- Hurrying through the National Gallery of Art five minutes before closing, I passed a Navajo weaving with a complex abstract pattern. Suddenly, I realized the pattern was strangely familiar, so I stopped and looked closely. The design turned out to be an image of Intel’s Pentium chip, the start of the long-lived Pentium family. The weaver, Marilou Schultz, created the artwork in 1994 using traditional materials and techniques. The rug was commissioned by Intel as a gift to AISES (American Indian Science & Engineering Society) and is currently part of an art exhibition—Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction—focusing on the intersection between abstract art and woven textiles.
- Delta Cephei (stars.astro.illinois.edu)
DELTA CEP (Delta Cephei). Surely among the most famed of all stars, fourth magnitude (4.1 or thereabouts) Delta Cephei, set at the southeastern corner of dim Cepheus (the King), does not even have a proper name. It is, however, the only star that has given its constellation name over to represent a whole class of stars, the “Cepheids.”