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Frank Kelly Freas Listen to this show
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On Saturday - January 15th, 2005 - Hour 25 remembered artist Frank Kelly Freas with an interview that we did with him shortly before we started doing the show on-line. Kelly Freas has had a long and prolific career as one of the premier artists in the science fiction field. In his 50+ year career he has crafted numerous iconic images for the field and has done much to shape our ideas of science fiction art and illustration. When not doing paintings for SF books and magazines, his work has appeared in a wide variety of 'main-stream' venues, including Mad magazine, airplane nose art, glossy magazines, NASA posters and mission patches, rock albums and even pictures of the Saints for the Franciscan monks. Outside of his art he was known to his friends and acquaintances as a friendly and dapper gentleman who warmed any room or gathering by his presence. His sense of humor was legendary and it can easily be said that he was loved by everyone who met him. You can find out why the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls Kelly 'the most popular science fiction artist in the history of the field' by checking out his web site. Sadly, Kelly died on January 2nd, 2005 and we deeply mourn his passing. Please note; All of the examples of Kelly's art used on this Web Site are Copyright © Kelly Freas, All Rights Reserved, and are used with the kind permission of his estate. | |
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Kelly and Laura Freas |
Kelly's first professional book cover. |
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When Kelly painted the cover for the Fredric Brown story Martians Go Home he created one of the iconic images of science fiction. The 'little green guy' is an instantly recognizable sign that, "Here be strange and fantastic stories". Likewise, when he did the painting for The Gulf Between he created a haunting image for the relationship between humans and our machines that speaks as loudly as any words could. This picture has been reprinted numerous times on various books and anthologies and even appeared on the Queen album, We Are the World. | ||
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Long a friend of the space program Kelly has lent his artistic talents to the exploration of space by doing series of commissioned posters for NASA explaining why we go into space. His contacts with NASA even led him to designing the patch the astronauts wore on one of the Skylab missions. And if you want to appreciate his ability to juxtapose unexpected elements in a painting you need look no farther than his cover illustration for the Murray Leinster story The Pirates of Ersatz. Every time I see that image of a pirate with a ray gun in his hand and a slide rule in his mouth I just have to smile. Thank you Kelly, for the images you created and for having made the world a nicer place to live in. We'll miss you. | ||
Dateline: Mars
NASA is releasing all of the images from the two Mars Exploration Rovers almost as soon as they arrive at JPL. The raw images for the Spirit rover can be found at the following Web Page and raw images for Opportunity can be found here. The images that have been released to the press, along with animations and explanatory text, can be found here. You can find larger versions of the images shown below at that last NASA Web Site.
Opportunity |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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Here is a true color close-up of the Burns Hill region of Endurance crater. {This is in fact, a small portion of a much larger and higher resolution picture.} This image was taken not long before the engineers and scientists at JPL found a route that would let them drive Opportunity out of that crater so it could explore other parts of the Martian surface. |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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Now that Opportunity has driven out of Endurance crater it is free to explore other Martian mysteries. But first it will take a look at the heatshield that protected the rover during its entry into the Martian atmosphere. |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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The above two images give you a closer look at Opportunity's heat shield and some of the other debris. The engineers who worked on this hardware are anxious to study it closer since it will give them clues as to how they can improve the designs for the vehicles that will land on Mars in the future. |
Spirit |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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The above image shows the route that Spirit has taken while it roves across Mars. Pay particular attention to the crater in the lower right hand part of the image, the one with the dark streak in it. |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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The upper portion of the picture above shows two images of that same area taken in March and August of last year. Note that the dark streak wasn't there in March but had been created sometime before August. Scientists think that it was caused by a dust devil that swept light colored dust off of darker rocks. The bottom part of the above picture shows that crater with a dark streak as seen by Spirit. In this picture taken from the surface of Mars you can see that same dark streak that was seen by a spacecraft in orbit hundreds of miles overhead. |
 Image Credit: NASA/JPL |
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Here is a false color image of Martian rocks and sand. Several of these rocks appear to be rounded, as if they had been smoothed by blowing sand or perhaps moving water. Other rocks lack that appearance and may have been transported in from other parts of Mars by volcanic action or meteor impacts. |
Dateline: Saturn/Titan
Information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, including the newest released images from Huygens, can be found at this ESA Web Site. The University of Arizona Web Site for the imaging system used to take these pictures has much information about how they were obtained and processed as well as a collection of processed and unprocessed images.The Huygens probe carried a microphone and recorded the various sounds that it heard while descending to the surface of Titan. You can listen to those sounds at this Web Page sponsored by the Planetary Society.
Information about the Cassini mission can be found at the Project's Official Web Site at JPL. Pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft can be found by going to this JPL Web Page.
 Image Credit: ESA/NASA/University of Arizona |
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This picture was taken when Huygens was 16 km above the surface of Titan and shows features as small as 40 meters across, roughly 120 feet. The lighter colored material is rougher and at a higher elevation that the smooth dark material on the right hand side of the image. There appear to be a number of drainage channels flowing from the high elevations to the dark low lying area, although it is not yet clear what fluid formed those channels. {The temperatures on Titan are far too low for liquid water to exist.} It is not yet clear what the dark materials are made of. It is not even clear if they are solid or liquid. They may be hydrocarbon soaked ice or could even be liquid hydrocarbons. Hopefully, further analysis of these and other pictures will offer some answers to these questions. |
 Image Credit: ESA/NASA/University of Arizona |
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This composite image was taken at a lower altitude and is looking obliquely toward the boundary between the smooth dark material and the light colored higher elevations. Some of the relatively smooth white areas might be clouds or fog. The absence of details toward the horizon is probably caused by atmospheric haze. I don't know about you, but this sure looks to me like a picture of a beach. |
 Image Credit: ESA/NASA/University of Arizona |
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And finally we have a color picture taken from the surface of Titan. Those rocks in the foreground are probably made of ice and are a few inches across. The sky is orange because of the hydrocarbon haze that blankets Titan's atmosphere. More images and interpretations will be released from the Science Team over the coming weeks. I can hardly wait to hear what they have found. |
Huygens Images Processed by Enthusiasts
 Source Images Credit: ESA/NASA/University of Arizona. Processing and Composition: Ricardo Nunes |
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Only a few of the images from Huygens have been processed and released by the Project's Science Team, but all of the raw images are available from various sources on the web. Some people can't wait to see the processed images and so they have been doing their own processing of the raw images. The Enthusiast Compositions of the Huygens Images Web Page is a focal point for this activity. The pictures there give us a preview of what will be officially released in the coming weeks. As an example of their work, the above image is a portion of a mosaic created by Ricardo Nunes showing details of the drainage channels that flow from the highlands to the dark colored low areas on Titan. Way cool! |
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 Kelly Freas at work. {Picture © Kelly Freas.} |
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Links for more information relating to this week's show
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Frank Kelly Freas
Tsunami Relief PO Box 37243 Washington, DC 20013 (800)-HELP NOW PO Box 17090 Baltimore, MD 21203-7090 800-736-3467 PO Box 2247 New York, NY 10116-2247 (888) 392-0392 Asia Earthquake Fund PO Box 1211 Albert Lea, MN 56007-1211 Space News - Mars Space News - The Cassini Mission to Saturn For On-Going Updates on Space News ISS News Space Related Organizations If you are interested in learning more about current space activities there are many local and national organizations you might want to know about. Joining these organizations and taking part in their activities is a good way to stay abreast of things going on in space as well as a way to show your support for those activities. Listed below are some of those organizations. |
Copyright © Warren W. James, 2000-2005. All rights reserved.