This Is How All Those Awesome Space Photographs Start Life

These days, we're all used to seeing colorful, saturated, high-resolution images of the weird and wonderful things that make up our universe. But they don't start off life looking quite as pretty.

This (perhaps not terribly inspiring) image of the Helix nebula is how most space images you see start out: scrappy. It was captured by a device that images radiation at the La Silla observatory in Chile's Atacama desert.

You'll notice that the image is broken to eight frames. That's an artefact of the sensors that are used, and the gaps are usually filled in by images taken from slightly different angles. There are also a fair few defects—like the vertical and horizontal lines you can see—which have to be removed.

Then, finally, the same image is shot through blue, green and red filters to identify light contributions from specific gases. Once combined, you get the kind of result pictured below—which we're far more used to seeing. But personally, I find the image above particualrly chamring. [New Scientist]

Images by ESO

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Shin avoids boot: Samsung hangs onto mobile chief despite crappy Galaxy S5 sales

Internet Security Threat Report 2014

Samsung has surprisingly opted to hang onto its current head of mobile JK Shin, despite rumours that he was for the chop after the mobile division underperformed all year.

Reports suggested last week that Shin would be ousted in favour of appliances and telly boss BK Yoon because sales of Sammy’s latest flagship, the Galaxy S5, were more than a little disappointing.

According to the WSJ, S5 sales were 40 per cent below the Korean company’s projections and 50 per cent lower in China.

But the Samsung Group’s heir apparent and acting chair Jay Y Lee opted to keep Shin on for now, with BK Yoon staying on as consumer electronics chief and components boss Kwon Oh-hyun also staying put. The guy taking responsibility for the poor mobile sales is DJ Lee, one of Shin’s top execs, who is president and head of sales and marketing for the mobile unit, familiar sources told the Wall Street Journal.

It’s possible that Samsung opted for a smaller reshuffle at the top to keep things stable for now, as Lee’s father and still technically chairman Lee Kun-hee remains in hospital after a heart attack in May. The firm may prefer to keep any big management changes on the back-burner until Jay Y Lee is fully in charge.

But Shin may also have earned some breathing room as the man in charge through the height of Sammy’s mobe popularity, having run the division since 2009.

“JK Shin has made big contributions in making Samsung Electronics the number one maker of mobile phones,” June Lee, the head of corporate communications at Samsung’s Corporate Strategy Office, told a group of reporters at a briefing following the announcement.

“The scope of personnel reshuffling is narrower than it has been before,” he added. ®

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Ralph McQuarrie Is Star Wars, and This Mini Doc Proves It

The internet is understandably excited about the new Star Wars trailer. I have no problems considering myself a mega ultra super fan. I've made pilgrimages to conventions around the country and seeing new live-action Star Wars footage that isn't the prequels is really exciting. But there's one name that's been woefully absent during the internet's long discussions about the plausibility of lightsabers and that really cool x-wing scene—Ralph McQuarrie.

McQuarrie is Star Wars, and I say that with no exaggeration. Sure the scripts belong to George Lucas, and Star Wars would be nothing without them, but McQuarrie gave the original series that classic Star Wars feel that even 35 years later can still capture imaginations. Character concepts? McQuarrie. Vehicle designs? McQuarrie. Planet topography? McQuarrie. The guy was in every sense a creative genius.

And it wasn't just the original trilogy. His artistic influence guided the prequel films and the Clone Wars series. In a five-part documentary, filmed in 2012 after McQuarrie's unfortunate passing, George Lucas and tons of other creatives who helped shaped the franchise weigh in on McQuarrie's monumental influence.

The documentary itself isn't much, just a bunch of interviews split up by stunning McQuarrie concepts, but there's a part in the first segment that always gets me. Scott Farrar, ILM's visual effects supervisor, puts into focus how McQuarrie was as instrumental to Star Wars as George Lucas.

The concepts they came up with were brilliant. Just brilliant. It helped every one up and down. Whether you were a model maker, a photographer, or a costumer, they broke new ground in ways nobody else had. You look back at the work, even at this point, and it holds up. There's lots of movies and lots of pieces of art that don't hold up past five years. We're talking shots and designs and things 25 or 30 years or more and they hold up as beautifully now as they did then. Now that's genius.

If you've got about 40 minutes to spare, it's a fitting tribute to the man, who even now, is making us ravenously watch an 88-second Star Wars teaser trailer on repeat.

Still via Ralph McQuarrie, Star Wars Artist: Tribute to a Master

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A Los Campesinos! Christmas Is a Great EP for the Holidays

So this Friday, I trudged into Manhattan for Black Friday. Mind you, I wasn't there to buy anything. For a couple years now, I've seen this strange holiday traditional as a sort of primal spectacle rarely witnessed on the day-to-day, and I just wanted to be in it. But there's one thing that always ruins my relaxing day of people watching—Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You."

Now I'm a little biased. I actively hate Christmas songs. Yeah, there are a few good ones—"Silent Night" is pretty chill—but whenever I hear Mariah Carey start up that familiar refrain, I just want to collapse in the fetal position in whatever store I'm in. A few artists have made valiant attempts to sway my opinion of yuletide music. Some have been successful. Others have really, really, really not been. Luckily Los Campesinos' A Los Campesinos! Christmas is a notch in the former category.

Releasing on December 8th (but you can stream at Pitchfork riiiiight now), the EP features six tracks, five originals and one cover, and are all better than Mariah Carey. Los Campesinos applies the same sonic wonder it has on all its albums with wonderful harmonies on "When Christmas Comes" and a "Doe to a Deer." We even get a great acoustic- and banjo-fueled number on "The Holly & The Ivy."

I can't think of any better way to shake off those lingering Thanksgiving thoughts and getting into the sans-Mariah Carey Christmas Spirit. [Pitchfork]

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This Guy Made a Spinning Wheel of Death With Clothespins and a Drill

Joerg Sprave is YouTube's pre-eminent creator of all things slingshot. On The Slingshot Channel, he shows off his various crazy-genius creations varying from all different levels of lethality. This Sunday Sprave debuted, as he describes, "the world's first drill-powered, fully automatic dart launcher."

Essentially each dart is strapped in a clothespin. Once Sprave powers on the drill, the wheel begins turning, and a specifically designed hand crank fires off the entire round. Sprave mentions that it's not very accurate, and it's not as lethal as some of his other borderline-scary creations, but it's a neat little piece of engineering.

Plus, Sprave's love of creating slingshots is incredibly infectious. I don't know if I ever loved something as much as this guy loves building his awesome slingshot/machine gun creations. [YouTube]

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Your Favorite Razer Gaming Peripherals, Discounted