Ipê Amarelo, Tabebuia [chrysotricha or ochracea].

Ipê-amarelo em Brasília (UnB), Brasil.

This tree is in Brasília, Capital of Brazil.

 

Text, in english, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Trumpet tree" redirects here. This term is occasionally used for the Shield-leaved Pumpwood (Cecropia peltata).

Tabebuia

Flowering Araguaney or ipê-amarelo (Tabebuia chrysantha) in central Brazil

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Plantae

(unranked): Angiosperms

(unranked): Eudicots

(unranked): Asterids

Order: Lamiales

Family: Bignoniaceae

Tribe: Tecomeae

Genus: Tabebuia

Gomez

Species

Nearly 100.

Tabebuia is a neotropical genus of about 100 species in the tribe Tecomeae of the family Bignoniaceae. The species range from northern Mexico and the Antilles south to northern Argentina and central Venezuela, including the Caribbean islands of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and Cuba. Well-known common names include Ipê, Poui, trumpet trees and pau d'arco.

They are large shrubs and trees growing to 5 to 50 m (16 to 160 ft.) tall depending on the species; many species are dry-season deciduous but some are evergreen. The leaves are opposite pairs, complex or palmately compound with 3–7 leaflets.

Tabebuia is a notable flowering tree. The flowers are 3 to 11 cm (1 to 4 in.) wide and are produced in dense clusters. They present a cupular calyx campanulate to tubular, truncate, bilabiate or 5-lobed. Corolla colors vary between species ranging from white, light pink, yellow, lavender, magenta, or red. The outside texture of the flower tube is either glabrous or pubescentThe fruit is a dehiscent pod, 10 to 50 cm (4 to 20 in.) long, containing numerous—in some species winged—seeds. These pods often remain on the tree through dry season until the beginning of the rainy.

Species in this genus are important as timber trees. The wood is used for furniture, decking, and other outdoor uses. It is increasingly popular as a decking material due to its insect resistance and durability. By 2007, FSC-certified ipê wood had become readily available on the market, although certificates are occasionally forged.

Tabebuia is widely used as ornamental tree in the tropics in landscaping gardens, public squares, and boulevards due to its impressive and colorful flowering. Many flowers appear on still leafless stems at the end of the dry season, making the floral display more conspicuous. They are useful as honey plants for bees, and are popular with certain hummingbirds. Naturalist Madhaviah Krishnan on the other hand once famously took offense at ipé grown in India, where it is not native.

Lapacho teaThe bark of several species has medical properties. The bark is dried, shredded, and then boiled making a bitter or sour-tasting brownish-colored tea. Tea from the inner bark of Pink Ipê (T. impetiginosa) is known as Lapacho or Taheebo. Its main active principles are lapachol, quercetin, and other flavonoids. It is also available in pill form. The herbal remedy is typically used during flu and cold season and for easing smoker's cough. It apparently works as expectorant, by promoting the lungs to cough up and free deeply embedded mucus and contaminants. However, lapachol is rather toxic and therefore a more topical use e.g. as antibiotic or pesticide may be advisable. Other species with significant folk medical use are T. alba and Yellow Lapacho (T. serratifolia)

Tabebuia heteropoda, T. incana, and other species are occasionally used as an additive to the entheogenic drink Ayahuasca.

Mycosphaerella tabebuiae, a plant pathogenic sac fungus, was first discovered on an ipê tree.

Tabebuia alba

Tabebuia anafensis

Tabebuia arimaoensis

Tabebuia aurea – Caribbean Trumpet Tree

Tabebuia bilbergii

Tabebuia bibracteolata

Tabebuia cassinoides

Tabebuia chrysantha – Araguaney, Yellow Ipê, tajibo (Bolivia), ipê-amarelo (Brazil), cañaguate (N Colombia)

Tabebuia chrysotricha – Golden Trumpet Tree

Tabebuia donnell-smithii Rose – Gold Tree, "Prima Vera", Cortez blanco (El Salvador), San Juan (Honduras), palo blanco (Guatemala),duranga (Mexico)

A native of Mexico and Central Americas, considered one of the most colorful of all Central American trees. The leaves are deciduous. Masses of golden-yellow flowers cover the crown after the leaves are shed.

Tabebuia dubia

Tabebuia ecuadorensis

Tabebuia elongata

Tabebuia furfuracea

Tabebuia geminiflora Rizz. & Mattos

Tabebuia guayacan (Seem.) Hemsl.

Tabebuia haemantha

Tabebuia heptaphylla (Vell.) Toledo – tajy

Tabebuia heterophylla – roble prieto

Tabebuia heteropoda

Tabebuia hypoleuca

Tabebuia impetiginosa – Pink Ipê, Pink Lapacho, ipê-cavatã, ipê-comum, ipê-reto, ipê-rosa, ipê-roxo-damata, pau d'arco-roxo, peúva, piúva (Brazil), lapacho negro (Spanish); not "brazilwood"

Tabebuia incana

Tabebuia jackiana

Tabebuia lapacho – lapacho amarillo

Tabebuia orinocensis A.H. Gentry[verification needed]

Tabebuia ochracea

Tabebuia oligolepis

Tabebuia pallida – Cuban Pink Trumpet Tree

Tabebuia platyantha

Tabebuia polymorpha

Tabebuia rosea (Bertol.) DC.[verification needed] (= T. pentaphylla (L.) Hemsley) – Pink Poui, Pink Tecoma, apama, apamate, matilisguate

A popular street tree in tropical cities because of its multi-annular masses of light pink to purple flowers and modest size. The roots are not especially destructive for roads and sidewalks. It is the national tree of El Salvador and the state tree of Cojedes, Venezuela

Tabebuia roseo-alba – White Ipê, ipê-branco (Brazil), lapacho blanco

Tabebuia serratifolia – Yellow Lapacho, Yellow Poui, ipê-roxo (Brazil)

Tabebuia shaferi

Tabebuia striata

Tabebuia subtilis Sprague & Sandwith

Tabebuia umbellata

Tabebuia vellosoi Toledo

 

Ipê-do-cerrado

Texto, em português, da Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre.

Ipê-do-cerrado

Classificação científica

Reino: Plantae

Divisão: Magnoliophyta

Classe: Magnoliopsida

Subclasse: Asteridae

Ordem: Lamiales

Família: Bignoniaceae

Género: Tabebuia

Espécie: T. ochracea

Nome binomial

Tabebuia ochracea

(Cham.) Standl. 1832

Sinónimos

Bignonia tomentosa Pav. ex DC.

Handroanthus ochraceus (Cham.) Mattos

Tabebuia chrysantha (Jacq.) G. Nicholson

Tabebuia hypodictyon A. DC.) Standl.

Tabebuia neochrysantha A.H. Gentry

Tabebuia ochracea subsp. heteropoda (A. DC.) A.H. Gentry

Tabebuia ochracea subsp. neochrysantha (A.H. Gentry) A.H. Gentry

Tecoma campinae Kraenzl.

ecoma grandiceps Kraenzl.

Tecoma hassleri Sprague

Tecoma hemmendorffiana Kraenzl.

Tecoma heteropoda A. DC.

Tecoma hypodictyon A. DC.

Tecoma ochracea Cham.

Ipê-do-cerrado é um dos nomes populares da Tabebuia ochracea (Cham.) Standl. 1832, nativa do cerrado brasileiro, no estados de Amazonas, Pará, Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Pernambuco, Bahia, Espírito Santo, Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo e Paraná.

Está na lista de espécies ameaçadas do estado de São Paulo, onde é encontrda também no domínio da Mata Atlântica[1].

Ocorre também na Argentina, Paraguai, Bolívia, Equador, Peru, Venezuela, Guiana, El Salvador, Guatemala e Panamá[2].

Há uma espécie homônima descrita por A.H. Gentry em 1992.

Outros nomes populares: ipê-amarelo, ipê-cascudo, ipê-do-campo, ipê-pardo, pau-d'arco-do-campo, piúva, tarumã.

Características

Altura de 6 a 14 m. Tronco tortuso com até 50 cm de diâmetro. Folhas pilosas em ambas as faces, mais na inferior, que é mais clara.

Planta decídua, heliófita, xerófita, nativa do cerrado em solos bem drenados.

Floresce de julho a setembro. Os frutos amadurecem de setembro a outubro.

FloresProduz grande quantidade de sementes leves, aladas com pequenas reservas, e que perdem a viabilidade em menos de 90 dias após coleta. A sua conservação vem sendo estudada em termos de determinação da condição ideal de armazenamento, e tem demonstrado a importância de se conhecer o comportamento da espécie quando armazenada com diferentes teores de umidade inicial, e a umidade de equilíbrio crítica para a espécie (KANO; MÁRQUEZ & KAGEYAMA, 1978). As levíssimas sementes aladas da espécie não necessitam de quebra de dormência. Podem apenas ser expostas ao sol por cerca de 6 horas e semeadas diretamente nos saquinhos. A germinação ocorre após 30 dias e de 80%. As sementes são ortodoxas e há aproximadamente 72 000 sementes em cada quilo.

O desenvolvimento da planta é rápido.

Como outros ipês, a madeira é usada em tacos, assoalhos, e em dormentes e postes. Presta-se também para peças torneadas e instrumento musicais.

 

Tabebuia alba (Ipê-Amarelo)

Texto, em português, produzido pela Acadêmica Giovana Beatriz Theodoro Marto

Supervisão e orientação do Prof. Luiz Ernesto George Barrichelo e do Eng. Paulo Henrique Müller

Atualizado em 10/07/2006

 

O ipê amarelo é a árvore brasileira mais conhecida, a mais cultivada e, sem dúvida nenhuma, a mais bela. É na verdade um complexo de nove ou dez espécies com características mais ou menos semelhantes, com flores brancas, amarelas ou roxas. Não há região do país onde não exista pelo menos uma espécie dele, porém a existência do ipê em habitat natural nos dias atuais é rara entre a maioria das espécies (LORENZI,2000).

A espécie Tabebuia alba, nativa do Brasil, é uma das espécies do gênero Tabebuia que possui “Ipê Amarelo” como nome popular. O nome alba provém de albus (branco em latim) e é devido ao tomento branco dos ramos e folhas novas.

As árvores desta espécie proporcionam um belo espetáculo com sua bela floração na arborização de ruas em algumas cidades brasileiras. São lindas árvores que embelezam e promovem um colorido no final do inverno. Existe uma crença popular de que quando o ipê-amarelo floresce não vão ocorrer mais geadas. Infelizmente, a espécie é considerada vulnerável quanto à ameaça de extinção.

A Tabebuia alba, natural do semi-árido alagoano está adaptada a todas as regiões fisiográficas, levando o governo, por meio do Decreto nº 6239, a transformar a espécie como a árvore símbolo do estado, estando, pois sob a sua tutela, não mais podendo ser suprimida de seus habitats naturais.

