Return of Comet 67P (2021)

Seven years ago I started following a mind-blowing space mission Rosetta, by the European Space Agency (ESA). I created a large set of artwork, spanning from interactive paintings, music and video collaborations and ceramic sculptures. I met so many scientists involved with the mission, I visited ESTEC, ESA and even exhibited my work there. So much was achieved, it was a long run and yet this is not the end.

The center of the project is a comet, 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Rosetta mission not only sent a space craft to this comet but also landed a small lander called Philae. A lot of research was done during this mission, so much important data was collected and is still being studied. “P” in the name of the comet 67P stands for periodic which means it comes back, the orbital period is 6.45 years. And for its return at the end of 2021 I have created two new paintings of the comet about which I would like to talk in this article.

Enriching water with D2O via electrolysis

Comets played a big role for our planet. They delivered most of the water to Earth, as comets are mostly made of ice and dust, scientists even call them “dirty snowballs”. Comet 67P also has a lot of water, though it has three times higher amount of D2O than on Earth. For my watermedia paintings in my studio lab I generated D2O enriched water using electrolysis. I did the same for my new work but this time I added something special.

There is a very interesting subject I would like to address in my new work. And this subject relates to you and I, as well as all other living creatures, big or small, alive or long gone. Let talk about life and how it came to be.

This question never gets old. Everyone at some point wondered how did life come to Earth. God? Aliens? But let’s hypothesize that comets has something to do with it. Well, they brought water, and life as we know it can not exist without water. Comets also brought very important ingredients that living beings are made of. In the case of Comet 67P it is Phosphorus (essential for the creation of DNA), a multitude of organic molecules (methylamine and ethylamine) and most importantly amino acid like glycine (DNA is made of amino acids).

Once crucial-for-life-forming ingredients got to Earth they had to wait until the Earth cooled off enough to let water rain down and accumulate on the surface of the planet. Because it is then, scientists believe, that the first primitive life formed in hot springs. Keeping in mind all of the mentioned above I decided to add a living organisms in the water I was painting with, in a way making a parallel with comets being vessels of life, traveling across space and bringing fertile seeds to planets like Earth.

To accomplish my plan and represent earlier life in its primitive form I grew colonies of bacteria in petri dishes. Bacteria are invisible but they are all around us, so I had no problem finding it. I sampled bacteria directly from my 3D printed model of Comet 67P, I added it in the petri dish, placed the dish in a warm place and watched it grow for a week. Very soon I saw varies round shapes of bacterial colonies appearing, some were smooth, some were fuzzy. I sampled that bacteria from the dish and added in into the heavy water (D2O) enriched water with which I painted the work.

I use Rosetta spacecraft photography as my references. My medium is watercolor that I often mix myself out of pigments. The 67P paintings for the most part appear monochromatic to match the original photography, yet I introduce color for some of the work to reference the spectroscopic data collected by Rosetta. I wanted the new 2021 work look a bit different and I added a special effect, based on chromatic aberration to represent human views to the distant celestial object, which 67P is.

I can’t wait to say hello to my favorite comet of them all at the end of this year and even more so I am looking forward to new research on what comets can tell us via future space missions. Meanwhile I am not putting a full stop at the end of this sentence, my work and the work of scientists is not complete yet, there are so many more mysteries to resolve

Black Hole M87

I was invited to create an image for the cover of a science magazine called Continuum, which is published in support of the Applied Superconductivity Conference. My model for the glossy cover was the famous Black Hole M87 for two reasons:

1. this black hole was the 1st one to be photographed, which of course made big news in 2019,
2. Art Lichtenburger was giving a lecture on the subject during the conference.

In order for me to make the design I went on researching black holes and what do we know about them. I chose to use my favorite media of watercolor to paint M87. I made a series of paintings exploring the possible views of the black hole, most all of them were based on the photograph by the Event Horizon Telescope that made the news.

