Club Jade

Why was John Knoll at a NASA press conference? Because the space agency has discovered a real-life Tatooine: A planet that orbits two stars at once. The New York Times writes:

The official name of the new planet is Kepler 16b, but astronomers are already referring to it informally as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker in the George Lucas “Star Wars” movies, which also had two suns. Indeed, a representative from Mr. Lucas’s production company, Lucasfilm, expected to participate in a news conference at NASA’s Ames Research Laboratory in California, Kepler’s home office.

So, not a moon. Or a space station. I’m so relieved.

ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll will be at a NASA press conference on Thursday. The presser is regarding a discovery made by the Kepler misson.

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the “habitable zone,” the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of the orbiting planet.

What could it be?

StarWars.com has a partial transcript of WonderCon’s biggest Star Wars event, Steve Sansweet’s presentation. First part a look back at ’99, featuring John Knoll; Part two introduced a new character from The Clone Wars, Cad Bane; Part three has Pablo and Steve going head to head with the Force Trainer and more TCW stuff.

Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder blogged briefly from a presentation the ILM VFX Supervisor gave at the TED conference yesterday in California. (via)

ILM effects guru is #10 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 50 smartest people in Hollywood. Also making the list are Steven Spielberg (#2,) Johnny Depp (#21,) J.J. Abrams (#29) and Cate Blanchett (#45.) (via)

Harry Potter movies still lag behind Star Wars saga in the box office, though they have beaten Lord of the Rings. In other epic comparison news, Luke goes head to head with Harry and Frodo.

Nice of you to drop by

• ComputerWorld interview with ILM’s John Knoll.

• Travel blog Lost Weekend looks at visiting some of the places SW was filmed.
• R2-D2 is top of the ‘bots.
• Dustin Roberts final address as fan club president.
• Australian mayor pleads not guilty to theft of money that bought a Darth Vader voice changer.
• British storntrooper speaks
• Fan confronts school board dressed as Jedi to make point about dress code.
• Article on Billy Dee William’s latest gig, General Hospital: Night Shift

Jon Berg, Don Bies, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Lorne Peterson, Ken Ralston, Phil Tippett, and of course John Knoll will all guest at Celebration.

John Knoll, one of the creators of Photoshop, and also some sort of effects guy, will be giving a behind-the-scenes retrospective of his work at ILM.

Good news for gamers – Star Wars Galaxies will be holding a Community Summit and for more traditional gamers, a Tatooine Game Parlor will be held in the Fan Club Lounge.