Wish upon a star with these astrology and astronomy home decor ideas.

Are you a stargazer? Do you have your head in the clouds? Do you follow your horoscope and take stock in the zodiac? Are you always looking towards the heavens and wondering what is out there? Whether your interest is in the science of astronomy or the pseudoscience of astrology, your taste is simply out of this world. Why not add some astrology and astronomy star-gazing themed decor to your home base?

While they often appeal to completely different types of people, the one thing that practitioners of astrology and astronomy have in common is a love of the stars. Bring that admiration home with these clever ideas to make your home seem more like the space station than a three-floor walk-up or a suburban ranch. The planets will align just right with just these simple touches and DIY tutorials.

Astrology and Astronomy Home Decor Ideas

1. DIY Constellation Light Wall Art – Choose to show off your favorite constellation in the night sky with this simple wall art project that utilizes black foam board and battery-operated LED lights.
2. Love Under the Stars Duvet Cover – Lounge in bed and under the stars at the same time with magical duvet cover featuring the moon and stars.
3. Astronomical Accent Star – Use this tutorial to make your own twinkling star to hang on the wall or from the ceiling as a mobile.
4. Simple DIY Wall Constellations – It doesn’t get any simpler than this tutorial that uses thread and star-shaped stickers to create the effect of constellations on your walls.
5. Zodiac Embroidery Kits – What’s your sign? Show it off with these Zodiac DIY embroidery kits. Choose to showcase your own sign, or complete all the kits for a wall of Zodiac embroidery.
6. DIY Hubble Space Telescope Art Prints – Apparently, the Hubble Telescope images are public domain and that means you can take high-resolution images from the HubbleSite and use them to make art prints for your walls.
7. Constellations Coasters – Show off your knowledge of the constellations with these constellation coasters.
8. DIY Moon Phases Mobile – Make a decorative mobile to celebrate the phases of the moon with this DIY tutorial.
9. Starry Night Lampshade – It’s simple to create your own starry night indoors simply by poking holes in a black or dark-colored lampshade.

Related on EcoSalon

The 20 Best & Worst Cities for Your Astrological Sign

Colorstrology: A Horoscope, Except with Color

Full Moon Freakout: Study Finds Lunar Phases Matters

 Top Image: Urban Outfitters

The post 9 Out of this World Astrology and Astronomy Decor Ideas for Your Home appeared first on EcoSalon.

Ground control to Major Tom.

In a week that Mercury went into retrograde (we think), our thoughts turn skywards. What’s up there waiting for us, in every sense? This week, our regular launch into the EcoSalon archives takes a celestial flavor as we look at space – the key to so many of our earthly problems.

Space Is How We Fix Our Own Planet. Remember the incredible image of Earth-rise, described by photographer Galen Rowell as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”? That’s a gift the space program has bestowed upon us – ecological self-awareness. We know how fragile our world is because we can see it, bright and alive against the backdrop of the most profound emptiness we know. The help to our planet is technological, too: For example, you may have heard of a little invention developed for spacecraft called solar panels.

Space: Why Bother?

The more fuel efficient flying machine Aurora researchers envision (illustration, above) would be designed to cruise at mach 0.72 instead of the industry standard of mach 0.8. It would not have to use composite materials (which are lighter weight and used in the newly tested Boeing 787 Dreamliner) but it could use conventional aluminum and manufacturing technology, while still saving substantial amounts of fuel.

25% of costs for a typical airliner are spent on fuel, studies show. So the environmental benefits should deliver economic benefits, too.

Can the same efficiencies apply to space travel and space ships? As an industry, commercial space travel is too nascent to “go green,” Parrish says. But it is starting with a very ecological-minded entrepreneur, Richard Branson, along with pioneering spacecraft designer Burt Rutan.Branson famously supported and financed the development of alternative, renewable energy and signed the Clinton Global Initiative in 2006.

EcoMeme: The Future Of Flight, Fuel Efficient?

There are around 900 satellites up there, busily keeping the world connected. They’re immersed in a sea of spacecraft fragments and garbage nicknamed space junk. There are parts of rockets, fragments of destroyed satellites (some of them very fresh indeed), gloves…even, would you believe, an astronaut’s tool bag that can occasionally be spotted whipping across the night sky (and here’s how it got up there). Around 18,000 pieces are larger than 10cm and can therefore be tracked and avoided. The rest? An estimated 580,000 further objects above 1cm in diameter. And all of these are hurtling round at orbital velocity, with enough kinetic energy to punch through spacecraft armor, destroy systems worth millions of dollars and endanger the lives of astronauts. It’s way beyond being a nuisance and makes a shocking picture.

The Sky’s The Limit: Space Gets Trashed

If there’s one way to feel how precious and fragile our tiny blue-green planet is, it’s to watch the stars wheel as the world turns on its axis. When I eventually settle down and have kids, I’ll be taking them for long trips away from the city lights, and encouraging them to squint through a telescope, and pointing them towards online astronomical resources such as the pupil-dilating beauty of the WorldWide Telescope project, and all the other forms of amateur astronomy that gave me such a sense of the wonder of Nature when I was a child.

Stars: Teaching Us About Living (And Lying)

The thing about the Geminids is that they’re unlike other meteor showers in that their “shooting stars” do not come from our passing through the tail of a comet, but rather from a “weird rocky object” called 3200 Phaethon. This smallish rock with an odd orbit is believed to have come from an impact event with asteroid called Pallas. In any event, there’s a ton of strange and unique features to this show, many of which remains a mystery to scientists. Its big deal though, is, well, its bigness.