I thought that just painting the photograph was not enough, so I brainstormed about how could I make this image more meaningful. Meanwhile, during my research, I was mesmerized by the fact that black holes are described not in a 3D format like most of the objects we know in our 3D world, but in 4D, having time as the 4th dimension.

Then I spent a very long time trying to add a visual graphic of the 4th dimension. My problem was that I could not find a definite answer on how this 4th dimension could be applied visually to the obvious 3D. I researched on my own, then I consulted with a couple of scientists, I even made a few drawings trying to visualize my options. In this drawing you see 4 options, where the red ball represents a black hole, and the funnel would be the time. If you know the answer to this question please leave a comment.

So this idea fell apart as I was not able to come up with the answer how could I add the time to the image of the black hole M87. From the photograph of M87 it seems to me that the swirl is almost facing you, almost as if you are looking inside of the funnel directly, so would the time be also deforming following the funnel shape almost precisely to the “visual” funnel?

You see, when working with black holes one must become a philosopher and a dreamer, so I was trying to become both, to get a little closer to the reality of an ordinary black hole.

Due to the presence of the 4th dimension, all sorts of other phenomenal things were offered to my view. One of them totally captivated my attention: because black holes distort space and time – they present an extraordinary visual phenomenon where light is optically deformed. For example, objects that are present behind a black hole are projected in front of it! Another interesting thing is that the image ends up being flipped. I would like to demonstrate this on an example of my pen and a glass ball: you can see the tip of the pen on the bottom right of the ball, even though the pen is positioned behind the ball on the left.

Design 1

While doing research about that I came upon an article where Oliver James presented a graphic with an explanation “The distortion of space-time around a black hole is extreme and affects the structure of nearby light cones.” I made my 1st design of the cover. You can see a star following the yellow path on the top right, it is being projected in the inner yellow path diagonally. This suggests that the objects behind the black hole are projected in the foreground of the black hole. An absolute visual phenomenon.

My second design was based on different interesting information, based on the article Infinite Visions Were Hiding in the First Black Hole Image’s Rings "When you point a telescope at a black hole, it turns out you don’t just see the swirling sizzling doughnut of doom formed by matter falling in. You can also see the whole universe. Light from an infinite array of distant stars and galaxies can wrap around the black hole like ribbons around a maypole, again and again before coming back to your eye, or your telescope." On my graphic you see the cosmic light coming from different directions, in the plane framed with a white border you see the swirly projection of the light that fell in earlier, as well as the other black hole matter.

For my final third design option, I just chose one of my paintings as it is, the most dynamic of them all. The swirls of light and other matter. The doughnut image of M87 that we know is a collection of swirl images, an overlap, taken during an extended period of time. This design perhaps was the most simple but yet to me it is the most striking and graphicly attractive.

Design 2

Design 3

Even though I know what design was chosen for the magazine cover, I would love to hear your vote.
Leave a comment, which one would you pick for the cover? 1, 2 or 3?

Lunar Rock Garden / Ontario Science Center

It is hard to imagine that 50 years ago humanity finally visited the Moon.

On July 20, 2019 we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Program. Here I would like to tell you about my art project made for this occasion. 

How it started.
Earlier this year I traveled to Japan for a science meeting of ESA and JAXA on the BepiColombo space mission to Mercury. After the conference I was invited to visit JAXA in Tokyo. There, I got my inspiration after seeing the lunar yards. A massive room was filled with sand replicating the surface of the Moon to test lunar rovers. The room was very dramatic with intense light hitting the sand sideways. We were instantly transported to our planetary satellite. A couple of rovers slowly moved across the “lunar” landscape creating intricate patterns on the sand.

I thought back then, it would be very cool to get ahold of this kind of sand for an art project. But this was very special sand and impossible to get. I wasn’t even sure what I could do with it quite yet. After that I went on a long journey around Japan and observed a lot of Japanese rock gardens, including the most famous ones like Ryoan-ji and Ginkaku-ji in Kyoto.

The idea came about when I was back in US: I must make a Japanese rock garden using special lunar sand!

