Via Viewmanoid Films, meet the boyband of the future.

Introducing Shakerboys … from viewmanoid on Vimeo

Dig it, baby.

Time for another episode of the excellent documentary series The Planets, this time on the Sun. Titled Star, the episode captures the magnitude of several “Eureka!” moments, as when Angelo Secchi, the Vatican’s chief astronomer, realised the blinding disc in the daytime sky is another one of those points that twinkle at night. As with previous episodes, there’s plenty of rare footage and some interesting characters, not least Kristian Birkeland, who created laboratory auroras while wearing a fez to protect his brain from radiation.

Part 1:

Splitting light. Secchi’s discovery. A makeshift umbrella. Twisted magnetism.

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Part 2:

Artificial auroras. Comets and clues. Force field. Heliopause. The stuff of life.

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Related: Astronomical Odds, Craters, Freefall.  (h/t, The Thin Man.)

Brilliant Noise, by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt, is a short film about the Sun. Not so much twinkling as seething, spitting and flaring.

Brilliant Noise from Semiconductor on Vimeo

More. And.

Busy today, but I thought you might like to see this exploding banana mask.

You heard me.

Thanks to The Thin Man, here’s the 2007 documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, in which the surviving Apollo crew members recount their remarkable, and at times moving, experiences. There’s previously unseen mission footage, an excellent score by Philip Sheppard, and keep an eye out for Kennedy’s extraordinary speech, about 13:20 in.

The film is also available in six parts here. Related: Freefall, Craters, Astronomical Odds.