Taxonomia

Família: Bignoniaceae

Espécie: Tabebuia Alba (Chamiso) Sandwith

Sinonímia botânica: Handroanthus albus (Chamiso) Mattos; Tecoma alba Chamisso

Outros nomes vulgares: ipê-amarelo, ipê, aipê, ipê-branco, ipê-mamono, ipê-mandioca, ipê-ouro, ipê-pardo, ipê-vacariano, ipê-tabaco, ipê-do-cerrado, ipê-dourado, ipê-da-serra, ipezeiro, pau-d’arco-amarelo, taipoca.

Aspectos Ecológicos

O ipê-amarelo é uma espécie heliófita (Planta adaptada ao crescimento em ambiente aberto ou exposto à luz direta) e decídua (que perde as folhas em determinada época do ano). Pertence ao grupo das espécies secundárias iniciais (DURIGAN & NOGUEIRA, 1990).

Abrange a Floresta Pluvial da Mata Atlântica e da Floresta Latifoliada Semidecídua, ocorrendo principalmente no interior da Floresta Primária Densa. É característica de sub-bosques dos pinhais, onde há regeneração regular.

Informações Botânicas

Morfologia

As árvores de Tabebuia alba possuem cerca de 30 metros de altura. O tronco é reto ou levemente tortuoso, com fuste de 5 a 8 m de altura. A casca externa é grisáceo-grossa, possuindo fissuras longitudinais esparas e profundas. A coloração desta é cinza-rosa intenso, com camadas fibrosas, muito resistentes e finas, porém bem distintas.

Com ramos grossos, tortuosos e compridos, o ipê-amarelo possui copa alongada e alargada na base. As raízes de sustentação e absorção são vigorosas e profundas.

As folhas, deciduais, são opostas, digitadas e compostas. A face superior destas folhas é verde-escura, e, a face inferior, acinzentada, sendo ambas as faces tomentosas. Os pecíolos das folhas medem de 2,5 a 10 cm de comprimento. Os folíolos, geralmente, apresentam-se em número de 5 a 7, possuindo de 7 a 18 cm de comprimento por 2 a 6 cm de largura. Quando jovem estes folíolos são densamente pilosos em ambas as faces. O ápice destes é pontiagudo, com base arredondada e margem serreada.

As flores, grandes e lanceoladas, são de coloração amarelo-ouro. Possuem em média 8X15 cm.

Quanto aos frutos, estes possuem forma de cápsula bivalvar e são secos e deiscentes. Do tipo síliqua, lembram uma vagem. Medem de 15 a 30 cm de comprimento por 1,5 a 2,5 cm de largura. As valvas são finamente tomentosas com pêlos ramificados. Possuem grande quantidade de sementes.

As sementes são membranáceas brilhantes e esbranquiçadas, de coloração marrom. Possuem de 2 a 3 cm de comprimento por 7 a 9 mm de largura e são aladas.

Reprodução

A espécie é caducifólia e a queda das folhas coincide com o período de floração. A floração inicia-se no final de agosto, podendo ocorrer alguma variação devido a fenômenos climáticos. Como a espécie floresce no final do inverno é influenciada pela intensidade do mesmo. Quanto mais frio e seco for o inverno, maior será a intensidade da florada do ipê amarelo.

As flores por sua exuberância, atraem abelhas e pássaros, principalmente beija-flores que são importantes agentes polinizadores. Segundo CARVALHO (2003), a espécie possui como vetor de polinização a abelha mamangava (Bombus morio).

As sementes são dispersas pelo vento.

A planta é hermafrodita, e frutifica nos meses de setembro, outubro, novembro, dezembro, janeiro e fevereiro, dependendo da sua localização. Em cultivo, a espécie inicia o processo reprodutivo após o terceiro ano.

Ocorrência Natural

Ocorre naturalmente na Floresta Estaciobal Semidecicual, Floresta de Araucária e no Cerrado.

Segundo o IBGE, a Tabebuia alba (Cham.) Sandw. é uma árvore do Cerrado, Cerradão e Mata Seca. Apresentando-se nos campos secos (savana gramíneo-lenhosa), próximo às escarpas.

Clima

Segundo a classificação de Köppen, o ipê-amarelo abrange locais de clima tropical (Aw), subtropical úmido (Cfa), sutropical de altitude (Cwa e Cwb) e temperado.

A T.alba pode tolerar até 81 geadas em um ano. Ocorre em locais onde a temperatura média anual varia de 14,4ºC como mínimo e 22,4ºC como máximo.

Solo

A espécie prefere solos úmidos, com drenagem lenta e geralmente não muito ondulados (LONGHI, 1995).

Aparece em terras de boa à média fertilidade, em solos profundos ou rasos, nas matas e raramente cerradões (NOGUEIRA, 1977).

Pragas e Doenças

De acordo com CARVALHO (2003), possui como praga a espécie de coleópteros Cydianerus bohemani da família Curculionoideae e um outro coleóptero da família Chrysomellidae. Apesar da constatação de elevados índices populacionais do primeiro, os danos ocasionados até o momento são leves. Nas praças e ruas de Curitiba - PR, 31% das árvores foram atacadas pela Cochonilha Ceroplastes grandis.

ZIDKO (2002), ao estudar no município de Piracicaba a associação de coleópteros em espécies arbóreas, verificou a presença de insetos adultos da espécie Sitophilus linearis da família de coleópteros, Curculionidae, em estruturas reprodutivas. Os insetos adultos da espécie emergiram das vagens do ipê, danificando as sementes desta espécie nativa.

ANDRADE (1928) assinalou diversas espécies de Cerambycidae atacando essências florestais vivas, como ingazeiro, cinamomo, cangerana, cedro, caixeta, jacarandá, araribá, jatobá, entre outras como o ipê amarelo.

A Madeira

A Tabebuia alba produz madeira de grande durabilidade e resistência ao apodrecimento (LONGHI,1995).

MANIERI (1970) caracteriza o cerne desta espécie como de cor pardo-havana-claro, pardo-havan-escuro, ou pardo-acastanhado, com reflexos esverdeados. A superfície da madeira é irregularmente lustrosa, lisa ao tato, possuindo textura media e grã-direita.

Com densidade entre 0,90 e 1,15 grama por centímetro cúbico, a madeira é muito dura (LORENZI, 1992), apresentando grande dificuldade ao serrar.

A madeira possui cheiro e gosto distintos. Segundo LORENZI (1992), o cheiro característico é devido à presença da substância lapachol, ou ipeína.

Usos da Madeira

Sendo pesada, com cerne escuro, adquire grande valor comercial na marcenaria e carpintaria. Também é utilizada para fabricação de dormentes, moirões, pontes, postes, eixos de roda, varais de carroça, moendas de cana, etc.

Produtos Não-Madeireiros

A entrecasca do ipê-amarelo possui propriedades terapêuticas como adstringente, usada no tratamento de garganta e estomatites. É também usada como diurético.

O ipê-amarelo possui flores melíferas e que maduras podem ser utilizadas na alimentação humana.

Outros Usos

É comumente utilizada em paisagismo de parques e jardins pela beleza e porte. Além disso, é muito utilizada na arborização urbana.

Segundo MOREIRA & SOUZA (1987), o ipê-amarelo costuma povoar as beiras dos rios sendo, portanto, indicado para recomposição de matas ciliares. MARTINS (1986), também cita a espécie para recomposição de matas ciliares da Floresta Estacional Semidecidual, abrangendo alguns municípios das regiões Norte, Noroeste e parte do Oeste do Estado do Paraná.

Aspectos Silviculturais

Possui a tendência a crescer reto e sem bifurcações quando plantado em reflorestamento misto, pois é espécie monopodial. A desrrama se faz muito bem e a cicatrização é boa. Sendo assim, dificilmente encopa quando nova, a não ser que seja plantado em parques e jardins.

Ao ser utilizada em arborização urbana, o ipê amarelo requer podas de condução com freqüência mediana.

Espécie heliófila apresenta a pleno sol ramificação cimosa, registrando-se assim dicotomia para gema apical. Deve ser preconizada, para seu melhor aproveitamento madeireiro, podas de formação usuais (INQUE et al., 1983).

Produção de Mudas

A propagação deve realizada através de enxertia.

Os frutos devem ser coletados antes da dispersão, para evitar a perda de sementes. Após a coleta as sementes são postas em ambiente ventilado e a extração é feita manualmente. As sementes do ipê amarelo são ortodoxas, mantendo a viabilidade natural por até 3 meses em sala e por até 9 meses em vidro fechado, em câmara fria.

A condução das mudas deve ser feita a pleno sol. A muda atinge cerca de 30 cm em 9 meses, apresentando tolerância ao sol 3 semanas após a germinação.

Sementes

Os ipês, espécies do gênero Tabebuia, produzem uma grande quantidade de sementes leves, aladas com pequenas reservas, e que perdem a viabilidade em poucos dias após a sua coleta. A sua conservação vem sendo estudada em termos de determinação da condição ideal de armazenamento, e tem demonstrado a importância de se conhecer o comportamento da espécie quando armazenada com diferentes teores de umidade inicial, e a umidade de equilíbrio crítica para a espécie (KANO; MÁRQUEZ & KAGEYAMA, 1978).

As levíssimas sementes aladas da espécie não necessitam de quebra de dormência. Podem apenas ser expostas ao sol por cerca de 6 horas e semeadas diretamente nos saquinhos. A quebra natural leva cerca de 3 meses e a quebra na câmara leva 9 meses. A germinação ocorre após 30 dias e de 80%.

As sementes são ortodoxas e há aproximadamente 87000 sementes em cada quilo.

Preço da Madeira no Mercado

O preço médio do metro cúbico de pranchas de ipê no Estado do Pará cotado em Julho e Agosto de 2005 foi de R$1.200,00 o preço mínimo, R$ 1509,35 o médio e R$ 2.000,00 o preço máximo (CEPEA,2005).

 

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid

 

Madrid is the capital of Spain and the largest municipality in both the Community of Madrid and Spain as a whole. The city has almost 3.3 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.5 million. It is the third-largest city in the European Union (EU), smaller than only London and Berlin, and its monocentric metropolitan area is the third-largest in the EU, smaller only than those of London and Paris. The municipality covers 604.3 km2 (233.3 sq mi).

 

Madrid lies on the River Manzanares in the centre of both the country and the Community of Madrid (which comprises the city of Madrid, its conurbation and extended suburbs and villages); this community is bordered by the autonomous communities of Castile and León and Castile-La Mancha. As the capital city of Spain, seat of government, and residence of the Spanish monarch, Madrid is also the political, economic and cultural centre of the country. The current mayor is Manuela Carmena from the party Ahora Madrid.

 

The Madrid urban agglomeration has the third-largest GDP in the European Union and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, environment, media, fashion, science, culture, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities. Madrid is home to two world-famous football clubs, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid. Due to its economic output, high standard of living, and market size, Madrid is considered the leading economic hub of the Iberian Peninsula and of Southern Europe. It hosts the head offices of the vast majority of major Spanish companies, such as Telefónica, IAG or Repsol. Madrid is also the 10th most liveable city in the world according to Monocle magazine, in its 2017 index.