It happened to be that the stars aligned and I was very lucky to find a perfect place to install my garden. This year I was selected for an art residency at the Ontario Science Center in Toronto, Canada. I knew that they would be celebrating the Apollo anniversary and I decided to propose the idea. The Ontario center is mainly focused on educating kids, so even though they loved my idea, I was asked to design it so kids could interact. So the alternative plan was to make a sand play box using the same sand I saw in JAXA. But that sand was just impossible to find! 

After some further research I discovered that there is a Florida based company that makes a proper lunar soil simulant. This material was the real deal, by just looking at it it was clear that this is what you see on the Moon. In both composition and appearance it was made to be a copy of the one on the Moon. Though due to the fact it is very powdery and contains particles of glass, no way kids could touch it. So, the sand box idea fell apart. 

Ana Klasnja, the curator of the art program at the Ontario center, an incredible lady who supports the connection of arts and science, found out that there is lunar soil simulant made locally in Ontario. So I am that lucky artist who got a whole box of it for my project! Unbelievable. By the time I got to Toronto, anorthositic Lunar regolith simulant ChEnOB1 was already waiting for me, along with a large glass covered table on which I would install my garden.

On my way to Toronto I spent a week in Gloucester, MA. Almost every day I would go to the shore to practice raking the sand, I have never made a rock garden before, so I was very worried if I would be able to do it. The whole idea behind the rock gardens is to get close to inner peace. Beautiful New England Atlantic landscape was helping me find that zen moment. I made a special raking tool, that appeared quite wabi sabi and ordered a miniature rock garden tool set online, so I was enjoying my practice on the shore. 

My goal was to design a pattern to represent artificial nature, just like any other Japanese rock gardens would do. The idea of the rock garden on the Moon made a lot of sense as there is no living nature or liquid water, and I am to create a representation of it in a hostile lunar environment. Straight lines that my tool would leave on the sand would represent oceans, wavy lines - rivers, circular patterns - waves on the water (as well as craters in my case), rocks - mountains.

Rocks.
This detail requires some explanations. In my original Idea I wanted to make 3D models of real moon rocks. After quite a bit of research I realized that nobody made such 3D models. Well, there was one institution which made a rock using lunar materials! But this was out of reach. I couldn’t even find photographic data to be able to make my own 3D models. So the alternative was to use terrestrial rocks. A scientist confirmed that they are also very close in composition to the the lunar ones. During my travels to volcanic areas I have collected a set of rocks in various sizes, so they worked wonderfully and appeared so similar to some found on the Moon. The Moon too had volcanic activity long ago (100 million years ago). So I packed up my rocks and traveled with them to Canada.

Installing.
Once I got to the Ontario Science Center, I was impressed how massive it was, many floors of exciting scientific displays and 90% of them were interactive. Such an honor to be working here! Magnificent Ana helped organizing every little bit for my project. I was introduced to a team of professional makers, people who had massive workshops (wood, metal and so on) behind the curtains of the center. If there was anything, they make it happen. Indeed, an artist’s dreams come true. But there was no time to relax and dream. 

I must say, this project was a personal challenge for me. Making rock gardens on the deserted shores of Gloucester, was NOTHING compared with what I faced at the center. Starting at 10 am the center is stormed by thousands of kids. The non-stop noisy chaos lasts all day long. On my 1st day of installation I was preparing my space and materials, my area was protected by a rope so I wouldn’t be disturbed. But of course a couple of red ropes would not stop kids from sneaking in. I would sometimes be surrounded by 20 kids at once and they all wanted to ask questions. I quickly realized that the installation of this artwork must happen before opening hours.

On my next day I started working at 8am and only had 2 hours to start and finish the rock garden. Which is extremely short time to complete the work. Curious workers of the center would still be coming by and asking questions, which I could not answer due to the lack of time. 

There was another issue. The lunar soil acted very different on the 2nd day. It was much more softer and powdery, which made it difficult to work with and create patterns. There must have been moisture in the mix, which evaporated over the night. From the patterns I left the day before I could see that they became less sharp and all of the corners got smoothed out. I thought then that there is a chance that in few month the whole garden will be totally flattened, and in a way I was intrigued by it and not discouraged.

