More AWESOMENESS, I mean, space jewelry! You might remember the spacey rings, then the moon bands of yesteryear.. Well, in continuation of the celestial theme, I present: Solar Surface Wedding Bands!

He is a software engineer at a solar power plant company and she is a theoretical physicist graduate student studying models that predict the behavior of plasmas at surface temperatures of the sun. They were intrigued with the lunar landscape bands and were wondering how it might work to have solar landscape bands.

This was a lot more abstract of a concept than the lunar map rings, since the surface of the sun is constantly in flux. On the other hand, I had a lot of material to pull from. I really love how these turned out!

[Photo graciously permitted by Alan Friedman; I highly recommend checking out his website—some amazing photos here.]

Once again, I mined the internets for inspirational sun images. It kind of blows my mind that such detailed photos of the sun can even be taken.

I tried to capture the effect of the sun’s surface with the roiling feathery parts vs the granular bits, with sun spots and hot spots. The rings were cast in 18K gold and included little yellow diamonds at the hot spots.

Basically, the rings I carved would totally waste our satellites and toast our electrical grid.

Please click through to see a bunch more detail shots… (more…)