Which way is up, Earthlings?

Sketches about Galileo, space & mind-blowing learning' 🤯

I find myself drawing about space again.

Last time it was space aliens visiting us on the day of the most recent presidential debate . . .

Debate watching, & a reminder that Facebook wants to kill you

. . . but this time I went a little farther back in time.

While I’m here doing the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford, fellows like me have been encouraged to get out of the usual daily news and journalism biz way of thinking.

So I’m sitting in on an incredible class about space!

More specifically, “Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination.”

Professor Elizabeth Kessler is focusing on images of space over human history, from the Nebra Sky Disc which dates to, oh, 2000-1600 BCE, give or take.

It’s a bronze and gold disc that is the first known representation humans made of the heavens.

As some of you know, I’m a bit of a space dork — not as much in a sci-fi way as in a science/I-love-to-have-my-mind-blown sort of way.

I’ve been sketching during the lectures, particularly since the class is focused on imagery. (I added the color later.)

Remember Galileo and his beautiful watercolors of the moon?

That was the first (known) time someone pointed a telescope at space and documented things not visible to the naked eye. (Turns out the Catholic Church frowned on that sort of thing.)

You’re also probably familiar with the famous “Earthrise” photo, taken during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968. (I mistakenly called this the “Blue Marble” photo in my sketchbook, but that actually came later.)

Earthrise is notable because the moon is in the foreground and earth is rising above it.

But — here comes one of the things that blew my mind — the photo was actually taken as the Apollo 8 astronauts were orbiting around the moon, and it appeared like the sketch at the bottom.

In other words, sideways compared to how it’s been presented all these years.

Which led me to ask, who decided which way is up in space?

Not only for this photo, but for Earth itself, why is the North Pole at the top and the South Pole at the bottom?

Something tells me it’s all about who had the biggest war chest and who made the maps and globes.

I’ll report back on what I find out at the next lecture.

And, don’t worry, I’ll have a political post for you here shortly!

. . . But it really is nice to take a short break and think about some big universal questions amid all the human calamity, don’t you think?

Thanks for being here and helping to support the cartoons!

-Mark