During the creation of a rock garden one must find peace and focus only on the present moment, which is the moment of rock garden making. In my case, this was the hardest part of it all. I made a decision that I should start practicing meditation to help me in my future work. Indeed, in the middle of the total chaos with a strict time pressure I was trying to make a representation of zen space. What an absurd idea. But there is no limits to art and one must overcome personal challenges.

I don’t know how, but the garden was finished, and at 9.45am my helpers were already standing by waiting to put the glass cover on for the day, so no kids could touch the exciting lunar soul.

Tools. 
I knew that working with powdery soil material will be very different from sand. So the raking tool I made was not good enough. But I was lucky to be right next to the so called “exploratorium” where kids could study how to create cool things, including 3D printing and laser cutting. So master creators at the exploratorium were very kind to help me out and laser cut a bunch of tools that I designed right than on Illustrator. After that, I took the cut out raking shapes to the wood workshop and thanks to the wonderful masters my finished tools were waiting for me the next morning. I don’t know what would I be able to make if I didn’t have those tools. So I would like to say thanks to everyone who helped me out! You guys are awesome!

Music.
A very exciting thing happen, I had a chance to collaborate with extraordinary musicians Andrew Santaguida and Matt Russo. They are also taking an art residency at the Ontario Science Center, so we were introduced. They created this beautiful zen composition to go along with the rock garden. What makes it even cooler is that it is based on the topography of the moon. It is indeed a wonderful addition to the installation and I am honored to be able to work with such talented composers.

Filming.
On my third day, I had a documentary filmmaker Shelley Ayres come over. I met Shelly during my project about the Rosetta space mission. She visited my studio in New York and made a small feature about my artwork on Rosetta for the Discovery Channel. Shelley came over to help document my artwork once again. We had to start working early, before the opening of the museum. I must say I was very impressed with Shelley’s professionalism once more. All of her actions and they way she interviewed me speaks of a true master of documentary filming. By the way, specifically for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Program Shelley and Mark Foerster made a short film which will be streamed at science museums. So keep an eye out for it. 

This blog post came out very long, but now you get to understand that even behind a very simple thing as a rock garden stands a lot of work, there are so many people involved to make this happen and a lot of challenges had to be resolved. Over all this was a great experience and helped me grow as an artist. I am inspired to create a permanent rock garden in a forest where we have a cabin, as I feel like this would be many years of self training meditative experience. 

Now, find my Lunar Rock Garden.
Imagine yourself sitting alone in the most tranquil place on the Moon, Mare Tranquillitatis, the landing site of Apollo 11. Observe this rock garden. Watch the stones, sitting among you motionless for millions of years, only the strokes of imaginary water slowly move around them, and you. Think of life and its true meaning. Perhaps in the lunar surrounding where life is absolutely impossible due to the lack of liquid water, organic matter and life supporting conditions, you will come to the answer of the true meaning of life.

Sculpting snow in ceramics

For my Frozen Waters project I started to work on a set of sculptures, based on my snow and ice observations. Picking porcelain as my material was an obvious choice simply because it can be bright white which works perfect when representing the whiteness of snow. I signed up for the Pottery Northwest studio in Seattle and begun my work.

In this post I would like to share with you my struggle and tell you about the creative process from beginning to the end.

When I visited Iceland in the beginning of 2018 I collected photo references of a very interesting formation I found on the Sólheimajökull glacier. Our guide explained how it forms (photos below):
1. volcanic ash falls on top of a glacier, a crevice forms on a glacier;
2. ash falls into the crevice;
3. glacier melts all around the crevice while ash covered area remains cooler and melts slower forming a peak covered with ash

A very unusual shape in the middle of glacier I thought. So, I wanted to try represent this interesting natural phenomenon in ceramic. Easier said than done it appeared.