 

Madrid houses the headquarters of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), belonging to the United Nations Organization (UN), the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), and the Public Interest Oversight Board (PIOB). It also hosts major international regulators and promoters of the Spanish language: the Standing Committee of the Association of Spanish Language Academies, headquarters of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), the Cervantes Institute and the Foundation of Urgent Spanish (Fundéu BBVA). Madrid organises fairs such as FITUR, ARCO, SIMO TCI and the Madrid Fashion Week.

 

While Madrid possesses modern infrastructure, it has preserved the look and feel of many of its historic neighbourhoods and streets. Its landmarks include the Royal Palace of Madrid; the Royal Theatre with its restored 1850 Opera House; the Buen Retiro Park, founded in 1631; the 19th-century National Library building (founded in 1712) containing some of Spain's historical archives; a large number of national museums, and the Golden Triangle of Art, located along the Paseo del Prado and comprising three art museums: Prado Museum, the Reina Sofía Museum, a museum of modern art, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, which complements the holdings of the other two museums. Cibeles Palace and Fountain have become one of the monument symbols of the city.

 

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teatro_Real

 

Teatro Real (Royal Theatre) or simply El Real, as it is known colloquially, is a major opera house located in Madrid. Founded in 1818 and inaugurated on 19 November 1850, it closed in 1925 and reopened in 1966. Beginning in 1988 it underwent major refurbishing and renovation works and finally reopened in 1997 with a capacity of 1,746 seats. Today the Teatro Real opera is one of the great theaters of Europe hosting large productions involving leading international figures in opera singing, musical direction, stage direction and dance. The theater offers visitors guided tours in several languages, including the auditorium, stage, workshops and rehearsal rooms.

Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley, and most of Saline Valley. The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons, and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, and the hottest, driest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States. The second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere is in Badwater Basin, which is 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. Approximately 91% of the park is a designated wilderness area. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment. Some examples include creosote bush, bighorn sheep, coyote, and the Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.

 

A series of Native American groups inhabited the area from as early as 7000 BC, most recently the Timbisha around 1000 AD who migrated between winter camps in the valleys and summer grounds in the mountains. A group of European Americans, trapped in the valley in 1849 while looking for a shortcut to the gold fields of California, gave the valley its name, even though only one of their group died there. Several short-lived boom towns sprang up during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to mine gold and silver. The only long-term profitable ore to be mined was borax, which was transported out of the valley with twenty-mule teams. The valley later became the subject of books, radio programs, television series, and movies. Tourism expanded in the 1920s when resorts were built around Stovepipe Wells and Furnace Creek. Death Valley National Monument was declared in 1933 and the park was substantially expanded and became a national park in 1994.

 

The natural environment of the area has been shaped largely by its geology. The valley is actually a graben with the oldest rocks being extensively metamorphosed and at least 1.7 billion years old. Ancient, warm, shallow seas deposited marine sediments until rifting opened the Pacific Ocean. Additional sedimentation occurred until a subduction zone formed off the coast. The subduction uplifted the region out of the sea and created a line of volcanoes. Later the crust started to pull apart, creating the current Basin and Range landform. Valleys filled with sediment and, during the wet times of glacial periods, with lakes, such as Lake Manly.

 

Source: Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Valley_National_Park

The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region and national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is primarily famous for the Cumbrian Mountains, its lake and coastal scenery, and for its literary associations with William Wordsworth and other Lake Poets, Beatrix Potter, and John Ruskin.

 

The Cumbrian mountains, or fells, include England's tallest mountains: Scafell Pike (978 m (3,209 ft)), Helvellyn (950 m (3,120 ft)), Skiddaw (931 m (3,054 ft)), and Cross Fell (893 m (2,930 ft)), which all have a topographical prominence of more than 600m. The region contains sixteen major lakes. They include Windermere, which with a length of 18 km (11 miles) and an area of 14.73 km2 (5.69 square miles) is both the longest and largest lake in England, and Wast Water, which at 79 metres (259 ft) is the deepest lake in England.

 

The Lake District National Park was established in 1951, and covers an area of 2,362 km2 (912 square miles), the bulk of the region. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017.

 

National Park

The Lake District National Park includes all of the central Lake District, though the town of Kendal, some coastal areas, and the Lakeland Peninsulas are outside the park boundary. The area was designated a national park on 9 May 1951, a month after the Peak District, the first UK national park. It retained its original boundaries until 2016 when it was extended by 3% in the direction of the Yorkshire Dales National Park to incorporate areas land of high landscape value around the Lune Valley.

 

The national park received 18.14 million tourist visitors in 2022. This equates to 29.15 million tourist days, counting visits of greater than three hours. It is the largest of the thirteen national parks in England and Wales and the second largest in the UK after the Cairngorms National Park. Its aim is to protect the landscape by restricting unwelcome change by industry or commerce. The area of the national park, with the exception of the 2016 extension, was designated a World Heritage Site in 2017 as a cultural landscape. This was the fourth attempt to list the park, after two attempts in the 1980s and one in 2012 failed.

 

The park is governed by the National Park Authority, which is based at offices in Kendal. It runs a visitor centre on Windermere at a former country house called Brockhole, Coniston Boating Centre, and Information Centres. The Park Authority has 20 members: six appointed by Westmorland and Furness Council, four by Cumberland Council, and ten by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs.

 

Human geography

The precise extent of the Lake District was not defined traditionally, but is slightly larger than that of the National Park[citation needed], the total area of which is about 2,362 square kilometres (912 sq mi). The park extends just over 51 kilometres (32 mi) from east to west and nearly 64 kilometres (40 mi) from north to south, with areas such as the Lake District Peninsulas to the south lying outside the National Park.

 

Settlement

There are only a few major settlements within this mountainous area: the towns of Keswick, Windermere, Ambleside, and Bowness-on-Windermere are the four largest. Significant settlements close to the boundary of the national park include Carlisle, Barrow-in-Furness, Kendal, Ulverston, Dalton-in-Furness, Whitehaven, Workington, Cockermouth, Penrith, Millom and Grange-over-Sands; each of these has important economic links with the area. Other villages are Coniston, Threlkeld, Glenridding, Pooley Bridge, Broughton-in-Furness, Grasmere, Newby Bridge, Staveley, Lindale, Gosforth and Hawkshead. The economies of almost all are intimately linked with tourism. Beyond these are a scattering of hamlets and many isolated farmsteads, some of which are still tied to agriculture;[citation needed] others now function as part of the tourist economy.

 

Communications

Roads

The Lake District is very nearly contained within a box of trunk routes and major A roads. It is flanked to the east by the A6 road, which runs from Kendal to Penrith (though the National Park extension approved in 2015 is east of the A6); across its southern fringes by the A590, which connects the M6 to Barrow-in-Furness, and the A5092, and across its northern edge by the A66 trunk road between Penrith and Workington. The A595 (linking the A66 with the A5092) forms the park boundary from Calder Bridge to Holmrook, then crosses the coastal plain of the park until turning inland at the Whicham Valley, forming much of the park boundary again until joining the A5092 at Grizebeck.

 

Besides these, a few A roads penetrate the area itself, notably the A591 which runs north-westwards from Kendal to Windermere and then on to Keswick. It continues up the east side of Bassenthwaite Lake. "The A591, Grasmere, Lake District" was short-listed in the 2011 Google Street View awards in the Most Romantic Street category. The A593 and A5084 link the Ambleside and Coniston areas with the A590 to the south whilst the A592 and A5074 similarly link Windermere with the A590. The A592 also continues northwards from Windermere to Ullswater and Penrith by way of the Kirkstone Pass.

 

Some valleys which are not penetrated by A roads are served by B roads. The B5289 serves Lorton Vale and Buttermere and links via the Honister Pass with Borrowdale. The B5292 ascends the Whinlatter Pass from Lorton Vale before dropping down to Braithwaite near Keswick. The B5322 serves the valley of St John's in the Vale whilst Great Langdale is served by the B5343. Other valleys such as Little Langdale, Eskdale and Dunnerdale are served by minor roads. The last of these is connected with the first two by the Wrynose and Hardknott passes respectively; both of these passes are known for their steep gradients and are together one of the most popular climbs in the United Kingdom for cycling enthusiasts. A minor road through the Newlands Valley connects via Newlands Hause with the B5289 at Buttermere. Wasdale is served by a cul-de-sac minor road,[a] as is Longsleddale and the valleys at Haweswater and Kentmere. There are networks of minor roads in the lower-lying southern part of the area, connecting numerous communities between Kendal, Windermere, and Coniston.

 

Railways and ferries

The West Coast Main Line skirts the eastern edge of the Lake District and the Cumbrian Coast Line passes through the southern and western fringes of the area. A single railway line, the Windermere Branch Line, penetrates from Kendal to Windermere via Staveley. Railways once served Broughton-in-Furness and Coniston (closed to passengers in 1958) and another ran from Penrith to Cockermouth via Keswick (closed west of Keswick in 1966 and completely in 1972). Part of the track of the latter is used by the improved A66 trunk road.

 

The Cumbrian Coast line has three stations within the boundaries of the national park (and additionally Drigg, about a third of a mile from the park boundary). The line gives railway enthusiasts and others a flavour of a pre-Beeching railway line, with features like manually operated level crossing gates, as well as giving a good connection to the steam railway into Eskdale and providing access for cyclists and serious walkers to the Western Fells.

 

The narrow gauge Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway runs from Ravenglass on the west coast up Eskdale as far as Dalegarth Station near the hamlet of Boot, catering for tourists. Another heritage railway, the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway, runs between Lake Windermere and Haverthwaite, and tourists can connect at Lakeside with the boats up the lake to Bowness.

 

A vehicle-carrying cable ferry, the Windermere Ferry, runs frequent services across Windermere. There are also seasonal passenger boats on Coniston Water, Derwent Water, and Ullswater.

 

Footpaths and bridleways

There are many paths over which the public has a right of way, all of which are signposted at their origin on public roads and at some other points. Within the area of the National Park in 2012 there were 2,159 km (1,342 mi) of public footpaths, 875 km (544 mi) of public bridleways, 15 km (9 mi) of restricted byways and 30 km (19 mi) of byways open to all traffic. There is also a general "right to roam" in open country, which includes approximately 50% of the national park.

 

Many of these tracks arose centuries ago and were used either as ridge highways (such as along High Street) or as passes for travelling across the ridges between settlements in the valleys. Historically these paths were not planned for reaching summits, but more recently they are used by fell walkers for that purpose. The Coast to Coast Walk, which crosses the north of England from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, traverses the national park from west to east.

 

Bridleways are intended for horse riding and walkers, with cyclists also permitted to use them. Cyclists must give way to all other bridleway users. Motor vehicles are only allowed on "byways open to all traffic" (green lanes) but in practice Traffic Regulation Orders have been brought in on several prohibiting motor traffic, although a system of permits operates on Gatesgarth Pass.

