STARDATE0114.25 - PLANETARY FLY-BY MARBLE SERIES

DROP GOES LIVE SATURDAY, JANUARY 17th at NOON MST

Origin Story
Back in Spring of 2024, Micro was in town and we were working on an underwater-to-space transition scene, his Mario murrine swimming below, and my stars floating above. Classic collab stuff. But the trials didn't quite come together the way we'd hoped, and I was left with this really pretty blue Meta-terrania/Stardust prep. I benched it for a bit, and let my brain chew on it in the background while we finished up other pieces. Something was there with that blue, though. I could feel it. Then one day I randomly thought to throw a few rocket murrine over it, add some clouds and a sun, and it became a daytime launch scene! And just like that, the Planetary sub-series was born...because you can probably guess where my brain went next: should I do all the planets? Yes. Yes I should.

Starship Enters the Chat
I'm a pretty big SpaceX fan. I watch the launches regularly, and the Starship program has been especially fun to follow because it's still in it's experimental stages, which means we get to watch it blow up over and over while they figure things out. Don't worry though, there are no people on board these test flights! There's something exciting about witnessing that trial-and-error process in real time, and fun fact: the actual Starship has already changed a bit in design since I first made the murrine, so these pieces are kind of a time capsule of that early iteration.

After I finished the Earth marble with the new Starship murrine, I liked the idea of the Starship doing a fly-by of every planet in the solar system. So every marble in the series (except the Sun and Pluto; the former too hot, the latter too far for Starship) features a Starship cruising past it. The Earth version gets a little extra mojo; it's got a Starship Booster murrine in addition to the Starship, since we've got an atmosphere to punch through, plus the sun and clouds in the sky. Every planet also has surface dots representing its major moons. And depending on the piece, you might spot some UFOs, Starlink satellites, and various star murrine scattered throughout. The Sun gets its own special treatment with some additional sunspots.

The Lineup
Here's the full lineup, with a few facts about each world these marbles represent:

^^^Earth - Blue Stardust Sparkle over Meta-terrania Blue Core w/Chromium Green Sparkle Spiral Border - Approx 30mm - Rocky planet, 12,756 km diameter. One moon (THE Moon). 

^^^Mars - Rust Red core w/Ruby Red Slippers Sparkle Spiral Border - Approx 27mm - Rocky planet, 6,779 km diameter (about half of Earth). Two moons: Phobos and Deimos.

^^^Jupiter - Electrum Core w/Caramel Spiral Border - Approx 28mm - Gas giant, 139,820 km diameter (11x Earth). 95 known moons, including the big ones: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, and Amalthea.

^^^Mercury - Deep Red Sparkle core w/Electrum Sparkle Spiral Border - Approx 25mm. Rocky planet, 4,880 km diameter (38% of Earth). No moons.

^^^Neptune - Neptunium Blue Sparkle Core with Neptunium Blue Sparkle Spiral Border - Approx 30mm - Ice giant, 49,528 km diameter (4x Earth). 16 moons, including Triton, Proteus, Nereid, Larissa, and Galatea. 

^^^Venus - Moonstone over a Lotus White Core w/Lotus White Spiral Border - Approx 23mm - Rocky planet, 12,104 km diameter (95% of Earth). No moons.

^^^Saturn - Caramel Core w/Electrum Spiral Border - Approx 31mm - Gas giant, 120,536 km diameter (9.5x Earth). Over 146 moons, including Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, and Tethys.

^^^Uranus - Blue Stardust Sparkle over Royal Jelly Core w/Neptune Blue Sparkle Spiral Border - Approx 25mm - Ice giant, 50,724 km diameter (4x Earth). 28 known moons, including Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda.

^^^Pluto - Electrum Core w/Galaxy Black Sparkle Spiral Border - Approx 16mm - Dwarf planet, 2,377 km diameter (18% of Earth). Five moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. I grew up with Pluto being a planet, so it's still a planet in my heart, and why I included it in this series.

^^^The Sun  - Gold Dichro over Rasta Gold Crayon Core w/ Elvis over Electrum Spiral Border - Approx 38mm - Dwarf star, 1,391,400 km diameter (109x Earth). No moons, just eight planets (& Pluto!) orbiting around it. 

The Logistics
The Planetaries collection includes all 10 celestial bodies listed above. There are only 5 complete sets of all 10 marbles available. The Earth, Sun, Mars, and Jupiter are also available as larger singles, and will remain an open series for the time being.

The marbles are sized to scale (sort of)—Pluto is the smallest, the Sun is the largest, and everything else falls in between.

Wrap-Up
Thanks for reading this far, and thanks for collecting and supporting this wild little corner of the glass world. This series has been a blast to make, and I hope you enjoy flying through the solar system as much as I did building it. -N8-

DROP GOES LIVE SATURDAY, JANUARY 17th at NOON MST

Extracurricular reading:
If you want to dive deeper into where this all started, head over to the NU-Classic blog post for the full origin story.