Published by Kate at August 21, 2009 2:01 pm under Story
By Kate Hennessy
After a fortuitous encounter at the Eureka Awards dinner on Tuesday, Professor Bryan M. Gaensler leapt on a brilliant opportunity. But first: watch this.
Physics professor Gaensler had a tutorial scheduled the next day about the challenges of portraying science and astronomy in film. He planned to use 1996 movie ‘Contact‘ (starring Jodie Foster) as his primary example.
Over dinner, however, Gaensler discovered that the gentleman to his left was none other than ’space artist’ Jon Lomberg.
From 1995-1997 Lomberg worked on the Warner Brothers film as Astronomical Visual Consultant. He designed and story-boarded many of the film’s astronomical animation sequences, including the famed three-minute zoom out from Earth that opens the movie (here again on QuietTube) – the very sequence Gaensler planned to show students the next day.
Sensibly, Gaensler’s first question to Lomberg was “What are you doing at noon tomorrow?”
Published by Kate at August 17, 2009 9:43 am under Story
By Jon Lomberg
A remembrance of things past, inspired by the new Star Trek movie.
I wasn’t a fan of Star Trek when it first came out. The cheesy effects and cheesier writing of many episodes of the original series did not whet my appetite for more.
Image: Artist Jon Lomberg with the black hole fountain he designed for the center of his Galaxy Garden in Hawaii.
When I began to show my art at Sci-Fi conventions, I couldn’t help but absorb some of the Trekkies’ excitement, and eventually started watching the show in reruns. But it was a guilty pleasure.
I was working Carl Sagan, who was contemptuous of Star Trek. Bad stories and bad science did not represent the space program in a very positive light.
I met Star Trek’s creator, Gene Roddenberry, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1976, on the night Viking 1 landed on the surface of Mars. I was there making a documentary about it for CBC radio. Roddenberry and actress Nichelle Nichols (who plays communications officer Lieutenant Uhura) were in attendance, along with writers Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury, among other Sci-Fi luminaries.
Not yet 30, I was brash enough to alienate Roddenberry by suggesting most Star Trek fans of my acquaintance were less interested in the real space program and more in trivia from the show, like the name of Capt. Kirk’s brother.
