Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Astrotypography

That's probably what I'm going to call all this business, unless I think of something more clever.

Here's my brainstorming thus far:

Words that sound sciencey that I could relate somehow to typography:
  • Orbit, orbital: the curved path of a celestial object or spacecraft around a star, planet, or moon, especially a periodic elliptical revolution
  • Trans-Neptunian: any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater average distance (semi-major axis) than Neptune, 30 astronomical units (AU)
  • (Celestial) Object: naturally occurring physical entity, association, or structure that current science has demonstrated to exist in the observable universe
  • *Axis: imaginary line about which a body rotates
  • Semi-major axis: one half of the major axis, and thus runs from the centre, through a focus, and to the perimeter
  • Data: facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis
  • Calculation: mathematical determination of the size or number of something
  • Astronomical Units (AU): a unit of measurement equal to 149.6 million kilometers, the mean distance from the center of the earth to the center of the sun
  • Unexplored: not investigated or mapped
  • Stellar: of or relating to a star or stars
  • Celestial: positioned in or relating to the sky, or outer space as observed in astronomy
  • (Celestial) Body: natural object visible in the sky
  • Crater: large, bowl-shaped cavity in the ground or on the surface of a planet or the moon, typically one caused by an explosion or the impact of a meteorite or other celestial body
  • Eclipse: an obscuring of the light from one celestial body by the passage of another between it and the observer or between it and its source of illumination
  • Ellipse: a regular oval shape, traced by a point moving in a plane so that the sum of its distances from two other points (the foci) is constant, or resulting when a cone is cut by an oblique plane that does not intersect the base
  • Galactic: of or relating to a galaxy or galaxies, especially the Milky Way galaxy
  • Gravity: the force that attracts a body toward the center of the earth, or toward any other physical body having mass. For most purposes Newton's laws of gravity apply, with minor modifications to take the general theory of relativity into account.
  • Nebula: a cloud of gas and dust in outer space, visible in the night sky either as an indistinct bright patch or as a dark silhouette against other luminous matter
  • Nova: a star showing a sudden large increase in brightness and then slowly returning to its original state over a few months
  • Supernova: a star that suddenly increases greatly in brightness because of a catastrophic explosion that ejects most of its mass
  • Penumbra: the shadow cast by the earth or moon over an area experiencing a partial eclipse
  • Phase: one of the recurring appearances or states of the moon or a planet in respect to the form, or the absence, of its illuminated disk
  • Planetary: of, relating to, or belonging to a planet or planets
  • Satellite: a celestial body orbiting the earth or another planet
  • Terminal velocity: highest velocity attainable by an object as it falls through air
Type-related stuff (that could potentially sound astronomical):
  • *Univers: a sans-serif typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954
  • Serif: a small line attached to the end of a stroke in a letter or symbol
  • *Axis: An imaginary line drawn from top to bottom of a glyph bisecting the upper and lower strokes is the axis
  • *Tail: A descending stroke, often decorative
  • Aperture: an area entirely or partially enclosed by a letter form or a symbol
  • Apex: an upward pointing shape found in certain letters
  • Kerning: the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result
  • Pixel: a minute area of illumination on a display screen, one of many from which an image is composed
  • Point: The width and height of a font, measured in points (one point is 1/72nd of an inch); a mark or dot used in printing or writing for punctuation, especially a period
  • *Space: an empty area between things
  • Majuscule: uppercase letter
  • Terminal: a type of curve, often the end (straight or curved) of any stroke that doesn't include a serif (which can include serif fonts)
Definitions coming soon.

* Has both an astronomical and typographic definition

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