 

Land ownership

Most of the land within the national park is in private ownership, with about 55% registered as agricultural land. Landowners include:

 

Individual farmers and other private landowners, with more than half of the agricultural land farmed by the owners.

The National Trust owns around 25% of the total area (including some lakes and land of significant landscape value).

The Forestry Commission and other investors in forests and woodland.

United Utilities (owns 8%)

Lake District National Park Authority (owns 3.9%)

 

Physical geography

The Lake District is a roughly circular upland massif, deeply dissected by a broadly radial pattern of major valleys which are largely the result of repeated glaciations over the last 2 million years. The apparent radial pattern is not from a central dome, but from an axial watershed extending from St Bees Head in the west to Shap in the east. Most of these valleys display the U-shaped cross-section characteristic of glacial origin and often contain long narrow lakes in bedrock hollows, with tracts of relatively flat ground at their infilled heads, or where they are divided by lateral tributaries (Buttermere-Crummock Water; Derwent Water-Bassenthwaite Lake).[b] Smaller lakes known as tarns occupy glacial cirques at higher elevations. It is the abundance of both which has led to the area becoming known as the Lake District.

 

Many of the higher fells are rocky, while moorland predominates lower down. Vegetation cover in better-drained areas includes bracken and heather, although much of the land is boggy, due to the high rainfall. Deciduous native woodland occurs on many of the steeper slopes below the tree line, but with native oak supplemented by extensive conifer plantations in many areas, particularly Grizedale Forest in the generally lower southern part of the area. The Lake District extends to the sea to the west and south.

 

The highest mountain in England, Scafell Pike (978m/3210'), has a far-reaching view on a clear day, ranging from the Galloway Hills of Scotland, the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and Snowdonia in Wales.

 

Cumbrian Mountains

Lake District is located in the Lake DistrictScafell PikeScafell PikeScafellScafellScafellScafellHelvellynHelvellynSkiddawSkiddawHigh StreetHigh StreetGrasmoorGrasmoorConiston Old ManConiston Old ManGreat GableGreat GableKendalKendalPenrithPenrithKeswickKeswickAmblesideAmblesideCockermouthCockermouthWindermereWindermereGrasmereGrasmere

 

Major fells and towns shown within the National Park

Lake District

The mountains (or 'fells') of the Lake District are known as the "Cumbrian Mountains", "Cumbrian Fells" or "Lakeland Fells". The four highest fells exceed 3,000 feet (914 m). These are:

 

Scafell Pike, 978 m (3,209 ft)

Scafell, 965 m (3,166 ft)

Helvellyn, 951 m (3,120 ft)

Skiddaw, 931 m (3,054 ft)

 

Northern Fells

The Northern Fells are a clearly defined range of hills contained within a 13 km (8 mi) diameter circle between Keswick in the southwest and Caldbeck in the northeast. They culminate in the 931 m (3,054 ft) peak of Skiddaw. Other notable peaks are Blencathra (also known as Saddleback) (868 m (2,848 ft)) and Carrock Fell. Bassenthwaite Lake occupies the valley between this massif and the North Western Fells.

 

North Western Fells

The North Western Fells lie between Borrowdale and Bassenthwaite Lake to the east and Buttermere and Lorton Vale to the west. Their southernmost point is at Honister Pass. This area includes the Derwent Fells above the Newlands Valley and hills to the north amongst which are Dale Head, Robinson. To the north stand Grasmoor, highest in the range at 852 m (2,795 ft), Grisedale Pike and the hills around the valley of Coledale, and in the far northwest is Thornthwaite Forest and Lord's Seat. The fells in this area are rounded Skiddaw slate, with few tarns and relatively few rock faces.

 

Western Fells

The Western Fells lie between Buttermere and Wasdale, with Sty Head forming the apex of a large triangle. Ennerdale bisects the area, which consists of the High Stile ridge north of Ennerdale, the Loweswater Fells in the far northwest, the Pillar group in the southwest, and Great Gable (899 m (2,949 ft)) near Sty Head. Other tops include Seatallan, Haystacks and Kirk Fell. This area is craggy and steep, with the impressive pinnacle of Pillar Rock its showpiece. Wastwater, located in this part, is England's deepest lake.

 

Central Fells

The Central Fells are lower in elevation than surrounding areas of fell, peaking at 762 m (2,500 ft) at High Raise. They take the form of a ridge running between Derwent Water in the west and Thirlmere in the east, from Keswick in the north to Langdale Pikes in the south. A spur extends southeast to Loughrigg Fell above Ambleside. The central ridge running north over High Seat is exceptionally boggy.

 

Eastern Fells

The Eastern Fells consist of a long north-to-south ridge, the Helvellyn range, running from Clough Head to Seat Sandal with the 950 m (3,118 ft) Helvellyn at its highest point. The western slopes of these summits tend to be grassy, with rocky corries and crags on the eastern side. The Fairfield group lies to the south of the range and forms a similar pattern with towering rock faces and hidden valleys spilling into the Patterdale valley. It culminates in the height of Red Screes overlooking the Kirkstone Pass.

 

Far Eastern Fells

The Far Eastern Fells refers to all of the Lakeland fells to the east of Ullswater and the A592 road running south to Windermere. At 828 m (2,717 ft), the peak known as High Street is the highest point on a complex ridge that runs broadly north-south and overlooks the hidden valley of Haweswater to its east. In the north of this region are the lower fells of Martindale Common and Bampton Common whilst in the south are the fells overlooking the Kentmere valley. Further to the east, beyond Mardale and Longsleddale is Shap Fell, an extensive area consisting of high moorland, more rolling and Pennine in nature than the mountains to the west.

 

Southern Fells

The Southern Fells occupy the southwestern quarter of the Lake District. They can be regarded as comprising a northern grouping between Wasdale, Eskdale, and the two Langdale valleys, a southeastern group east of Dunnerdale and south of Little Langdale, and a southwestern group bounded by Eskdale to the north and Dunnerdale to the east.

 

The first group includes England's highest mountains: Scafell Pike in the centre, at 978 m (3,209 ft) and Scafell one mile (1.6 km) to the southwest. Though it is slightly lower, Scafell has a 700 ft (210 m) rockface, Scafell Crag, on its northern side. This group also includes the Wastwater Screes overlooking Wasdale, the Glaramara ridge overlooking Borrowdale, the three tops of Crinkle Crags, Bowfell and Esk Pike. The core of the area is drained by the infant River Esk. Collectively these are some of the Lake District's most rugged hillsides.

 

The second group, otherwise known as the Furness Fells or Coniston Fells, have as their northern boundary the steep and narrow Hardknott and Wrynose passes. The highest are Old Man of Coniston and Swirl How which slightly exceed 800 m (2,600 ft).

 

The third group to the west of the Duddon includes Harter Fell and the long ridge leading over Whitfell to Black Combe and the sea. The south of this region consists of lower forests and knolls, with Kirkby Moor on the southern boundary. The southwestern Lake District ends near the Furness peninsula and Barrow-in-Furness, a town which many Lake District residents rely on for basic amenities.

 

Southeastern area

The southeastern area is the territory between Coniston Water and Windermere and east of Windermere towards Kendal and south to Lindale. There are no high summits in this area which are mainly low hills, knolls and limestone cuestas such as Gummer's How and Whitbarrow. Indeed, it rises only as high as 333 m (1,093 ft) at Top o' Selside east of Coniston Water; the wide expanse of Grizedale Forest stands between the two lakes. Kendal and Morecambe Bay stand at the eastern and southern edges of the area.

 

Valleys

The main radial valleys are (clockwise from the south) Dunnerdale, Eskdale, Wasdale, Ennerdale, the Vale of Lorton, and Buttermere valley, the Derwent Valley and Borrowdale, the Ullswater valley, Haweswater valley, Longsleddale, the Kentmere valley, those converging on the head of Windermere - Grasmere, Great Langdale and Little Langdale, and the Coniston Water valley. The valleys break the mountains up into blocks, which have been described by various authors in different ways. The most frequently encountered approach is that made popular by Alfred Wainwright who published seven separate area guides to the Lakeland Fells.

 

Only one of the lakes in the Lake District is called by that name, Bassenthwaite Lake. All the others such as Windermere, Coniston Water, Ullswater and Buttermere are meres, tarns and waters, with mere being the least common and water being the most common. The major lakes and reservoirs in the National Park are given below.

 

Bassenthwaite Lake

Brotherswater

Buttermere

Coniston Water

Crummock Water

Derwent Water

Devoke Water

Elter Water

Ennerdale Water

Esthwaite Water

Grasmere

Haweswater Reservoir

Hayeswater

Loweswater

Rydal Water

Thirlmere

Ullswater

Wast Water

Windermere

 

Woodlands

Below the tree line are wooded areas, including British and European native oak woodlands and introduced softwood plantations. The woodlands provide habitats for native English wildlife. The native red squirrel is found in the Lake District and a few other parts of England. In parts of the Lake District, the rainfall is higher than in any other part of England. This gives Atlantic mosses, ferns, lichen, and liverworts the chance to grow. There is some ancient woodland in the National Park. Management of the woodlands varies: some are coppiced, some pollarded, some left to grow naturally, and some provide grazing and shelter.

 

Coast

The Lake District extends to the coast of the Irish Sea from Drigg in the north to Silecroft in the south, encompassing the estuaries of the Esk and its tributaries, the Irt and the Mite. The intertidal zone of the combined estuaries includes sand, shingle and mudflats, and saltmarsh. The dune systems on either side of the estuary are protected as nature reserves; Drigg Dunes and Gullery to the north and Eskmeals Dunes[31] to the south. South of the estuary, the coast is formed in low cliffs of glacial till, sands, and gravels.

 

The district also extends to the tidal waters of Morecambe Bay and several of its estuaries alongside the Furness and Cartmel Peninsulas, designated on M6 motorway signposts as the "Lake District Peninsulas", and the southern portions of which lie outside the park. These are the Duddon Estuary, the Leven Estuary, and the western banks and tidal flats of the Kent Estuary. These areas are each characterised by sand and mudflats of scenic and wildlife interest. The coast is backed by extensive flats of raised marine deposits left when the relative sea level was higher.

Spaceflight (or space flight) is ballistic flight into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft with or without humans on board. Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union was the first human to conduct a spaceflight. Examples of human spaceflight include the U.S. Apollo Moon landing and Space Shuttle programs and the Russian Soyuz program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station. Examples of unmanned spaceflight include space probes that leave Earth orbit, as well as satellites in orbit around Earth, such as communications satellites. These operate either by telerobotic control or are fully autonomous.

 

Spaceflight is used in space exploration, and also in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other Earth observation satellites.

