View allAll Photos Tagged CreativeCommons
Two merging galaxies in the VV689 system — nicknamed the Angel Wing —feature in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Unlike chance alignments of galaxies which only appear to overlap as seen from our vantage point on Earth, the two galaxies in VV689 are in the midst of a collision. The galactic interaction has left the VV689 system almost completely symmetrical, giving the impression of a vast set of galactic wings.
This angelic image comes from a set of Hubble observations inspecting the highlights of the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. This crowdsourced astronomy project relied on hundreds of thousands of volunteers to classify galaxies and help astronomers wade through a deluge of data from robotic telescopes. In the process, volunteers discovered a rogues’ gallery of weird and wonderful galaxy types, some of which had not previously been studied. A similar, ongoing project called Radio Galaxy Zoo is using the same crowdsourcing approach to locate supermassive black holes in distant galaxies.
Noteworthy objects from both projects were chosen for detailed follow-up observations with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. In keeping with the crowdsourced nature of the Galaxy Zoo project, the targets for follow-up observations with Hubble were chosen via roughly 18 000 votes cast by the public. The selected targets include ring-shaped galaxies, unusual spirals, and a striking selection of galaxy mergers such as VV689.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel.; CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt
The mass of dust and bright swirls of stars in this image are the distant galaxy merger IC 2431, which lies 681 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured what appears to be a triple galaxy merger in progress, as well as a tumultuous mixture of star formation and tidal distortions caused by the gravitational interactions of this galactic trio. The centre of this image is obscured by a thick cloud of dust — though light from a background galaxy can be seen piercing its outer extremities.
This image is from a series of Hubble observations investigating weird and wonderful galaxies found by the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. Using Hubble’s powerful Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), astronomers took a closer look at some of the more unusual galaxies that volunteers had identified. The original Galaxy Zoo project was the largest galaxy census ever carried out, and relied on crowdsourcing time from more than 100 000 volunteers to classify 900 000 unexamined galaxies. The project achieved what would have been years of work for a professional astronomer in only 175 days, and has led to a steady stream of similar astronomical citizen science projects. Later Galaxy Zoo projects have included the largest ever studies of galaxy mergers and tidal dwarf galaxies, as well as the discovery of entirely new types of compact star-forming galaxies.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel, Dark Energy Survey, DOE, FNAL, DECam, CTIO, NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, SDSS; CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt
The ultra-diffuse galaxy GAMA 526784 appears as a tenuous patch of light in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This wispy object resides in the constellation Hydra, roughly four billion light-years from Earth. Ultra-diffuse galaxies such as GAMA 526784 have a number of peculiarities. For example, their dark matter content can be either extremely low or extremely high — ultra-diffuse galaxies have been observed with an almost complete lack of dark matter, whereas others consist of almost nothing but dark matter. Another oddity of this class of galaxies is their anomalous abundance of bright globular clusters, something not observed in other types of galaxies.
Hubble captured GAMA 526784 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which was installed in 2002 by astronauts during Hubble Servicing Mission 3B. Since then, the instrument has played a pivotal role in some of Hubble’s most impressive scientific results, including capturing the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The ACS has also photographed Pluto in advance of the New Horizon mission, observed gargantuan gravitational lenses and found fully formed galaxies in the early Universe.
This image comes from a set of Hubble observations designed to shed light on the properties of ultra-diffuse galaxies. Hubble’s keen vision allowed astronomers to study GAMA 526784 in high resolution at ultraviolet wavelengths, helping to gauge the sizes and ages of the compact star-forming regions studding the galaxy.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. van der Burg; CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgement: L. Shatz
Bad angel...or hard-living cherub? Either way...
Happy new year!
1 January 2023.
***************
▶ Photo by Yours For Good Fermentables.com.
▶ For a larger image, type 'L' (without the quotation marks).
— Follow on Facebook: YoursForGoodFermentables.
— Follow on Instagram: @tcizauskas.
— Follow on Vero: @cizauskas.
▶ Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10 II.
— Lens: Lumix G 20/F1.7 II.
— Edit: Photoshop Elements 15, Nik Collection.
▶ Commercial use requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.
Buck stands, silent grace,
Between trees, nature's embrace,
Graceful woodland dance.
