A visit from Coma Niddy and PBS Digital Studios!

• By Sara Mitchell
• December 17, 2013
• Comments Off on A visit from Coma Niddy and PBS Digital Studios!

Yesterday and today, we’ve been hosting a few special guests who have come to see what’s going on at NASA Goddard and… shoot a music video! We’ve been talking to science educator/rapper Coma Niddy about a collaboration for nearly a year now, and everything finally came together to schedule a visit from him and a team from PBS Digital Studios. After weeks of emailing lyrics back and forth for science fact-checking, and talking locations and storyboards and NASA visualizations, the big day arrived! Here are a few behind-the-scenes photos from the shoot for Coma Niddy’s upcoming music video about black holes (and why they’re not the scary monsters shown in pop culture).

Rapping about black holes in front of a visualization of the Milky Way’s galactic center (which contains a supermassive black hole) on the Science on a Sphere at Goddard’s Visitor Center.

Coma Niddy peers out of a vintage 1960s training model of a Gemini capsule.

If his hands are a blur in every photo, it’s because Coma Niddy is always in motion! Shot in front of a gorgeous Hubble image of the Eagle Nebula.

We shot a few scenes on the catwalks that overlook the integration and testing facilities (a.k.a. the Spacecraft Chamber of Horrors).

We stopped by the observation deck that looks into the huge high-bay cleanroom where they’re working on the James Webb Space Telescope (watch online here)…

…and got a special treat, as there were tons of personnel in their “bunny suits,” inspecting the last shipment of the telescope’s gorgeous golden mirrors! You can see the special round silver capsules that store the mirrors on either side of the cleanroom, and one of the mirrors on a small platform with someone crouched down beside it. Very exciting!

It’s not every day that we get to see a rap video come together… and especially one that lays down some cold hard facts about black holes. We’re excited to see how everything comes together in editing, and to accompany the world premiere of the video (stay tuned!) with plenty of Blueshift content about the black hole research going on at NASA!

3… 2… 1… liftoff! Getting a few awesome photos in front of the imposing facade of the high bay cleanroom.