 

A spaceflight typically begins with a rocket launch, which provides the initial thrust to overcome the force of gravity and propels the spacecraft from the surface of the Earth. Once in space, the motion of a spacecraft – both when unpropelled and when under propulsion – is covered by the area of study called astrodynamics. Some spacecraft remain in space indefinitely, some disintegrate during atmospheric reentry, and others reach a planetary or lunar surface for landing or impact.

  

History

Main articles: History of spaceflight and Timeline of spaceflight

Tsiolkovsky, early space theorist

 

The first theoretical proposal of space travel using rockets was published by Scottish astronomer and mathematician William Leitch, in an 1861 essay "A Journey Through Space".[1] More well-known (though not widely outside Russia) is Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's work, "Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами" (The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices), published in 1903.

 

Spaceflight became an engineering possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddard's publication in 1919 of his paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. His application of the de Laval nozzle to liquid fuel rockets improved efficiency enough for interplanetary travel to become possible. He also proved in the laboratory that rockets would work in the vacuum of space;[specify] nonetheless, his work was not taken seriously by the public. His attempt to secure an Army contract for a rocket-propelled weapon in the first World War was defeated by the November 11, 1918 armistice with Germany. Working with private financial support, he was the first to launch a liquid-fueled rocket in 1926. Goddard's paper was highly influential on Hermann Oberth, who in turn influenced Wernher von Braun. Von Braun became the first to produce modern rockets as guided weapons, employed by Adolf Hitler. Von Braun's V-2 was the first rocket to reach space, at an altitude of 189 kilometers (102 nautical miles) on a June 1944 test flight.[2]

 

Tsiolkovsky's rocketry work was not fully appreciated in his lifetime, but he influenced Sergey Korolev, who became the Soviet Union's chief rocket designer under Joseph Stalin, to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry nuclear weapons as a counter measure to United States bomber planes. Derivatives of Korolev's R-7 Semyorka missiles were used to launch the world's first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, and later the first human to orbit the Earth, Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1, on April 12, 1961.[3]

 

At the end of World War II, von Braun and most of his rocket team surrendered to the United States, and were expatriated to work on American missiles at what became the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. This work on missiles such as Juno I and Atlas enabled launch of the first US satellite Explorer 1 on February 1, 1958, and the first American in orbit, John Glenn in Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. As director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, Von Braun oversaw development of a larger class of rocket called Saturn, which allowed the US to send the first two humans, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, to the Moon and back on Apollo 11 in July 1969. Over the same period, the Soviet Union secretly tried but failed to develop the N1 rocket to give them the capability to land one person on the Moon.

Phases

Launch

Main article: Rocket launch

See also: List of space launch system designs

 

Rockets are the only means currently capable of reaching orbit or beyond. Other non-rocket spacelaunch technologies have yet to be built, or remain short of orbital speeds. A rocket launch for a spaceflight usually starts from a spaceport (cosmodrome), which may be equipped with launch complexes and launch pads for vertical rocket launches, and runways for takeoff and landing of carrier airplanes and winged spacecraft. Spaceports are situated well away from human habitation for noise and safety reasons. ICBMs have various special launching facilities.

 

A launch is often restricted to certain launch windows. These windows depend upon the position of celestial bodies and orbits relative to the launch site. The biggest influence is often the rotation of the Earth itself. Once launched, orbits are normally located within relatively constant flat planes at a fixed angle to the axis of the Earth, and the Earth rotates within this orbit.

 

A launch pad is a fixed structure designed to dispatch airborne vehicles. It generally consists of a launch tower and flame trench. It is surrounded by equipment used to erect, fuel, and maintain launch vehicles. Before launch, the rocket can weigh many hundreds of tonnes. The Space Shuttle Columbia, on STS-1, weighed 2,030 tonnes (4,480,000 lb) at take off.

Reaching space

 

The most commonly used definition of outer space is everything beyond the Kármán line, which is 100 kilometers (62 mi) above the Earth's surface. The United States sometimes defines outer space as everything beyond 50 miles (80 km) in altitude.

 

Rockets are the only currently practical means of reaching space. Conventional airplane engines cannot reach space due to the lack of oxygen. Rocket engines expel propellant to provide forward thrust that generates enough delta-v (change in velocity) to reach orbit.

 

For manned launch systems launch escape systems are frequently fitted to allow astronauts to escape in the case of emergency.

Alternatives

Main article: Non-rocket spacelaunch

 

Many ways to reach space other than rockets have been proposed. Ideas such as the space elevator, and momentum exchange tethers like rotovators or skyhooks require new materials much stronger than any currently known. Electromagnetic launchers such as launch loops might be feasible with current technology. Other ideas include rocket assisted aircraft/spaceplanes such as Reaction Engines Skylon (currently in early stage development), scramjet powered spaceplanes, and RBCC powered spaceplanes. Gun launch has been proposed for cargo.

Leaving orbit

 

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Main articles: Escape velocity and Parking orbit

Launched in 1959, Luna 1 was the first known man-made object to achieve escape velocity from the Earth.[4] (replica pictured)

 

Achieving a closed orbit is not essential to lunar and interplanetary voyages. Early Russian space vehicles successfully achieved very high altitudes without going into orbit. NASA considered launching Apollo missions directly into lunar trajectories but adopted the strategy of first entering a temporary parking orbit and then performing a separate burn several orbits later onto a lunar trajectory. This costs additional propellant because the parking orbit perigee must be high enough to prevent reentry while direct injection can have an arbitrarily low perigee because it will never be reached.

 

However, the parking orbit approach greatly simplified Apollo mission planning in several important ways. It substantially widened the allowable launch windows, increasing the chance of a successful launch despite minor technical problems during the countdown. The parking orbit was a stable "mission plateau" that gave the crew and controllers several hours to thoroughly check out the spacecraft after the stresses of launch before committing it to a long lunar flight; the crew could quickly return to Earth, if necessary, or an alternate Earth-orbital mission could be conducted. The parking orbit also enabled translunar trajectories that avoided the densest parts of the Van Allen radiation belts.

 

Apollo missions minimized the performance penalty of the parking orbit by keeping its altitude as low as possible. For example, Apollo 15 used an unusually low parking orbit (even for Apollo) of 92.5 nmi by 91.5 nmi (171 km by 169 km) where there was significant atmospheric drag. But it was partially overcome by continuous venting of hydrogen from the third stage of the Saturn V, and was in any event tolerable for the short stay.

 

Robotic missions do not require an abort capability or radiation minimization, and because modern launchers routinely meet "instantaneous" launch windows, space probes to the Moon and other planets generally use direct injection to maximize performance. Although some might coast briefly during the launch sequence, they do not complete one or more full parking orbits before the burn that injects them onto an Earth escape trajectory.

 

Note that the escape velocity from a celestial body decreases with altitude above that body. However, it is more fuel-efficient for a craft to burn its fuel as close to the ground as possible; see Oberth effect and reference.[5] This is another way to explain the performance penalty associated with establishing the safe perigee of a parking orbit.

 

Plans for future crewed interplanetary spaceflight missions often include final vehicle assembly in Earth orbit, such as NASA's Project Orion and Russia's Kliper/Parom tandem.

Astrodynamics

Main article: Orbital mechanics

 

Astrodynamics is the study of spacecraft trajectories, particularly as they relate to gravitational and propulsion effects. Astrodynamics allows for a spacecraft to arrive at its destination at the correct time without excessive propellant use. An orbital maneuvering system may be needed to maintain or change orbits.

 

Non-rocket orbital propulsion methods include solar sails, magnetic sails, plasma-bubble magnetic systems, and using gravitational slingshot effects.

Ionized gas trail from Shuttle reentry

Recovery of Discoverer 14 return capsule by a C-119 airplane

Transfer energy

 

The term "transfer energy" means the total amount of energy imparted by a rocket stage to its payload. This can be the energy imparted by a first stage of a launch vehicle to an upper stage plus payload, or by an upper stage or spacecraft kick motor to a spacecraft.[6][7]

Reentry

Main article: Atmospheric reentry

 

Vehicles in orbit have large amounts of kinetic energy. This energy must be discarded if the vehicle is to land safely without vaporizing in the atmosphere. Typically this process requires special methods to protect against aerodynamic heating. The theory behind reentry was developed by Harry Julian Allen. Based on this theory, reentry vehicles present blunt shapes to the atmosphere for reentry. Blunt shapes mean that less than 1% of the kinetic energy ends up as heat that reaches the vehicle, and the remainder heats up the atmosphere.

Landing

 

The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules all splashed down in the sea. These capsules were designed to land at relatively low speeds with the help of a parachute. Russian capsules for Soyuz make use of a big parachute and braking rockets to touch down on land. The Space Shuttle glided to a touchdown like a plane.

Recovery

 

After a successful landing the spacecraft, its occupants and cargo can be recovered. In some cases, recovery has occurred before landing: while a spacecraft is still descending on its parachute, it can be snagged by a specially designed aircraft. This mid-air retrieval technique was used to recover the film canisters from the Corona spy satellites.

Types

Uncrewed

See also: Uncrewed spacecraft and robotic spacecraft

Sojourner takes its Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer measurement of Yogi Rock on Mars

The MESSENGER spacecraft at Mercury (artist's interpretation)

 

Uncrewed spaceflight (or unmanned) is all spaceflight activity without a necessary human presence in space. This includes all space probes, satellites and robotic spacecraft and missions. Uncrewed spaceflight is the opposite of manned spaceflight, which is usually called human spaceflight. Subcategories of uncrewed spaceflight are "robotic spacecraft" (objects) and "robotic space missions" (activities). A robotic spacecraft is an uncrewed spacecraft with no humans on board, that is usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe.

 

Uncrewed space missions use remote-controlled spacecraft. The first uncrewed space mission was Sputnik I, launched October 4, 1957 to orbit the Earth. Space missions where other animals but no humans are on-board are considered uncrewed missions.

Benefits

 

Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to lower cost and lower risk factors. In addition, some planetary destinations such as Venus or the vicinity of Jupiter are too hostile for human survival, given current technology. Outer planets such as Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are too distant to reach with current crewed spaceflight technology, so telerobotic probes are the only way to explore them. Telerobotics also allows exploration of regions that are vulnerable to contamination by Earth micro-organisms since spacecraft can be sterilized. Humans can not be sterilized in the same way as a spaceship, as they coexist with numerous micro-organisms, and these micro-organisms are also hard to contain within a spaceship or spacesuit.

Telepresence

 

Telerobotics becomes telepresence when the time delay is short enough to permit control of the spacecraft in close to real time by humans. Even the two seconds light speed delay for the Moon is too far away for telepresence exploration from Earth. The L1 and L2 positions permit 400-millisecond round trip delays, which is just close enough for telepresence operation. Telepresence has also been suggested as a way to repair satellites in Earth orbit from Earth. The Exploration Telerobotics Symposium in 2012 explored this and other topics.[8]

Human

Main article: Human spaceflight

ISS crew member stores samples

 

The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, on which cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin of the USSR made one orbit around the Earth. In official Soviet documents, there is no mention of the fact that Gagarin parachuted the final seven miles.[9] Currently, the only spacecraft regularly used for human spaceflight are the Russian Soyuz spacecraft and the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft. The U.S. Space Shuttle fleet operated from April 1981 until July 2011. SpaceShipOne has conducted two human suborbital spaceflights.