--- Haiku by ChatGPT
This work by Dennis Behm is licensed under a creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, this image shows NGC 7513, a barred spiral galaxy. Located approximately 60 million light-years away, NGC 7513 lies within the Sculptor constellation in the southern hemisphere.
This galaxy is moving at the astounding speed of 1564 kilometres per second, and it is heading away from us. For context, the Earth orbits the Sun at about 30 kilometres per second. Though NGC 7513’s apparent movement away from the Milky Way might seem strange, it is not that unusual.
While some galaxies, like the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, are caught in each other’s gravitational pull and will eventually merge together, the vast majority of galaxies in our Universe appear to be moving away from each other. This phenomenon is due to the expansion of the Universe, and it is the space between galaxies that is stretching, rather than the galaxies themselves moving.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Stiavelli; CC BY 4.0
Cassini ended its 13-year mission at Saturn on 15 September 2017 when it plunged into the gas giant's atmosphere, but the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is still keeping an eye on the ringed planet.
This is a composite image taken by Hubble on 6 June 2018 showing a fully-illuminated Saturn and its rings, along with six of its 62 known moons. The visible moons are (from left to right) Dione, Enceladus, Tethys, Janus, Epimetheus and Mimas (click here for an annotated version). Dione is the largest moon in the picture, with a diameter of 1123 km, compared to the smallest, oddly-shaped Epimetheus with a diameter around 116 km.
During Cassini’s mission, Enceladus was identified as one of the most intriguing moons, with the discovery of water vapour jets spewing from the surface implying the existence of a subsurface ocean. Icy moons with subsurface oceans could potentially offer the conditions to harbour life, and understanding their origins and properties are essential for furthering our knowledge of the Solar System. ESA's JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (Juice), due to launch in 2022, aims to continue this theme by studying Jupiter's ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto.
The Hubble image shown here was taken shortly before Saturn's opposition on 27 June, when the Sun, Earth and Saturn were aligned so that the Sun fully illuminated Saturn as seen from Earth. Saturn's closest approach to Earth occurs around the same time as opposition, which makes it appear brighter and larger and allows the planet to be imaged in greater detail.
In this image the planet’s rings are seen near their maximum tilt towards Earth. Towards the end of Cassini’s mission, the spacecraft made multiple dives through the gap between Saturn and its rings, gathering spectacular data in this previously unchartered territory.
The image also shows a hexagonal atmospheric feature around the north pole, with the remnants of a storm, seen as a string of bright clouds. The hexagon-shaped cloud phenomenon is a stable and persistent feature first seen by the Voyager 1 space probe when it flew past Saturn 1981. In a study published just last week, scientists using Cassini data collected between 2013 and 2017, as the planet approached northern summer, identified a hexagonal vortex above the cloud structure, showing there is still much to learn about the dynamics of Saturn’s atmosphere.
The Hubble observations making up this image were performed as part of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) project, which uses Hubble to observe the outer planets to understand the dynamics and evolution of their complex atmospheres. This was the first time that Saturn was imaged as part of OPAL. This image was first published on 26 July.
Credits: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC) and the OPAL Team, and J. DePasquale (STScI); CC BY 4.0
7 March 2022 marks the 20th anniversary of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. On 7 March 2002 astronauts installed the ACS during Hubble Servicing Mission 3B, also known as STS-109. With its wide field of view, sharp image quality, and high sensitivity, the ACS delivers many of Hubble’s most impressive images of deep space.
The ACS wavelength range extends from the ultraviolet, through the visible and out to the near-infrared. Its name, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, comes from its particular ability to map large areas of the sky in great detail. The ACS can also perform spectroscopy with a special optical tool called a grism.
Three subinstruments make up the ACS. The Wide Field Channel is a high-efficiency, wide-field, optical and near-infrared camera that is optimised to hunt for galaxies and galaxy clusters in the remote and ancient Universe, at a time when the cosmos was very young. The High Resolution Channel was designed to take extremely detailed (high resolution) pictures of the light from the centres of galaxies with massive black holes, though this is not currently operational, and the Solar Blind Channel blocks visible light to allow faint ultraviolet radiation to be discerned. Amongst other things, it can be used to study weather patterns on other planets and aurorae on Jupiter.
NASA, ESA; CC BY 4.0
This is a Blue Dasher, I think I read somewhere, the most common dragonfly in North America. They love slow moving water and so, no surprise they were in abundance on the bayous of Louisiana.