Starting with a sketch, I began to work on the project. My plan was not necessarily to copy the way it appears in nature exactly, but represent it in an artistic way. I planned on making the peak and attach the black ash rocks. In order to make such a long peak there had to be a structural support made first. Ceramics, are made hollow for multiple reasons, so I could not just make it solid (which surely would be the easiest way).  

When the structure was ready – the top surface was made. Black rocks were made out of colored porcelain as well, so it would shrink at the same rate when fired. The rocks were made rough to mimic the volcanic ash. They were attached at the very end. 

When the sculpture was ready it was set on a shelf covered in plastic to start slowly drying. 

It was during this time when problems started. Unequal drying throughout the sculpture started to cause cracking. I made a decision the trim the base of the sculpture instead of trying to fix cracks, which would be extremely difficult.

As soon as I would leave the sculpture back on the shelf, in few days another crack would arrear. 

It was almost as if the global warming was effecting my glacier and it was rapidly melting and becoming smaller and smaller in just few days. A very discouraging process, you can imagine. Eventually only the top part of the peak was left and it was now ready to go into its 1st firing (bisque). 

When the sculpture was fired I had to decide on glazing and the type of kiln. Prior to the glazing I made a bunch of test tiles in the shape of hexagonal snowflakes (you can see them laying around the table). For me to be able to apply an equal coat of "New Blanc" glaze I had to apply wax all around the black rocks to resist the glaze, so they stay black and matte. The sculpture was dipped into a bucket of glaze.

Fingers crossed, the sculpture is ready and it goes into an oxidation kiln.
 

Here is the final look. You will be the judge and decide if I did a good job or failed.
As for me, I will try to make another sculpture, but this time I will use a different approach to try escape the cracking. It will be designed this way so I could attache the real volcanic ash which I brought with me back from Iceland.

Frozen Waters book series!

I am so excited to announce that my first three books of the Frozen Waters series are now available! This project is an artistic exploration of snow and ice – natural phenomena, under threat of global warming. In these books I would like to share with you the delicate beauty and limitless forms of frozen waters, while celebrating animals and humanity coexisting with snow.

Order HERE. 110 pages.

Human and Frozen Waters

You would think that snow and ice are trouble at times. But let us not forget all the joy we can have with them! In this book you will find photography from Russia, Japan, America, Canada and South Korea highlighting winter sports, cultural events, ice fishing, food preservation, winter activities and much more!
 

Order HERE. 70 pages.

Animals and Frozen Waters

From Red Crowned Cranes dancing on the snow in Japan, Siberian husky taking a rest in the middle of the harsh winter months or a squirrel looking for acorns in Central Park... animals always find their way with snow. For many animals life depends on it, and this book is to remind you about our changing climate, plus to make you smile once again observing a funny goose making his way through the ice.
 

Order HERE. 100 pages.

Textures of Frozen Waters

This book is perhaps my favorite of the series, because it includes an extensive photo collection of possible textures that snow and ice can take. You will even be able to find such snow phenomena as diamond dust, zastrugi and snow rollers (read an additional blog post about the phenomena). Frozen waters shine, sparkle and reflect. Let it snow.
 

I've been working on them for 12 month and went through many years of my photography of snow and ice, trying to pick the best shots to represent the subject. It was fun, but tough work. It is not so easy to fit all you want in one book, that's maybe why I ended up with over 100 pages for two of them :)

While working on this series I traveled to subarctic Japan in Hokkaido, met with scientists researching Antarctic ice; visited my hometown in Siberia to photograph unusual textures of snow (3 images below); hiked to see the largest glacier in continental US (excluding Alaska) on Mount Rainier, WA and explored snow in Canada. I am fascinated with beautiful frozen waters, they have no limits in forms and always wow me. 

A large part of the editing process happened during my art residency at I-Park, CT. I was able to try out a new way of working on the book interior by displaying all of the pages in front of me on one wall. This really gave me a scale of a single book visually.

I hope that you share my addiction to Frozen Waters and enjoy these books. 

I refuse to buy bottled water!

