International Year of Astronomy
When I was little and just starting out in the ways of geekdom, there was a thing called the International Geophysical Year, or IGY.* The idea of a year devoted to worldwide research of such a thing made a big impression on my young, ever-curious mind.
This year we're looking upward. On January 1, the Astronomy Picture of the Day featured this poster for the International Year of Astronomy, or IYA:
I really love this poster but it's much too oblong to make a good LJ userpic, so I cropped all but the illustration in the center of the poster, which makes a nice icon, I think.
*To illustrate how my life sometimes seems to get involved in weird loops, in 1982 Donald Fagen, once-and-futurely of Steely Dan, did a song called "I.G.Y." recounting his own youthful memories. And a couple of weeks ago I changed the subtitle of my LJ profile page to a line from a different Steely Dan song, which also has initials in its title.
This year we're looking upward. On January 1, the Astronomy Picture of the Day featured this poster for the International Year of Astronomy, or IYA:
I really love this poster but it's much too oblong to make a good LJ userpic, so I cropped all but the illustration in the center of the poster, which makes a nice icon, I think.
*To illustrate how my life sometimes seems to get involved in weird loops, in 1982 Donald Fagen, once-and-futurely of Steely Dan, did a song called "I.G.Y." recounting his own youthful memories. And a couple of weeks ago I changed the subtitle of my LJ profile page to a line from a different Steely Dan song, which also has initials in its title.