Europa Archives | Moss and Fog

Art

Vintage Style Travel Posters Imagine Travel to Distant Planets and Moons

June 26, 2024 Art

We have a beautiful and varied solar system, even if we’ve only visited a few celestial bodies so far.

That hasn’t stopped some of us from dreaming and imagining of far-flung vacations to distant planets and moons. Artist Steve Thomas has an amazing collection of travel posters in the style of classic airline and railway posters from the middle of the last century.

Instead of travel to Banff and St. Croix, the destinations include Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Triton, a moon of Neptune. They are illustrated in a lovely throwback style, and include lines like “Explore the Crimson Canyons of Mars” and “Sail Under the Ice of Neptune – Yellow Star Line”

See more of Thomas’ work on his website, which include many more creative series.

Images © Copyright Steve Thomas. Images used with artist’s permission.

Thomas describes his inspiration and research for the project to Moss and Fog:

“When I started the series it was purely from imagination. Those include Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Titan. After I went through all the planets the first time, then I started to do a little more research on what they would actually be like. So the second round of Space Travel posters started to get a little more accurate, but still with a healthy dose of imagination.”

3D

Planetary Moon Sizes In Comparison With Earth

July 27, 2020 3D

When you think of a planet’s moon, do you ever consider its size, in relation to Earth? Or for the small moons, the size relation to our own cities?

This fascinating animation shows us some of our solar system’s smallest moons, a few of which are no larger than the Eiffel Tower. The view quickly zooms out, however, to show Phobos, Europa, and Triton, which rival our own moon’s scale.

Throughout the animation, we see over a dozen planetary moons, and their size. It’s definitely a worthy-watch, giving you perspective on our orbiting bodies. You’ll never know when you might need vital trivia-night knowledge on the solar system’s smallest and largest moons. Via LS:

Advertising

Nasa’s Visions of the Future

February 13, 2016 Advertising

NASA has an eye for the artistic, and these beautifully concepted and illustrated posters are a great example of creativity + space travel.

Imagination is our window into the future. At NASA/JPL we strive to be bold in advancing the edge of possibility so that someday, with the help of new generations of innovators and explorers, these visions of the future can become a reality. As you look through these images of imaginative travel destinations, remember that you can be an architect of the future. Via JPL:

Future

Europa

November 20, 2011 Future

What’s cooler than a vacation to Europe? A probe sent to Europa, one of Jupiter’s 60+ moons, and possibly a celestial body in our solar system that could harbor life.

Scientists have for years wondered about the strange, complex surface textures of this moon.

Slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and probably has an iron core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is composed of ice and is one of the smoothest in the Solar System. This surface is striated by cracks and streaks, while craters are relatively infrequent. The apparent youth and smoothness of the surface have led to the hypothesis that a water ocean exists beneath it, which could conceivably serve as an abode for extraterrestrial life.This hypothesis proposes that heat energy from tidal flexing causes the ocean to remain liquid and drives geological activity similar to plate tectonics.

Just in the last few months, have determined that, indeed, the surface is made up of ice that shows relatively recent activity from underneath. The idea from many in the space community is to send an advanced probe to this moon, and either drill or melt through the 3-kilometer-thick surface to the water oceans below.

The task is going to be monumental to complete, and in the age of budget-slashing, NASA may not get the funding it needs to get this off the drawing board. Who knows what a probe would discover, if it could ever complete its mission. We do know that strange, primitive life exists at the bottom of our own oceans, where no sunlight ever reaches. Thermal vents near the earth’s mantle pump out heat that make this life possible.

In 2006, Robert T. Pappalardo, an assistant professor in the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder said,

We’ve spent quite a bit of time and effort trying to understand if Mars was once a habitable environment. Europa today, probably, is a habitable environment. We need to confirm this … but Europa, potentially, has all the ingredients for life … and not just four billion years ago … but today.

We can be sure that if a scientific probe beamed back images of strange alien life swimming under the icy shell of Europa, our existence would never be the same. Let’s go!