Astronomer matrioshkas

Nate Bellegarde painted a set of blank matrioshka dolls with the likenesses of famous astronomers. It's a gift for his girlfriend, who is studying astronomy.

Astronomatryoshkas

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Bookburn

Thinking more on it, I probably would have left out Sagan or Hawking to include Kepler.
Anonymous

I want to buy a set!!!!!
Medford Jack

Carl Sagan was on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Sagan was explaining the relationship of speed and light to measured time. He pointed out that the shortest measurement of time we had available was a nanosecond which is equal to one billionth of a second. Carson immediately corrected him saying “I disagree, it’s not the shortest measure of time.” Carl Sagan was visibly taken aback by Carson’s challenge to a commonly accepted term. Then Johnny deadpanned, ” The shortest measurement of time is: the time between when the light changes and the guy behind you beeps his horn.”
Salviati

I agree about the order, but I would still buy these in a heartbeat. Awesome job.
Anonymous

They are cool, but there is a big gap between Newton and Carl Sagan. You really need Hubble and Herschel in there, though I have to admit, its much easier to recognize ‘billions and billions’ Carl Sagan than it is to recognize the discoverer of Uranus and Deep Time, or the discoverer of the red shift.
- mdh
  
  I’d say these are the big thinkers and big communicators of astronomy, more so than the big do-ers.
  
  You could make a bigger set involving both, but these, for me, are the correct luminaries in terms of expanding the very ideas of what astronomy IS.
Anonymous

That’s lovely. I really like this.
ernesto

No Kepler! Still love it, though.
And, sure, there’s a bit of Copernicus in Newton (and quite a bit of Kepler too!), but Newton did say he was standing on the shoulders of giants. (OK, not standing on in this case, but they are giants).
Anonymous

The main motive for Kepler’s discoveries was to adjust the recorded observations to take account of Copernicus’s discovery that the Earth as the observation point was not stationary but orbited round the Sun.
WaylonWillie

nice job!
futnuh

Hawking isn’t an astronomer. Kepler really should have been included. And perhaps Ptolemy.
grikdog

Say…! Shouldn’t there be billions and billions of these?
RyanH

I like the order. After all, one of Newton’s most famous quotes is “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
IWood

The Sagan is clearly high.
Anonymous

Further to my anonymous comment of 16 April 2011, two of Kepler’s discoveries were contained in the Introduction to Astronomia Nova (1609). These were that the velocity of the planets was inversely related to their distance from the Sun, and that the planetary orbits were elliptical. Greater mathematical precision to these discoveries was given in Kepler’s later works and also the important concept of the foci.
mdh

Buddy Sagan is awesome.
Anonymous

The order doesn’t make sense
Hanglyman

I know there’s not enough dolls for it, but it would be great to see Jack Horkheimer in there too.
Anonymous

“If I have seen further it is only by nesting neatly inside giants.”
–Newton
Anonymous

But if he’d included Tycho Brahe, he could have been petting his pet elk.
tamgoddess

Awesome! I was just listening to a brilliant auto-tune (trust me, it’s great) song with Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc
- falz
  
  SUCH an awesome song. I got high and listened to that once for hours on repeat
Rob Cruickshank

As as awesome as this is, (and it *is* awesome), if I were making this for MY girlfriend, there’s be a Hypatia of Alexandria, a Caroline Herschel, a Henrietta Swan Levitt, and more like that.
- tamgoddess
  
  Rob, if I weren’t married…
- DoctressJulia
  
  <hug>
  
  <blush>
yellokat42

Or how about Annie Jump Cannon?
- Rob Cruickshank
  
  Yes!
  Here’s a nice list of more:
  http://www.astrosociety.org/education/resources/womenast_bib.html
  - DoctressJulia
    
    Ok, let me try this again. Rob, you’re awesome. xoxo :3
Wally Ballou

I didn’t peek.

Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Sagan, Hawking, right?

Too bad there wasn’t room for Kepler or Hubble.
- Richard Kirk
  
  I thought the second-to-last one was the young Hubble holding a football. There are pictures of him looking like that, only his hair wasn’t black. Of course, once I knew it was supposed to be Sagan, it is obviously him.
Anonymous

They should be in opposite order.

Gotta go. There are kids on my lawn.
- scopeyPDX
  
  hee hee
- Anonymous
  
  Right, wrong order. A little bit of Copernicus is in Newton, and not the reverse. …and dammit, now those kids are on mylawn!
  - Eark_the_Bunny
    
    Leave them kids alone! They don’t need no ed-u-cation!
    Beside my unicorn just ate your lawn. Now them kids don’t have nothing stand on.
angryearthling

bugger i thought it was kepler, galileo, newton, sagan, hawking. but after looking at the wikipedia image of copernicus the first one does seem to be copernicus.

would so love to get a set of these!
Sekino

I like how Sagan has this huge grin and go-get’em attitude compared to the others.
Bookburn

The telescope should have given it away, but I had a hard time with Galileo. He looks more… modern than I would have liked to see.

Must have Kepler. He can be holding Tycho Brahe’s brain (or notes).

Agree that the order should be reversed… but Hawking would become exponentially freakish with each increase in overall magnitude.