I don't know why this did not occur to me earlier, and I blame myself for it, but I came to this decision finally.

I WANT TO STOP BUYING WATER AND OTHER BEVERAGES IN PLASTIC BOTTLES!

Look, it's simple, the lesser bottles we use – the lesser plastic will be used. Using plastic hurts our environment (not only while producing it, but also after it was discarded). So, why are we still using plastic bottles? I personally don't buy that much bottles, but if to estimate it 3 bottles a month, it still becomes 36 per year. I recycle them always, but I don't know if I can trust our recycling system, there is still a lot of trash that ends up in the ocean. 

Starting this month I want to do better than that and bring that number to ZERO. 

If you live in urban surroundings, you will find that most every public place you go nowadays has water fountains. So, why not carry a portable beverage container? There are so many options available, different colors, forms and purposes... I prefer thermoses, as I am a tea drinker I like to keep it hot, but thermoses works as well for cold drinks ;) When I travel, a thermos might be a problem at the security check, but that's because they can not see the contents of the bottle in xray, so I take my transparent plastic bottles (not forgetting to finish my drink before the security). My first stop before finding my gate is a bottle refill station.

For those who like to count if they drink 2 liters a day, there are even bottles which measure your liters for you and send this data to your phone! Recently I found a bottle that makes my water alkaline, this not only helps you loose weight, but also has great health benefits.

Are you looking for a good bottle? Gizmodo might help you: 9 Reusable Water Bottles Recommended By Gizmodo's Staff

If you found yourself in a situation that you have no other option, but to buy bottled water, then see if you have an option of buying it boxed instead. I think this is a neat idea, check out boxedwaterisbetter.com.

Here are some scary facts:
– Americans used about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year. However, the U.S.’s recycling rate for plastic is only 23 percent;
– Making bottles to meet America’s demand for bottled water uses more than 17 million barrels of oil annually;

Here are some good sources to read more on the subject: 
Ban the bottle 
Stop Drinking Bottled Water (Gizmodo)
Why Is Bottled Water So Expensive?
 

I truly hope that you would join me in a bottle-free challenge! Feel free to comment to this post and lets discuss it further.

Why did I melt 25 gallons of ice in my studio?

How long does it take to melt a chunk of ice (~3 lb / ~1.5 kg) at a room temperature (~73 F / ~23 C) ?
Make a guess... 3 days / 1 day / 12 hours / 6 hours / 1 hour / 5 min...

For the duration of the month of September I was mostly doing just that, melting ice. The answer to my question is – about 5 hours! Just 5 hours. Now, think of it in the global scale. How many chunks of snow this big can be found around the world and how much snow is being melted just during one day due to the increasing temperatures of global warming? There are of course many factors that come into a consideration when you are trying to get a scientific approach in calculating the melted amount world-wide, but I will allow scientists to take care of this and just show you visually how fast the proses is happening and will give you a minute to think about this. 

My installation evolved greatly since the first thought of it, and it will continues to change. At first I envisioned a large structure in the middle of the room representing the bottom of an iceberg. At the very end of it I was thinking on adding a chunk of ice which will melt and it will look like the whole big iceberg is melting. But for the final installation I ended up having many of ice chunks suspended in the air. And again the original idea was to allow all of that melted water to just stay on the floor and puddle and run freely, making it very uncomfortable for the observers. I would still want to make the installation this way with water on the floor. For this studio however it would be perhaps ok with one ice piece, but with estimated 48 liters (~105 lb) of water on the floor it would create a little flood. So I had to figure out how to keep all of this water content for 5-8 hours. 

In total during the month of September I estimate that I created about 25 gallons (95 liters) of ice (the installation was active 5 days having about 5 gallons worth of ice each time). 

Very fortunately at that moment I was working on another installation in the smaller room, wanting to make a snow blizzard, and I was looking for snow options to make this happen. Surely, it had to be fake snow since I wanted it to last for a while. I came across a material called Sodium Polyacrylate. This super absorbent white element was just perfect, it looked like snow from dry to slushy conditions, it could hold a lot of water in place. I decided to place this "snow" under the suspended ice. Looked great! But there was still a discovery to make: dripping melted water would create intricate patterns on snow. Because of the rotation of the heavy ice pieces and multiple dripping points, snow would record circular patterns, unique for each ice chunk. 