Sub-orbital

Main article: Sub-orbital spaceflight

The International Space Station in Earth orbit after a visit from the crew of STS-119

 

On a sub-orbital spaceflight the spacecraft reaches space and then returns to the atmosphere after following a (primarily) ballistic trajectory. This is usually because of insufficient specific orbital energy, in which case a suborbital flight will last only a few minutes, but it is also possible for an object with enough energy for an orbit to have a trajectory that intersects the Earth's atmosphere, sometimes after many hours. Pioneer 1 was NASA's first space probe intended to reach the Moon. A partial failure caused it to instead follow a suborbital trajectory to an altitude of 113,854 kilometers (70,746 mi) before reentering the Earth's atmosphere 43 hours after launch.

 

The most generally recognized boundary of space is the Kármán line 100 km above sea level. (NASA alternatively defines an astronaut as someone who has flown more than 50 miles (80 km) above sea level.) It is not generally recognized by the public that the increase in potential energy required to pass the Kármán line is only about 3% of the orbital energy (potential plus kinetic energy) required by the lowest possible Earth orbit (a circular orbit just above the Kármán line.) In other words, it is far easier to reach space than to stay there. On May 17, 2004, Civilian Space eXploration Team launched the GoFast Rocket on a suborbital flight, the first amateur spaceflight. On June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne was used for the first privately funded human spaceflight.

Point-to-point

 

Point-to-point is a category of sub-orbital spaceflight in which a spacecraft provides rapid transport between two terrestrial locations. Consider a conventional airline route between London and Sydney, a flight that normally lasts over twenty hours. With point-to-point suborbital travel the same route could be traversed in less than one hour.[10] While no company offers this type of transportation today, SpaceX has revealed plans to do so as early as the 2020s using its BFR vehicle.[11] Suborbital spaceflight over an intercontinental distance requires a vehicle velocity that is only a little lower than the velocity required to reach low Earth orbit.[12] If rockets are used, the size of the rocket relative to the payload is similar to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Any intercontinental spaceflight has to surmount problems of heating during atmosphere re-entry that are nearly as large as those faced by orbital spaceflight.

Orbital

Main article: Orbital spaceflight

Apollo 6 heads into orbit

 

A minimal orbital spaceflight requires much higher velocities than a minimal sub-orbital flight, and so it is technologically much more challenging to achieve. To achieve orbital spaceflight, the tangential velocity around the Earth is as important as altitude. In order to perform a stable and lasting flight in space, the spacecraft must reach the minimal orbital speed required for a closed orbit.

Interplanetary

Main article: Interplanetary spaceflight

 

Interplanetary travel is travel between planets within a single planetary system. In practice, the use of the term is confined to travel between the planets of our Solar System.

Interstellar

Main article: Interstellar travel

 

Five spacecraft are currently leaving the Solar System on escape trajectories, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, and New Horizons. The one farthest from the Sun is Voyager 1, which is more than 100 AU distant and is moving at 3.6 AU per year.[13] In comparison, Proxima Centauri, the closest star other than the Sun, is 267,000 AU distant. It will take Voyager 1 over 74,000 years to reach this distance. Vehicle designs using other techniques, such as nuclear pulse propulsion are likely to be able to reach the nearest star significantly faster. Another possibility that could allow for human interstellar spaceflight is to make use of time dilation, as this would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to travel further into the future while aging very little, in that their great speed slows down the rate of passage of on-board time. However, attaining such high speeds would still require the use of some new, advanced method of propulsion.

Intergalactic

Main article: Intergalactic travel

 

Intergalactic travel involves spaceflight between galaxies, and is considered much more technologically demanding than even interstellar travel and, by current engineering terms, is considered science fiction.

Spacecraft

Main article: Spacecraft

An Apollo Lunar Module on the lunar surface

 

Spacecraft are vehicles capable of controlling their trajectory through space.

 

The first 'true spacecraft' is sometimes said to be Apollo Lunar Module,[14] since this was the only manned vehicle to have been designed for, and operated only in space; and is notable for its non aerodynamic shape.

Propulsion

Main article: Spacecraft propulsion

 

Spacecraft today predominantly use rockets for propulsion, but other propulsion techniques such as ion drives are becoming more common, particularly for unmanned vehicles, and this can significantly reduce the vehicle's mass and increase its delta-v.

Launch systems

Main article: Launch vehicle

 

Launch systems are used to carry a payload from Earth's surface into outer space.

Expendable

Main article: Expendable launch system

 

Most current spaceflight uses multi-stage expendable launch systems to reach space.

 

Reusable

Main article: Reusable launch system

Ambox current red.svg

 

This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (August 2019)

 

The first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19, 1963. The first partially reusable orbital spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, on April 12, 1981. During the Shuttle era, six orbiters were built, all of which have flown in the atmosphere and five of which have flown in space. The Enterprise was used only for approach and landing tests, launching from the back of a Boeing 747 and gliding to deadstick landings at Edwards AFB, California. The first Space Shuttle to fly into space was the Columbia, followed by the Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. The Endeavour was built to replace the Challenger, which was lost in January 1986. The Columbia broke up during reentry in February 2003.

 

The Space Shuttle Columbia seconds after engine ignition on mission STS-1

 

Columbia landing, concluding the STS-1 mission

 

Columbia launches again on STS-2

 

The first automatic partially reusable spacecraft was the Buran (Snowstorm), launched by the USSR on November 15, 1988, although it made only one flight. This spaceplane was designed for a crew and strongly resembled the US Space Shuttle, although its drop-off boosters used liquid propellants and its main engines were located at the base of what would be the external tank in the American Shuttle. Lack of funding, complicated by the dissolution of the USSR, prevented any further flights of Buran.

 

Per the Vision for Space Exploration, the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011 due mainly to its old age and high cost of the program reaching over a billion dollars per flight. The Shuttle's human transport role is to be replaced by the partially reusable Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) no later than 2021. The Shuttle's heavy cargo transport role is to be replaced by expendable rockets such as the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) or a Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle.

 

Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne was a reusable suborbital spaceplane that carried pilots Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie on consecutive flights in 2004 to win the Ansari X Prize. The Spaceship Company has built its successor SpaceShipTwo. A fleet of SpaceShipTwos operated by Virgin Galactic planned to begin reusable private spaceflight carrying paying passengers (space tourists) in 2008, but this was delayed due to an accident in the propulsion development.[15]

 

Challenges

Main article: Effect of spaceflight on the human body

Space disasters

Main article: Space accidents and incidents

 

All launch vehicles contain a huge amount of energy that is needed for some part of it to reach orbit. There is therefore some risk that this energy can be released prematurely and suddenly, with significant effects. When a Delta II rocket exploded 13 seconds after launch on January 17, 1997, there were reports of store windows 10 miles (16 km) away being broken by the blast.[16]

 

Space is a fairly predictable environment, but there are still risks of accidental depressurization and the potential failure of equipment, some of which may be very newly developed.

 

In 2004 the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety was established in the Netherlands to further international cooperation and scientific advancement in space systems safety.[17]

Weightlessness

Main article: Weightlessness

Astronauts on the ISS in weightless conditions. Michael Foale can be seen exercising in the foreground.

 

In a microgravity environment such as that provided by a spacecraft in orbit around the Earth, humans experience a sense of "weightlessness." Short-term exposure to microgravity causes space adaptation syndrome, a self-limiting nausea caused by derangement of the vestibular system. Long-term exposure causes multiple health issues. The most significant is bone loss, some of which is permanent, but microgravity also leads to significant deconditioning of muscular and cardiovascular tissues.

Radiation

 

Once above the atmosphere, radiation due to the Van Allen belts, solar radiation and cosmic radiation issues occur and increase. Further away from the Earth, solar flares can give a fatal radiation dose in minutes, and the health threat from cosmic radiation significantly increases the chances of cancer over a decade exposure or more.[18]

Life support

Main article: Life support system

 

In human spaceflight, the life support system is a group of devices that allow a human being to survive in outer space. NASA often uses the phrase Environmental Control and Life Support System or the acronym ECLSS when describing these systems for its human spaceflight missions.[19] The life support system may supply: air, water and food. It must also maintain the correct body temperature, an acceptable pressure on the body and deal with the body's waste products. Shielding against harmful external influences such as radiation and micro-meteorites may also be necessary. Components of the life support system are life-critical, and are designed and constructed using safety engineering techniques.

Space weather

Main article: Space weather

Aurora australis and Discovery, May 1991.

 

Space weather is the concept of changing environmental conditions in outer space. It is distinct from the concept of weather within a planetary atmosphere, and deals with phenomena involving ambient plasma, magnetic fields, radiation and other matter in space (generally close to Earth but also in interplanetary, and occasionally interstellar medium). "Space weather describes the conditions in space that affect Earth and its technological systems. Our space weather is a consequence of the behavior of the Sun, the nature of Earth's magnetic field, and our location in the Solar System."[20]

 

Space weather exerts a profound influence in several areas related to space exploration and development. Changing geomagnetic conditions can induce changes in atmospheric density causing the rapid degradation of spacecraft altitude in Low Earth orbit. Geomagnetic storms due to increased solar activity can potentially blind sensors aboard spacecraft, or interfere with on-board electronics. An understanding of space environmental conditions is also important in designing shielding and life support systems for manned spacecraft.

Environmental considerations

 

Rockets as a class are not inherently grossly polluting. However, some rockets use toxic propellants, and most vehicles use propellants that are not carbon neutral. Many solid rockets have chlorine in the form of perchlorate or other chemicals, and this can cause temporary local holes in the ozone layer. Re-entering spacecraft generate nitrates which also can temporarily impact the ozone layer. Most rockets are made of metals that can have an environmental impact during their construction.

 

In addition to the atmospheric effects there are effects on the near-Earth space environment. There is the possibility that orbit could become inaccessible for generations due to exponentially increasing space debris caused by spalling of satellites and vehicles (Kessler syndrome). Many launched vehicles today are therefore designed to be re-entered after use.

Spaceflight (or space flight) is ballistic flight into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft with or without humans on board. Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union was the first human to conduct a spaceflight. Examples of human spaceflight include the U.S. Apollo Moon landing and Space Shuttle programs and the Russian Soyuz program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station. Examples of unmanned spaceflight include space probes that leave Earth orbit, as well as satellites in orbit around Earth, such as communications satellites. These operate either by telerobotic control or are fully autonomous.

 

Spaceflight is used in space exploration, and also in commercial activities like space tourism and satellite telecommunications. Additional non-commercial uses of spaceflight include space observatories, reconnaissance satellites and other Earth observation satellites.

