Sunday Stills: Our Universe, Growing Up Geographic, and More

Read: An Ancient Comic Strip View in web browser. Sunday Stills ISSUE 36 Sunday, March 29, 2015 MAGAZINE A 25-Year Lens on Our Beautiful Universe Hubble literally expanded the frontiers of human knowledge. Using it to peer deep into space and back in cosmic time with unprecedented clarity, astronomers learned that galaxies formed from smaller patches of stuff in the early universe and that massive galaxies typically harbor supermassive black holes at their centers. Hubble examinations of dim dwarf stars confirmed that normal matter cannot generate nearly enough gravity to hold galaxies together, which means that the “dark matter” responsible must be made of more exotic stuff … The space telescope’s global popularity surely arises, though, not only from its scientific attainments but also from the memorable images it has produced of glittering galaxies, softly glowing nebulae, and the wreckage of shattered stars (which are all originally in black and white, converted to color after the fact). While Hubble was being built and launched, such photos were routinely disparaged in NASA circles as mere public relations fodder, called “pretties.” But a quarter century later the cosmic scenes have, in the words of NASA historian Steven J. Dick, “enhanced the very idea of what we call ‘culture.’ ” READ NEWS Portraits Capture Unexpected Reactions to ISIS Beheadings PHOTOGRAPH BY Jonathan Rashad Photographer Jonathan Rashad arrived in the dusty Egyptian town of Al Aour two days after 13 of its residents were shown being beheaded in a video released by the Islamic State, commonly known as ISIS. The town’s victims were among 21 Coptic Christians whom ISIS says it beheaded after kidnapping them from migrant worker dormitories in Libya. Rashad, a 23-year-old Egyptian documentary photographer, had come to the heavily Coptic Al Aour, south of Cairo, to shoot portraits of grieving family members. What he found surprised him. READ PROOF Notes From a Native Son PHOTOGRAPH BY TYRONE TURNER “I love to photograph before the parade has begun, as the floats and marching bands are still trying to line up.” —Tyrone Turner When Tyrone Turner was a kid, Mardi Gras meant competing with his brother and sisters to see who could fill up their bags with the most beads and doubloons, reveling in the freedom given by their parents to roam a prescribed four or five blocks in their Uptown neighborhood. As a newspaper photographer for the Times-Picayune, Turner covered the expected parade highlights from every vantage point, but it wasn't until he returned to photograph the city post-Hurricane Katrina, no longer driven by newspaper deadlines, that he felt compelled to slow down and spend time around the edges. Tyrone's examination has become the subject of a series of articles on Proof and reveals that the locals have come a long way. "Nine years after … we feel like we are back," says Ronald Lewis, a Lower Ninth Ward resident in Tyrone’s first installment. “We feel like we are normal. We do the things that we did before. So for us, the progress still needs to happen, but we are at a comfortable point in our lives, and we just want other people to come back and do the same—to build this community back to the size it was before.” READ THE LATEST IN THE SERIES YOUR SHOT The Art of Making Art PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAN QUINN “Something I’ve learned as I’ve worked with photographers and artists is that practice does make perfect,” writes Jeanne M. Modderman, photography producer at National Geographic. “Some of the most beautiful, mind-blowing art I’ve ever seen was not made by superheroes or saints but by ordinary people.” Modderman challenged Your Shot members to take a moment to think, sketch, reshoot, plot. The assignment, entitled Create It, includes artful submissions like Brian Quinn’s picture of a boy walking away from an exploding firework (above). “After many failed attempts I was finally able to capture the exact moment of detonation,” Quinn writes in the caption. On April 7 from 12:30 to 1 p.m. ET, Modderman will be joined by two guest editors for a live discussion on Facebook about editing this assignment. SEE THE TRENDING SUBMISSIONS PROOF Growing Up Geographic PHOTOGRAPH BY W.E. GARRETT Imagine this: You’re 11 years old, clamoring up a steep passage on an Alaskan gold rush trail, accompanied by your big brother, your mother, a massive St. Bernard, and your father, who just happens to be a National Geographic photographer and editor. It’s 1964, and most of the world will never see a picture of Skagway, Alaska, except for the photographs that will be published in the magazine. It was a golden era for photography—much of the world was still unseen by the general public—and the iPhone wasn’t even a glimmer in Steve Jobs’s eye. READ Show Your Support: SHOP DONATE SUBSCRIBE TRAVEL BECOME A MEMBER You are receiving this email because ignoble.experiment@arconati.us is signed up to receive National Geographic communications. If you prefer not to receive emails from us, please unsubscribe. To ensure that you receive your National Geographic emails, please add ngs@e.nationalgeographic.com to your address book now. Learn how. Contact Us | Privacy Policy | About Us | Customer Service National Geographic | 1145 17th Street N.W. | Washington, D.C. 20036 Copyright © 2015 National Geographic Society. All Rights Reserved.