Alex Heberling

I’m sitting at my house in Toledo, watching Independence Day on TV with my mom.  13 years later, the special effects are still as captivating as they were when I was 10 years old. Around the same time was the peak of my childhood interest in astronomy and all things spacey.  At the time, I still wanted to be an artist when I grew up, but Independence Day threw me into a brief  stint of wanting to design special effects for sci-fi movies.

In actuality, with my training, I probably could do this.  It’s interesting where life takes me sometimes.

But shortly after that, I decided I wanted to be an astronomer instead.  Astronomy still fascinates me, and they were my science courses of choice at OSU.  Not to mention that knowing how many light minutes there are from Earth to the Sun is a definite plus when dating geeky boys.  (The answer is 8, by the way.)

Of course, as the years went on, my interest in math and the rest of science wasn’t intense enough for me to continue with a realistic dream of being an astronomer, and I went back to artist.

But anytime io9 posts something with the tag [Space Porn], I just can’t help but admit that it’s a good descriptor.

Besides, can you really say you’ve seen anything as amazing at this?