 

A spaceflight typically begins with a rocket launch, which provides the initial thrust to overcome the force of gravity and propels the spacecraft from the surface of the Earth. Once in space, the motion of a spacecraft – both when unpropelled and when under propulsion – is covered by the area of study called astrodynamics. Some spacecraft remain in space indefinitely, some disintegrate during atmospheric reentry, and others reach a planetary or lunar surface for landing or impact.

  

History

Main articles: History of spaceflight and Timeline of spaceflight

Tsiolkovsky, early space theorist

 

The first theoretical proposal of space travel using rockets was published by Scottish astronomer and mathematician William Leitch, in an 1861 essay "A Journey Through Space".[1] More well-known (though not widely outside Russia) is Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's work, "Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами" (The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices), published in 1903.

 

Spaceflight became an engineering possibility with the work of Robert H. Goddard's publication in 1919 of his paper A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. His application of the de Laval nozzle to liquid fuel rockets improved efficiency enough for interplanetary travel to become possible. He also proved in the laboratory that rockets would work in the vacuum of space;[specify] nonetheless, his work was not taken seriously by the public. His attempt to secure an Army contract for a rocket-propelled weapon in the first World War was defeated by the November 11, 1918 armistice with Germany. Working with private financial support, he was the first to launch a liquid-fueled rocket in 1926. Goddard's paper was highly influential on Hermann Oberth, who in turn influenced Wernher von Braun. Von Braun became the first to produce modern rockets as guided weapons, employed by Adolf Hitler. Von Braun's V-2 was the first rocket to reach space, at an altitude of 189 kilometers (102 nautical miles) on a June 1944 test flight.[2]

 

Tsiolkovsky's rocketry work was not fully appreciated in his lifetime, but he influenced Sergey Korolev, who became the Soviet Union's chief rocket designer under Joseph Stalin, to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles to carry nuclear weapons as a counter measure to United States bomber planes. Derivatives of Korolev's R-7 Semyorka missiles were used to launch the world's first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, and later the first human to orbit the Earth, Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1, on April 12, 1961.[3]

 

At the end of World War II, von Braun and most of his rocket team surrendered to the United States, and were expatriated to work on American missiles at what became the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. This work on missiles such as Juno I and Atlas enabled launch of the first US satellite Explorer 1 on February 1, 1958, and the first American in orbit, John Glenn in Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962. As director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, Von Braun oversaw development of a larger class of rocket called Saturn, which allowed the US to send the first two humans, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, to the Moon and back on Apollo 11 in July 1969. Over the same period, the Soviet Union secretly tried but failed to develop the N1 rocket to give them the capability to land one person on the Moon.

Phases

Launch

Main article: Rocket launch

See also: List of space launch system designs

 

Rockets are the only means currently capable of reaching orbit or beyond. Other non-rocket spacelaunch technologies have yet to be built, or remain short of orbital speeds. A rocket launch for a spaceflight usually starts from a spaceport (cosmodrome), which may be equipped with launch complexes and launch pads for vertical rocket launches, and runways for takeoff and landing of carrier airplanes and winged spacecraft. Spaceports are situated well away from human habitation for noise and safety reasons. ICBMs have various special launching facilities.

 

A launch is often restricted to certain launch windows. These windows depend upon the position of celestial bodies and orbits relative to the launch site. The biggest influence is often the rotation of the Earth itself. Once launched, orbits are normally located within relatively constant flat planes at a fixed angle to the axis of the Earth, and the Earth rotates within this orbit.

 

A launch pad is a fixed structure designed to dispatch airborne vehicles. It generally consists of a launch tower and flame trench. It is surrounded by equipment used to erect, fuel, and maintain launch vehicles. Before launch, the rocket can weigh many hundreds of tonnes. The Space Shuttle Columbia, on STS-1, weighed 2,030 tonnes (4,480,000 lb) at take off.

Reaching space

 

The most commonly used definition of outer space is everything beyond the Kármán line, which is 100 kilometers (62 mi) above the Earth's surface. The United States sometimes defines outer space as everything beyond 50 miles (80 km) in altitude.

 

Rockets are the only currently practical means of reaching space. Conventional airplane engines cannot reach space due to the lack of oxygen. Rocket engines expel propellant to provide forward thrust that generates enough delta-v (change in velocity) to reach orbit.

 

For manned launch systems launch escape systems are frequently fitted to allow astronauts to escape in the case of emergency.

Alternatives

Main article: Non-rocket spacelaunch

 

Many ways to reach space other than rockets have been proposed. Ideas such as the space elevator, and momentum exchange tethers like rotovators or skyhooks require new materials much stronger than any currently known. Electromagnetic launchers such as launch loops might be feasible with current technology. Other ideas include rocket assisted aircraft/spaceplanes such as Reaction Engines Skylon (currently in early stage development), scramjet powered spaceplanes, and RBCC powered spaceplanes. Gun launch has been proposed for cargo.

Leaving orbit

 

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Main articles: Escape velocity and Parking orbit

Launched in 1959, Luna 1 was the first known man-made object to achieve escape velocity from the Earth.[4] (replica pictured)

 

Achieving a closed orbit is not essential to lunar and interplanetary voyages. Early Russian space vehicles successfully achieved very high altitudes without going into orbit. NASA considered launching Apollo missions directly into lunar trajectories but adopted the strategy of first entering a temporary parking orbit and then performing a separate burn several orbits later onto a lunar trajectory. This costs additional propellant because the parking orbit perigee must be high enough to prevent reentry while direct injection can have an arbitrarily low perigee because it will never be reached.

 

However, the parking orbit approach greatly simplified Apollo mission planning in several important ways. It substantially widened the allowable launch windows, increasing the chance of a successful launch despite minor technical problems during the countdown. The parking orbit was a stable "mission plateau" that gave the crew and controllers several hours to thoroughly check out the spacecraft after the stresses of launch before committing it to a long lunar flight; the crew could quickly return to Earth, if necessary, or an alternate Earth-orbital mission could be conducted. The parking orbit also enabled translunar trajectories that avoided the densest parts of the Van Allen radiation belts.

 

Apollo missions minimized the performance penalty of the parking orbit by keeping its altitude as low as possible. For example, Apollo 15 used an unusually low parking orbit (even for Apollo) of 92.5 nmi by 91.5 nmi (171 km by 169 km) where there was significant atmospheric drag. But it was partially overcome by continuous venting of hydrogen from the third stage of the Saturn V, and was in any event tolerable for the short stay.

 

Robotic missions do not require an abort capability or radiation minimization, and because modern launchers routinely meet "instantaneous" launch windows, space probes to the Moon and other planets generally use direct injection to maximize performance. Although some might coast briefly during the launch sequence, they do not complete one or more full parking orbits before the burn that injects them onto an Earth escape trajectory.

 

Note that the escape velocity from a celestial body decreases with altitude above that body. However, it is more fuel-efficient for a craft to burn its fuel as close to the ground as possible; see Oberth effect and reference.[5] This is another way to explain the performance penalty associated with establishing the safe perigee of a parking orbit.

 

Plans for future crewed interplanetary spaceflight missions often include final vehicle assembly in Earth orbit, such as NASA's Project Orion and Russia's Kliper/Parom tandem.

Astrodynamics

Main article: Orbital mechanics

 

Astrodynamics is the study of spacecraft trajectories, particularly as they relate to gravitational and propulsion effects. Astrodynamics allows for a spacecraft to arrive at its destination at the correct time without excessive propellant use. An orbital maneuvering system may be needed to maintain or change orbits.

 

Non-rocket orbital propulsion methods include solar sails, magnetic sails, plasma-bubble magnetic systems, and using gravitational slingshot effects.

Ionized gas trail from Shuttle reentry

Recovery of Discoverer 14 return capsule by a C-119 airplane

Transfer energy

 

The term "transfer energy" means the total amount of energy imparted by a rocket stage to its payload. This can be the energy imparted by a first stage of a launch vehicle to an upper stage plus payload, or by an upper stage or spacecraft kick motor to a spacecraft.[6][7]

Reentry

Main article: Atmospheric reentry

 

Vehicles in orbit have large amounts of kinetic energy. This energy must be discarded if the vehicle is to land safely without vaporizing in the atmosphere. Typically this process requires special methods to protect against aerodynamic heating. The theory behind reentry was developed by Harry Julian Allen. Based on this theory, reentry vehicles present blunt shapes to the atmosphere for reentry. Blunt shapes mean that less than 1% of the kinetic energy ends up as heat that reaches the vehicle, and the remainder heats up the atmosphere.

Landing

 

The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules all splashed down in the sea. These capsules were designed to land at relatively low speeds with the help of a parachute. Russian capsules for Soyuz make use of a big parachute and braking rockets to touch down on land. The Space Shuttle glided to a touchdown like a plane.

Recovery

 

After a successful landing the spacecraft, its occupants and cargo can be recovered. In some cases, recovery has occurred before landing: while a spacecraft is still descending on its parachute, it can be snagged by a specially designed aircraft. This mid-air retrieval technique was used to recover the film canisters from the Corona spy satellites.

Types

Uncrewed

See also: Uncrewed spacecraft and robotic spacecraft

Sojourner takes its Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer measurement of Yogi Rock on Mars

The MESSENGER spacecraft at Mercury (artist's interpretation)

 

Uncrewed spaceflight (or unmanned) is all spaceflight activity without a necessary human presence in space. This includes all space probes, satellites and robotic spacecraft and missions. Uncrewed spaceflight is the opposite of manned spaceflight, which is usually called human spaceflight. Subcategories of uncrewed spaceflight are "robotic spacecraft" (objects) and "robotic space missions" (activities). A robotic spacecraft is an uncrewed spacecraft with no humans on board, that is usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe.

 

Uncrewed space missions use remote-controlled spacecraft. The first uncrewed space mission was Sputnik I, launched October 4, 1957 to orbit the Earth. Space missions where other animals but no humans are on-board are considered uncrewed missions.

Benefits

 

Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather than crewed operation, due to lower cost and lower risk factors. In addition, some planetary destinations such as Venus or the vicinity of Jupiter are too hostile for human survival, given current technology. Outer planets such as Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are too distant to reach with current crewed spaceflight technology, so telerobotic probes are the only way to explore them. Telerobotics also allows exploration of regions that are vulnerable to contamination by Earth micro-organisms since spacecraft can be sterilized. Humans can not be sterilized in the same way as a spaceship, as they coexist with numerous micro-organisms, and these micro-organisms are also hard to contain within a spaceship or spacesuit.