Heads Up, The Geminids Are Coming

Whether you actually buy into planetary politics (we’re reserving judgment), the cosmos are a fun and convenient foil for a range of bad behavior and bum luck. Your astrocartography, on the other hand, is something that should be taken very, very seriously. That’s right, your astrocartography, a.k.a. locational astrology, meaning you are where you live. That’s what the experts say, anyway. And you, my dear Leo, could very well be living in the wrong ZIP code.

Pack your bags. Here’s where you should be living according to your star sign.

The 20 Best And Worst Cities For Your Astrological Sign

Images: paul (dex), Aurora, Buglugs, ForestGladesiWanderer, DrRawheaD and Apple Wood Manor.

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Allow me to wax cosmic: There are certain events that take us outside of ourselves. Big ones, dwarfing our most significant human travails. Events where we look up for a moment and submit to the understanding that we’re part of a stupefying stellar picture, passing through a heavens so overwhelming that we’re simply owned – and there’s nothing to do but watch and accept our role in the show. Beautiful stuff.

I’m talking solar and lunar eclipses. I’m talking comets. And I’m talking meteor showers, the most intense of which is about to make its annual clockwork appearance, erupting out of Gemini early next week to the delight of night-sky devotees who never miss its arrival. The Earth, says NASA, “will pass through the Geminid debris stream, producing as many as 120 meteors per hour over dark-sky sites.” The shower will peak probably between midnight and sunrise on Tuesday, “when the Moon is low and the constellation Gemini is high overhead, spitting bright Geminids across a sparkling starry sky.” (See NASA waxes, too.)

The thing about the Geminids is that they’re unlike other meteor showers in that their “shooting stars” do not come from our passing through the tail of a comet, but rather from a “weird rocky object” called 3200 Phaethon. This smallish rock with an odd orbit is believed to have come from an impact event with asteroid called Pallas. In any event, there’s a ton of strange and unique features to this show, many of which remains a mystery to scientists. Its big deal, though, is, well, its bigness.

“Of all the debris streams Earth passes through every year, the Geminids’ is by far the most massive,” says NASA astronomer Bill Cooke. “When we add up the amount of dust in the Geminid stream, it outweighs other streams by factors of 5 to 500.” Says the NASA site: “This makes the Geminids the 900-lb gorilla of meteor showers.”

So go. Watch. Obey the heavens and enjoy the show.

Images: Dr. Rawhead, St0rmz, Nasa Images, Navicore, Noel Feans

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NASA is about to commit an eco-sin on a galactic scale.

On October 8th, in search of water, NASA is going to bomb the Moon.

Water on the Moon, you ask? Yes, scientists think there might be evidence of moisture found in the debris plume (which will, by the way, be visible from Earth). I admit, this irks me; I find it strikingly arrogant. Exploration is one thing, but the Moon doesn’t belong to the United States for benefit and exploitation.

Even if water is found, shuttling it back to Earth is an inconceivably ridiculous prospect, and colonizing the place seems just plain silly. Let’s fix Earth’s problems first – including conserving our own water sources – before setting forth on destructive (and expensive) forays into the Solar System.

Dare this blogger wax sentimental, but the Moon is a celestial body revered by Earthlings of all cultures, inspiring poets, shamans and lovers across the globe. Disrespectfully viewing the natural world as naught more than raw materials has already taken us too far.

Does science rule all? Or are there some ecological lines we should never cross?

Image: Flowery Luza

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Over the next few months, as winter wanes and the night air warms up enough to be comfortably breathed, it’s time to stand in the garden and watch the sky fall.

It’s not difficult to see how meteoroids got their nickname of shooting stars, even if the term couldn’t be less accurate. These lumps of icy gravel (cast-offs from comets powering around our solar system) rain against our planet in a slow, steady drizzle for much of the year, and unless you are remarkably lucky, there’s not much to see. But every few months, the earth passes through the dusty trail of a fragmenting comet – and we’re treated to the celestial firework display known as a meteor shower.

It’s the perfect excuse to grab a warming drink, wrap up well, and sit – or even lie – in your back garden until your eyes become accustomed to the dark. Because meteoroids move on parallel paths, they appear to be radiating from the same point of the sky – it’s the same perspective trick as when you are standing on railway tracks that seem to converge in the distance. Watching for meteors is a job for the more light-sensitive corners of your eyes – most of the time all you’ll glimpse is an after-image of a livid scratch of light across the dark sky, on the very edge of your perception. It’s hypnotically calming and it hones your senses.

So what can we expect from meteor showers in 2009? The best displays for North American observers are:

The Lyrids (mid April).

The Perseids (early August) – the most famous, and often the most beautiful.

The Orionids – caused by the passage of Halley’s Comet, and streaking across the sky in late October.

The Leonids (mid November) – spectacular in history, and a little unpredictable (although the heaviest storms come in 33-year cycles). Remarkable images include this one taken from an aircraft at 40,000 feet.

The Geminids (mid December). Appearing to fly out of the constellation Gemini (hence their name), the rather weird Geminids are regarded as one of the meteor-shower highlights of the year.

For the hardened stargazer, there are other less easily-spotted showers to tax the senses – SkyTour lists the full 2009 itinerary. And as eccentric as it may seem, reclining on the ground is a good way to watch – no amount of yoga (or mulled wine) will unkink the crick in your neck from a long, mesmerized night of craning your head back.

Images: jurvetson / johndan / typicalnaloboy

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