Spreading Stardust

FINISHING TOUCHES: Annabelle finished a days-long art project this afternoon, putting the final (of about 2,423) plastic beads into place on Ziggy Stardust's face. Below, you can see she's closing in on being done.

Once all of the beads are in place, you cover the pattern with parchment paper and then use an iron to slightly melt or fuse the beads together. 

That process is always a little dicey, because you don't want to over melt them and lose the pixel effect, but if you under-iron them, the whole darn thing falls apart. Also, while you're ironing, invariably some of the beads flip sideways - especially on a big project like this - and then things get tense. 

Mercifully, in the end Ziggy came together fabulously. Long live Bowie. Gone but never forgotten. No doubt he'll be inspiring all kinds of art projects for generations to come.

PONDERING PLANETS: We're working hard on the picture book project. And though we're in the homestretch, we keep coming across "little" things that need changing or fixing or updating or altering, and so the finish line seems to keep getting pushed further away. Sigh. But we shall persevere!

Today's research for the book involved making sure we were well-versed in how Pluto is different than the eight inner solar system planets. To that end, we read the article "What Is Pluto?" part of the NASA Knows! (Grades K-4) series.

We also had to research how big the equator of Jupiter is. According to Space.com's article "How Big is Jupiter?" Jupiter has a mean radius of 43,440.7 miles (69,911 kilometers), which is about one-tenth the mean radius of the sun. Interestingly, Jupiter's rapid rotation causes it to bulge at the equator. Isn't that interesting? (In case you're wondering, Jupiter's diameter is 88,846 miles, and it spins once every 9.8 hours. That's a short day!

And our book research also had us calculating the distance from the Ohio/Indiana border to Washington DC.

Turns out it's about 525 miles, and would supposedly take about nine hours to drive, per our Mapquest query this morning.

Meanwhile, on Mars, the Mars Science Laboratory rover keeps on rollin.' We loved this selfie it took, which NASA shared today.

The photo shows Curiosity at "Namib Dune," where the rover's activities included scuffing into the dune with a wheel and scooping samples of sand for laboratory analysis.

            Image: NASA/JPL

We couldn't help but notice the big holes in MSL's wheels. Hope they are good for many more miles. ...

A DATE WITH THE BARD: One of the items we knocked off our 'to do' list today was getting reservations to see William Shakespeare's First Folio when it comes to down this spring. It will be on display at the main branch of the Seattle Public Library. 

Published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, the First Folio is the first and most comprehensive collection of the plays of William Shakespeare. It's considered one of the most important books ever published, as without it, his masterpieces including Julius Caesar, Macbeth, As You Like It and The Taming of the Shrew might have been lost to the ages. 

According to the British Library, it is estimated around 750 First Folios were printed, of which 233 are currently known to survive worldwide. The folios contain manuscripts of 36 plays. More: http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/shakespeares-first-folio
As part of the event, Seattle Public Library will have lots of special Shakespeare-related programming. You can learn more about it here: spl.org/shakespeare.

MPA will definitely be reading up on Shakespeare before we go see the precious artifact.