These patterns acted like time records of the melt, drop by drop completing the circle. When ice was long gone, they remained on the snow surface, it was a small historical evidence of something previously present.

During two days when my studio was open for public at I-Park, I had a lot of visitors to show my installation to. We talked about environment and global warming on the final weekend of the September, which was unexpectedly hot, so unusual for CT for this time of year. Ice melted even faster than expected and it was very obvious to everyone that we are not living a fiction and the climate is changing. When you are gradually getting used to something new, you don't necessarily register the change. With my installation I was offering to take a moment and think of this change while observing drops of water separating from the melting ice and slicing the air to record the moment of change.

In the smaller room I created a different tiny installation with the same snow I used for the large one. I invited my visitors for a brief moment to experience a joy of playing with this magical white substance we call snow. Adults had fun, children did not want to leave.

Just 5 hours and it's not enough time to say everything what needs to be said. But this is a start and if you read these lines perhaps you also care about this as much as I do.

Snow Phenomenon

To me snow is already a phenomenon! But apparently this can go much further and there is no limit to the intricate beauty of shiny white frozen water. Here is a list to the snow and ice conditions I came across so far.

Diamond dust image is taken in Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia

Diamond dust is a ground-level cloud composed of tiny ice crystals. This meteorological phenomenon is also referred to simply as ice crystals and is reported in the METAR code as IC. Diamond dust generally forms under otherwise clear or nearly clear skies, so it is sometimes referred to as clear-sky precipitation. It is most commonly observed in Antarctica and the Arctic, but it can occur anywhere with a temperature well below freezing. In polar regions diamond dust may continue for several days without interruption. Wiki

This photo is from Hokkaido, Japan, near the volcano (Mount Io)

Needle ice is a phenomenon that occurs when the temperature of the soil is above 0 °C (32 °F) and the surface temperature of the air is below 0 °C (32 °F). The subterranean liquid water is brought to the surface via capillary action, where it freezes and contributes to a growing needle-like ice column. Needle ice requires a flowing form of water underneath the surface, from that point it comes into contact with air that is below freezing. This area of the process usually occurs at night when temperature peaks its low point. From then on, it produces a needle like structure as we know as “Needle Ice”. Wiki

Sastrugi, or zastrugi, are sharp irregular grooves or ridges formed on a snow surface by wind erosion, saltation of snow particles, and deposition, and found in polar and open sites such as frozen lakes in cold temperate regions. The ridges are usually parallel to the prevailing winds; they are steep on the windward side and sloping to the leeward side. Smaller irregularities of this type are known as ripples (small, ~10 mm high) or wind ridges. Wiki

Frozen Ob sea, Siberia

This is a good example of wind ridges I found on the same frozen sea, though formed out of dog's foot prints.

Snow storm in New York, spring 2017

Ice pellets are a form of precipitation consisting of small, translucent balls of ice. Ice pellets are smaller than hailstone which form in thunderstorms rather than in winter, and are different from graupel ("soft hail") which is made of frosty white rime, and from a mixture of rain and snow which is a slushy liquid or semisolid. Ice pellets often bounce when they hit the ground or other solid objects, and make a higher-pitched "tap" when striking objects like jackets, windshields, and dried leaves, compared to the dull splat of liquid raindrops. Pellets generally do not freeze into a solid mass unless mixed with freezing rain. The METAR code for ice pellets is PL. Wiki

A snow roller is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which large snowballs are formed naturally as chunks of snow are blown along the ground by wind, picking up material along the way, in much the same way that the large snowballs used in snowmen are made. They can be as small as a tennis ball, but they can also be bigger than a car. Wiki

*This post will be updated with more types of snow phenomenon, please comment and suggest what else should be featured.