Sunshine

There are a couple of spectacular pictures on SpaceWeather.com today, by astrophotographer Thierry Legault. This link will take you to today's post, and this one to the front page of SpaceWeather.
Click the pic to see the full size version, and here to see another incredible shot, taken the next day, of the whole disk. In the latter, the shuttle is getting ready to grapple the Hubble space telescope. The two spacecraft are at about the 7:00 position, a third of the way in from the edge to the center. On my computer, at least, you need to expand the picture to full-size (not fit to the size of the window) to see any detail. Mr. Legault's webpage is here, but when I checked it was overloaded (undoubtedly by traffic like mine from SpaceWeather).

I'm reminded that I recently watched the movie Sunshine. A number of people recommended it to me, but I have to say I was disappointed. I think my problem is that the movie doesn't know what it wants to be... hard SF? The science is sub-lousy. Psychodrama? I felt that the characters were pretty trite, reduced to one dimensional obsessives, and not very well developed as believable people with their foibles and strengths competing in a crisis situation. Monster movie? This aspect really pissed me off. Suspense/Thriller? I suppose this might come closest to the mark, but the fact is, there's so much going on, and you can pretty much guess how it's all going to end up (not in detail, but broad outcome) right from the beginning, so it's hard to get into a suspensful mindset. Overall, it never led me to willingly suspend my disbelief, and I spent most of the movie exasperated at its predictable manipulativeness.

Another thing that irritates me is when a story is not credited with at least "inspired by," if not "based upon." Most of the stories by Phillip K. Dick that have been adapted to film attribute his work as inspiration, even when the final production would be almost unrecognizable to someone familiar with the orignal writing. The short story Phoenix by Clark Ashton Smith (1954) is very clearly the basis of this film, but I saw no attribution. I was looking, and it is possible I missed it, but I don't think so. If you have a little bit of time, and you like Sci Fi, here is a link to the story online. I'm not a big fan of the flowery language, but the mood of pensiveness amid apparent calm works for me much better than the frenetic hysteria of the movie.