The Stardust Collection combines my love for weaving with my fascination for the universe. The Solar Abundance shawl reminds us that all objects, even massive stars, are made up of tiny atoms. Atoms emit radiation of a certain color, somewhere between ultraviolet and infrared. An atom can be identified by the color of radiation that it emits, as the radiated color is different for atoms of different elements. The radiation of a star combines all these colors into a colorspectrum. By looking at the intensity of the different colors in this colorspectrum, it is possible to determine how much of each element it contains. In the case of the sun, this composition is called the Solar Abundance. The alternating green and petrol colors in the warp of this shawl symbolise the radiation colors of single atoms.
by Barbara Goudsmit
The Stardust Collection combines my love for weaving with my fascination for the universe. The Luminosity shawl is inspired by the fact that starlight always contains a complete color palette. The radiation of a star spans the entire color spectrum of the rainbow — from ultraviolet to infrared. The spectrum determines the luminosity of the star, a measure of how bright the star shines. Luminosity has a warp that gradually changes color, just as the light spectrum of a star does.
The Stardust Collection combines my love for weaving with my fascination for the universe. A binary star consists of two stars that orbit a shared center of gravity. Just like the sun, a binary star can be the center of a planetary system. Binary stars form when a star-to-be breaks into two pieces and both develop into a star. The pattern of this shawl is inspired by a binary star, as the complete shawl contains just two repeats of a large star motif.
The Stardust Collection combines my love for weaving with my fascination for the universe. For millions of years, a star obtains a balance between two forces: an outward-directed force due to nuclear fusion and the inward-directed gravitational force. At the end of a star’s life, there is no fuel left for nuclear fusion and the star cannot counteract the gravitational force any longer. The star collapses and explodes into a supernova. This shawl with its large star patterns symbolises the major extent of a supernova.
The Stardust Collection combines my love for weaving with my fascination for the universe. The Milky Way and Andromeda shawls are symbolic of the unimaginable size of the universe. Andromeda and the Milky Way are two of the billions of galaxies present in the universe. Every one of these galaxies is a collection of millions of planetary systems, of which our Solar System is one. The central star of the Solar System is the sun and gravitational attraction lets the earth and seven other planets orbit around it. Our Solar System is part of the Milky Way and Andromeda is its neighbouring galaxy.