Deep Space Becomes a Wearable Work of Art

Today is an exception on the blog, but for good reasons!  I’m taking a bit of a detour from discussing home decor so that I can share with you some exciting news from my hubby.  While I try my best to stick to the subject of home decorating, I sometimes feel it’s necessary to share a bit about what is going on in my personal life because it’s my life that inspires my blog, so one is obviously related to the other.  And I am a person that gets very excited for others when they have good news and always want to help them celebrate their successes, so today is that day because I am so happy for my hubby!

If you’re read some of my previous interviews, you might already know that my husband’s hobby is astrophotography {and tagging along with me to antique faires jokingly wearing my purchases, of course!}.

By day, he works for Twitter, so he tweets…a lot!  Truly, I have to be careful what I say because sometimes I catch him tweeting random things I’ve said!  I even now sometimes finish sentences with the phrase, “Don’t tweet that!” just to be sure that my secrets stay secret.  :)

But I digress…By night, he captures amazing astrophotography images – or rather images of deep space.  One of hubby’s astrophotography image tweets recently caught the attention of a jewelry designer who creates jewelry out of space images and a fun new friendship and merging of passions was born!  Melissa from Lost in Space Jewelry reached out to my hubby to see about using some of his images in her jewelry designs.  Melissa is a jewelry designer, who one night during a bout with insomnia, envisioned a necklace design in her head using the Earth and the Moon.  The next day, she turned her vision into a reality and her obsession with all things cosmic was born!  To her, space is the universal language of awe…

As it turns out, not only are my hubby and Melissa both passionate about what they do, they are also neighbors living in the same county.  Melissa used two of hubby’s images – The Horsehead Nebula and the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula –  to create a beautiful, reversible sterling silver bracelet.

Now I’ll be honest.  Even though hubby talks to me every day about deep space, I am still not up-to-speed about the techniques for capturing images and don’t always understand what the images represent, so here’s what hed had to say:
“Nebulae are regions of active star formation in deep space. Each image is shot over multiple nights and layered together to create one composite image. These Nebula are imaged through telescope using a specialized Astrophotography camera called a CCD. The array of colors found in the images represent the combination of gases found in deep space. So why can’t you see these colors when you look up into the night sky? The light emitted from deep space activates the colorblind rods in our eyes so these objects appear in black and white if you simply view them through a telescope.”

We live in a tract home in the California Bay Area, so we are surrounded by two-story homes on all sides, and yet, he still manages to capture some amazing images over the course of many hours, sometimes, over the duration of many days.

Horsehead Nebula

“Ever since I was a kid, I have been captivated by the Orion constellation, a group of stars that resembles a Hunter that makes an appearance in the Winter night sky. Easily recognizable by its iconic belt, Orion contained a gem for astrophotographers. Located on Orion’s belt, the Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1500 light years from Earth and the swirling cloud of dark dust and gases is one of the most identifiable nebula. Capturing this Nebula was very special for me as this was my first object that I had shot in color, which made me fall deeper in love with the hobby.”

Elephants Trunk Nebula

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula was my first venture into Narrowband astrphotography, which is a technique to illuminate the beautiful gases that lie in deep space. Since seeing the mezmorizing colors of this nebula on the internet, I was eager to capture this object myself. Shooting this nebula taught me a great lesson in that in order to shoot quality images, I would have to shoot objects over multiple nights, resulting in many hours of imaging time. I logged just over 8 hours of time under the stars on this one and have since adopted the ‘quality over quantity’ principle in my astrophotography. Located 2,400 light years from Earth, the Elephant’s Trunk nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young stars.

Having a hobby that you enjoy and are passionate about is a reward in and of itself, but it’s a bonus when someone else appreciates and enjoys your work.  So today I’m extra thrilled for hubby that a talented jewelry designer used his images to create this bracelet.

Here’s to hoping your week is out of this world!  {Sorry, I just couldn’t resist…}  :)

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