One for Macro Monday.
Each day during the year, Flickr employs a 'secret' algorithm to select five hundred images for a daily-posted Explore page —all exemplifying some sort of 'interestingness.'
▶ During 2024, Flickr selected seventeen of my images for Explore:
☞ Percussionist in the green was my most viewed, at 10,310 views.
☞ Lanceleaf coreopsis (sepals & petals) was my most 'faved', with 282 'faves.'
☞ Tree falls into winter received the highest position (no. 78 out of 500), selected on 12 December 2024.
***************
THE FULL LIST
● ROW 1
☞ Tree falls into winter (12 December 2024)
8,534 views; 266 'faves'; 78th/500.
---> This image achieved the highest Explore position of any of my seventeen images selected.
☞ Woodland at Glenn Creek (22 November 2024)
8,766 views; 217 'faves'; 102nd/500.
☞ Purple aster (13 October 2024)
8,992 views; 232 'faves'; 150th/500.
☞ Bird of paradise, against blue wall (13 September 2024)
6,177 views; 188 'faves; 313th/500.
☞ Paddleboard morningtide (28 August 2024)
6,632 views; 128 'faves'; 479th/500.
☞ Strasburg pitches (04) (28 August 2024)
6453; 73 'faves'; 186th/500.
☞ Umbrella in the foliage (12 August 2024)
9,728 views; 171 'faves'; 92nd/500.
☞ Moving Keys (24 July 2024)
7,379 views; 103 'faves'; 351st/500.
*****
● ROW 2
☞ Gnomes' back beat on parade (26 June 2024)
8,358 views; 120 'faves'; 216th/500.
☞ Dancing to the tunes (02) (26 June 2024)
8,514 views; 118 'faves'; 157th/500.
☞ Geese, too? (19 June 2024)
6,882 views; 162 'faves'; 269th/500.
☞ Percussionist in the green (3 June 2024)
10,310 views; 119 'faves'; 85th/500.
---> The most viewed of my 2024 images, 'Explored' or not.
☞ Lanceleaf coreopsis (sepals & petals) (10 May 2024)
9,497 views; 282 'faves'; 98th/500.
---> The most 'faved' of my 2024 images, 'Explored' or not.
☞ Arabia Lake (in early spring) (24 April 2024)
7,658 views; 215 'faves'; 230/500.
☞ Arabia Mountain spring landscape (03) (5 April 2024)
8,822 views; 217 'faves'; 104th/500.
☞ Holy hellebore (5 February 2024)
6,921 views; 207 'faves'; 474th/500.
*****
● ROW 3
☞ Winter beech woodland (12 January 2024)
7,873 views; 210 'faves'; 474th/500.
***************
▶ WHAT IS EXPLORE?
"Explore is a Flickr feature with the intent of showing you 'some of the most awesome photos on Flickr.' Photos are automatically selected by computer according to a secret algorithm called Interestingness. The top 500 photos ranked by Interestingness are shown in Explore.
Flickr has stated that many factors go into calculating Interestingness: a photo's tags, how many groups the photo is in, views, favorites, where click-throughs are coming from, who comments on a photo and when, and more. The velocity of any of those components is a key factor. For example, getting 20 comments in an hour counts much higher than getting 20 comments in a week.
Is Explore a showcase for the top Flickr photographers? No. It's for photo viewers, not the photographers. It exists so that, at any moment, anyone who wants to view interesting photos can go to Explore and have a reasonable chance of seeing something interesting.
Does that imply that photographs not in Explore are uninteresting? Of course not. Many wonderful photos are uploaded to Flickr each day not selected for Explore. But, to serve its purpose, Explore only includes a small sampling of all of the photos on Flickr, showing photos from many different people to create a diverse selection."
***************
▶ Collage created by Big Huge Labs
▶ Uploaded by: YFGF.
▶ For a larger image, type 'L' (without the quotation marks).
— Follow on Facebook: YoursForGoodFermentables.
— Follow on Instagram: @tcizauskas.
▶ Commercial use requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.
Lines have been drawn in the fungal community, with some choosing to join the dark side.
105mm, f/5.6, 1/1000, iso100
An astonishing moment, I was standing still under a tree, and then had an egret walk right up beside me, stare at me for a bit and then walk on past.
