For the record, my favorite scene in all six Star Wars films is also perhaps the most iconic one, the moment in the very first movie when Luke Skywalker watches two suns sink toward the barren horizon of Tatooine. It’s a beautiful scene no matter how you examine it: visually, thematically, musically, emotionally. It’s a powerful evocation of youthful restlessness, both melancholy and hopeful. And it’s magical because it takes something that is mundane, if beautiful — a simple sunset — and transforms it into a novelty, the double sunset of another world. We identify with the image because we see something similar all the time, but we thrill at its strangeness. It is simultaneously familiar and unearthly.

How’d you like to see something like that scene, only for real? Something as close to standing in Luke Skywalker’s boots as we’re likely to get any time soon? My friends, please click “Continue Reading” to experience the unspeakably cool…

This image, which I found via the Space News Blog — an excellent resource for space enthusiasts, by the way — was captured recently by the Spirit rover, one of those durable little robot skateboards that are still doing good work up there on Mars, even though they long ago faded from the headlines. I find this photo startling and romantic for exactly the same reasons I like that scene in Star Wars: it is both like and unlike every sunset I’ve ever seen. It fills me with awe to know that this is how evening looks on the next planet over.

If that photo has the same effect on you, then you might also want to check out this page, which features images of dust-devils twisting in the Martian sand. (Be sure to click on the pictures; they’re animated GIFs that aren’t quite perfect movies, but will give you an idea of how these things move. Of course, they move just like earthly zephyrs, which is part of their charm.) I don’t know about you, but I can picture myself sitting in a rocker on the front porch of my farm house, chewing on a stalk of grass and watchin’ them thar twisters in the distance… the desert is all red, naturally, the grass is imported at considerable expense from Earth, and I’m wearing a spacesuit because Mars doesn’t have much in the way of breathable air, but hey, I can picture those conditions easily enough.

And if that’s still not enough for you, what do you think about the news that a human-built object is at the very edge of our system and about to cross into interstellar space? Or that some intrepid civilians are about to launch a genuine solar-sail, a spacecraft that will be propelled by the gentle pressure of light from the sun? Now there’s a science-fiction idea for you…

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s like we’re living in the future!