We are so embarrassed that we haven’t shared the wonderful work of Liz Kruesi on the blog yet even though we’ve been carrying her designs at the #BOOTHtique for almost two years now!! Liz is a freelance science writer and jewelry maker on the side. We fell in love with her pieces back in 2017 at the Women in Astronomy IV meeting where she was sporting her solar system necklace. 

Since then, she has created quite possibly one of the loveliest planetary collections. Her pieces feature beads reminiscent of each planet (and its moons) and each item comes with a cheat sheet describing the stones that represent each object. We started with her Jupiter and Saturn designs and they were so popular at the Division of Planetary Sciences Conference in 2018, that people were soon swapping them with each other so they could sport one of each planet. The fad soon took over the Neptune and Uranus designs as well. Now we just assume this will be the case and order both matching and mis-matching pairs from her. ;)

New to the BOOTHtique at AAS235* are her Earth+Moon, Earth/Mars mismatched, and Pluto+Charon earrings! 

For those of you not at AAS235, check out Liz’s Etsy store and be sure to follow her on Twitter, Instagram. 

- Summer & Emily

You’ve Never Seen Neptune Look Like This

The Webb Space Telescope has produced yet another view of a solar system planet, and you may not be able to guess the world from the image alone. The new portrait of Neptune shows its dramatic and often overlooked rings, and the European Space Agency says this is the clearest view of the planet since 1989. Read more…

Then and Now: Our Earliest Close-Ups of the Planets Compared to Today’s Best Shots

For centuries, astronomers were limited to ground-based observations of the planets, but now we use spacecraft to capture close-up views of our neighboring worlds. Excitingly, our views of solar system planets have been getting progressively better over the decades, as these images attest. Read more…