This photo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution
Non-Commercial Share-Alike license.
For information on the license see this link.
The required attribution should read:
" Erica Marshall of muddyboots.org "
If you'd like information on using my photos commercially, see this link.
All my images are Creative Commons, so they are free to use with attribution. Here's one of my photos being used by a Youtube Music channel.
Zermatt, it's a pleasant town, but seriously they need to sort out all the traffic!!! This was base camp to getting up closer to the Matterhorn. I warned you all that I would be posting more gratuitous Matterhorn images!!! This is from a couple of weeks ago in Switzerland.
The whole traffic thing is a joke of course. Zermatt is actually combustion engine free, only electric and "grass-powered" vehicles up here. Which means you can't actually drive here, you need to take the spectacular cogwheel train to get to the village. Steep sections of the railway have cogs to stop the train from slipping backward or going down too quickly.
The horseman's outfit matches the Valais flag, which is the canton that Zermatt is in.
Another ridiculously early morning shot in the rain and wet grass, but as we say in Ireland, "A damp day, thank God!"
I took this a week ago, just getting to put it up now. My only shot of last Sunday. I thought it looked a bit shamrocky, even though they're clover leaves, so looks like a place a Leprechaun might leave his umbrella!
Today is day 192 of Project 365 (Sunday).
This is Indiana Bones, rides shotgun with me during the Halloween season.
No, I'm not responsible for the recent spate of car crashes on US 101, that was because of the rain, not people staring at my passenger.
Happy Halloween!
Leaving Tokyo again today. This was from the Hamarikyu Gardens, near my hotel. Like most parks in Tokyo, it's repurposed from a Shogun stronghold.
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Gulf of Kutch – also known as the Gulf of Kachchh – an inlet of the Arabian Sea, along the west coast of India.
The Gulf of Kutch divides the Kutch and the Kathiawar peninsula regions in the state of Gujarat. Reaching eastward for around 150 km, the gulf varies in width from approximately 15 to 65 km. The area is renowned for extreme daily tides which often cover the lower lying areas – comprising networks of creeks, wetlands and alluvial tidal flats in the interior region.
Gujarat is the largest salt producing state in India. Some of the white rectangles dotted around the image are salt evaporation ponds which are often found in major salt-producing areas. The arid climate in the region favours the evaporation of water from the salt ponds.
Just north of the area pictured here, lies the Great Rann of Kutch, a seasonal salt marsh located in the Thar desert. The Rann is considered the largest salt desert in the world.
The Gulf of Kutch has several ports including Okha (at the entrance of the gulf), Māndvi, Bedi, and Kandla. Kandla, visible on the northern peninsula in the left of the image, is one of the largest ports in India by volume of cargo handled.
The gulf is rich in marine biodiversity. Part of the southern coast of the Gulf of Kutch was declared Marine Sanctuary and Marine National Park in 1980 and 1982 respectively – the first marine conservatory established in India. The park covers an area of around 270 sq km, from Okha in the south (not visible) to Jodiya. There are hundreds of species of coral in the park, as well as algae, sponges and mangroves.
Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. The mission’s frequent revisits over the same area and high spatial resolution allow changes in water bodies to be closely monitored.
This image, acquired on 4 April 2020, is also featured on the Earth from Space video programme.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
A big harvest this year, this group of woodpeckers have been harvesting for over 6 weeks, and have created two new granaries to store their acorns, this one on the roofs of several houses, and another on a palm tree. Normally they just use an old oak tree. It's so crazy now that they have to hop from tile to tile trying to find room for just one more acorn.
Loved this redhead's shadow too, with its big acorn revealed, and how clearly you can see how they use their tails to steady themselves.
Fascinating, innovative, super social creatures.
325mm, f/8.0, 1/500, iso250
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has provided astronomers with the sharpest view yet of the breakup of Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS). The telescope resolved roughly 30 fragments of the comet on 20 April and 25 pieces on 23 April.
The comet was first discovered in December 2019 by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) and its fragmentation was confirmed in April 2020.
Learn more here.
Credits: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA), Q. Ye (University of Maryland); CC BY 4.0
National theatre by architect Sir Denys Lasdun, opened 1976. Grade 2* listed theatre complex in the brutalist style. South Bank, London Borough of Lambeth.
(CC BY-SA - credit: Images George Rex)