Telepresence

 

Telerobotics becomes telepresence when the time delay is short enough to permit control of the spacecraft in close to real time by humans. Even the two seconds light speed delay for the Moon is too far away for telepresence exploration from Earth. The L1 and L2 positions permit 400-millisecond round trip delays, which is just close enough for telepresence operation. Telepresence has also been suggested as a way to repair satellites in Earth orbit from Earth. The Exploration Telerobotics Symposium in 2012 explored this and other topics.[8]

Human

Main article: Human spaceflight

ISS crew member stores samples

 

The first human spaceflight was Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961, on which cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin of the USSR made one orbit around the Earth. In official Soviet documents, there is no mention of the fact that Gagarin parachuted the final seven miles.[9] Currently, the only spacecraft regularly used for human spaceflight are the Russian Soyuz spacecraft and the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft. The U.S. Space Shuttle fleet operated from April 1981 until July 2011. SpaceShipOne has conducted two human suborbital spaceflights.

Sub-orbital

Main article: Sub-orbital spaceflight

The International Space Station in Earth orbit after a visit from the crew of STS-119

 

On a sub-orbital spaceflight the spacecraft reaches space and then returns to the atmosphere after following a (primarily) ballistic trajectory. This is usually because of insufficient specific orbital energy, in which case a suborbital flight will last only a few minutes, but it is also possible for an object with enough energy for an orbit to have a trajectory that intersects the Earth's atmosphere, sometimes after many hours. Pioneer 1 was NASA's first space probe intended to reach the Moon. A partial failure caused it to instead follow a suborbital trajectory to an altitude of 113,854 kilometers (70,746 mi) before reentering the Earth's atmosphere 43 hours after launch.

 

The most generally recognized boundary of space is the Kármán line 100 km above sea level. (NASA alternatively defines an astronaut as someone who has flown more than 50 miles (80 km) above sea level.) It is not generally recognized by the public that the increase in potential energy required to pass the Kármán line is only about 3% of the orbital energy (potential plus kinetic energy) required by the lowest possible Earth orbit (a circular orbit just above the Kármán line.) In other words, it is far easier to reach space than to stay there. On May 17, 2004, Civilian Space eXploration Team launched the GoFast Rocket on a suborbital flight, the first amateur spaceflight. On June 21, 2004, SpaceShipOne was used for the first privately funded human spaceflight.

Point-to-point

 

Point-to-point is a category of sub-orbital spaceflight in which a spacecraft provides rapid transport between two terrestrial locations. Consider a conventional airline route between London and Sydney, a flight that normally lasts over twenty hours. With point-to-point suborbital travel the same route could be traversed in less than one hour.[10] While no company offers this type of transportation today, SpaceX has revealed plans to do so as early as the 2020s using its BFR vehicle.[11] Suborbital spaceflight over an intercontinental distance requires a vehicle velocity that is only a little lower than the velocity required to reach low Earth orbit.[12] If rockets are used, the size of the rocket relative to the payload is similar to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). Any intercontinental spaceflight has to surmount problems of heating during atmosphere re-entry that are nearly as large as those faced by orbital spaceflight.

Orbital

Main article: Orbital spaceflight

Apollo 6 heads into orbit

 

A minimal orbital spaceflight requires much higher velocities than a minimal sub-orbital flight, and so it is technologically much more challenging to achieve. To achieve orbital spaceflight, the tangential velocity around the Earth is as important as altitude. In order to perform a stable and lasting flight in space, the spacecraft must reach the minimal orbital speed required for a closed orbit.

Interplanetary

Main article: Interplanetary spaceflight

 

Interplanetary travel is travel between planets within a single planetary system. In practice, the use of the term is confined to travel between the planets of our Solar System.

Interstellar

Main article: Interstellar travel

 

Five spacecraft are currently leaving the Solar System on escape trajectories, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, and New Horizons. The one farthest from the Sun is Voyager 1, which is more than 100 AU distant and is moving at 3.6 AU per year.[13] In comparison, Proxima Centauri, the closest star other than the Sun, is 267,000 AU distant. It will take Voyager 1 over 74,000 years to reach this distance. Vehicle designs using other techniques, such as nuclear pulse propulsion are likely to be able to reach the nearest star significantly faster. Another possibility that could allow for human interstellar spaceflight is to make use of time dilation, as this would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to travel further into the future while aging very little, in that their great speed slows down the rate of passage of on-board time. However, attaining such high speeds would still require the use of some new, advanced method of propulsion.

Intergalactic

Main article: Intergalactic travel

 

Intergalactic travel involves spaceflight between galaxies, and is considered much more technologically demanding than even interstellar travel and, by current engineering terms, is considered science fiction.

Spacecraft

Main article: Spacecraft

An Apollo Lunar Module on the lunar surface

 

Spacecraft are vehicles capable of controlling their trajectory through space.

 

The first 'true spacecraft' is sometimes said to be Apollo Lunar Module,[14] since this was the only manned vehicle to have been designed for, and operated only in space; and is notable for its non aerodynamic shape.

Propulsion

Main article: Spacecraft propulsion

 

Spacecraft today predominantly use rockets for propulsion, but other propulsion techniques such as ion drives are becoming more common, particularly for unmanned vehicles, and this can significantly reduce the vehicle's mass and increase its delta-v.

Launch systems

Main article: Launch vehicle

 

Launch systems are used to carry a payload from Earth's surface into outer space.

Expendable

Main article: Expendable launch system

 

Most current spaceflight uses multi-stage expendable launch systems to reach space.

 

Reusable

Main article: Reusable launch system

Ambox current red.svg

 

This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (August 2019)

 

The first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19, 1963. The first partially reusable orbital spacecraft, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight, on April 12, 1981. During the Shuttle era, six orbiters were built, all of which have flown in the atmosphere and five of which have flown in space. The Enterprise was used only for approach and landing tests, launching from the back of a Boeing 747 and gliding to deadstick landings at Edwards AFB, California. The first Space Shuttle to fly into space was the Columbia, followed by the Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. The Endeavour was built to replace the Challenger, which was lost in January 1986. The Columbia broke up during reentry in February 2003.

 

The Space Shuttle Columbia seconds after engine ignition on mission STS-1

 

Columbia landing, concluding the STS-1 mission

 

Columbia launches again on STS-2

 

The first automatic partially reusable spacecraft was the Buran (Snowstorm), launched by the USSR on November 15, 1988, although it made only one flight. This spaceplane was designed for a crew and strongly resembled the US Space Shuttle, although its drop-off boosters used liquid propellants and its main engines were located at the base of what would be the external tank in the American Shuttle. Lack of funding, complicated by the dissolution of the USSR, prevented any further flights of Buran.

 

Per the Vision for Space Exploration, the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011 due mainly to its old age and high cost of the program reaching over a billion dollars per flight. The Shuttle's human transport role is to be replaced by the partially reusable Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) no later than 2021. The Shuttle's heavy cargo transport role is to be replaced by expendable rockets such as the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) or a Shuttle Derived Launch Vehicle.

 

Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne was a reusable suborbital spaceplane that carried pilots Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie on consecutive flights in 2004 to win the Ansari X Prize. The Spaceship Company has built its successor SpaceShipTwo. A fleet of SpaceShipTwos operated by Virgin Galactic planned to begin reusable private spaceflight carrying paying passengers (space tourists) in 2008, but this was delayed due to an accident in the propulsion development.[15]

 

Challenges

Main article: Effect of spaceflight on the human body

Space disasters

Main article: Space accidents and incidents

 

All launch vehicles contain a huge amount of energy that is needed for some part of it to reach orbit. There is therefore some risk that this energy can be released prematurely and suddenly, with significant effects. When a Delta II rocket exploded 13 seconds after launch on January 17, 1997, there were reports of store windows 10 miles (16 km) away being broken by the blast.[16]

 

Space is a fairly predictable environment, but there are still risks of accidental depressurization and the potential failure of equipment, some of which may be very newly developed.

 

In 2004 the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety was established in the Netherlands to further international cooperation and scientific advancement in space systems safety.[17]

Weightlessness

Main article: Weightlessness

Astronauts on the ISS in weightless conditions. Michael Foale can be seen exercising in the foreground.

 

In a microgravity environment such as that provided by a spacecraft in orbit around the Earth, humans experience a sense of "weightlessness." Short-term exposure to microgravity causes space adaptation syndrome, a self-limiting nausea caused by derangement of the vestibular system. Long-term exposure causes multiple health issues. The most significant is bone loss, some of which is permanent, but microgravity also leads to significant deconditioning of muscular and cardiovascular tissues.

Radiation

 

Once above the atmosphere, radiation due to the Van Allen belts, solar radiation and cosmic radiation issues occur and increase. Further away from the Earth, solar flares can give a fatal radiation dose in minutes, and the health threat from cosmic radiation significantly increases the chances of cancer over a decade exposure or more.[18]

Life support

Main article: Life support system

 

In human spaceflight, the life support system is a group of devices that allow a human being to survive in outer space. NASA often uses the phrase Environmental Control and Life Support System or the acronym ECLSS when describing these systems for its human spaceflight missions.[19] The life support system may supply: air, water and food. It must also maintain the correct body temperature, an acceptable pressure on the body and deal with the body's waste products. Shielding against harmful external influences such as radiation and micro-meteorites may also be necessary. Components of the life support system are life-critical, and are designed and constructed using safety engineering techniques.

Space weather

Main article: Space weather

Aurora australis and Discovery, May 1991.

 

Space weather is the concept of changing environmental conditions in outer space. It is distinct from the concept of weather within a planetary atmosphere, and deals with phenomena involving ambient plasma, magnetic fields, radiation and other matter in space (generally close to Earth but also in interplanetary, and occasionally interstellar medium). "Space weather describes the conditions in space that affect Earth and its technological systems. Our space weather is a consequence of the behavior of the Sun, the nature of Earth's magnetic field, and our location in the Solar System."[20]

 

Space weather exerts a profound influence in several areas related to space exploration and development. Changing geomagnetic conditions can induce changes in atmospheric density causing the rapid degradation of spacecraft altitude in Low Earth orbit. Geomagnetic storms due to increased solar activity can potentially blind sensors aboard spacecraft, or interfere with on-board electronics. An understanding of space environmental conditions is also important in designing shielding and life support systems for manned spacecraft.

Environmental considerations

 

Rockets as a class are not inherently grossly polluting. However, some rockets use toxic propellants, and most vehicles use propellants that are not carbon neutral. Many solid rockets have chlorine in the form of perchlorate or other chemicals, and this can cause temporary local holes in the ozone layer. Re-entering spacecraft generate nitrates which also can temporarily impact the ozone layer. Most rockets are made of metals that can have an environmental impact during their construction.

 

In addition to the atmospheric effects there are effects on the near-Earth space environment. There is the possibility that orbit could become inaccessible for generations due to exponentially increasing space debris caused by spalling of satellites and vehicles (Kessler syndrome). Many launched vehicles today are therefore designed to be re-entered after use.

The Ajanta Caves (Ajiṇṭhā leni; Marathi: अजिंठा लेणी) in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, India are about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments which date from the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE. The caves include paintings and sculptures described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as "the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly painting", which are masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, with figures of the Buddha and depictions of the Jataka tales. The caves were built in two phases starting around the 2nd century BCE, with the second group of caves built around 400–650 CE according to older accounts, or all in a brief period of 460 to 480 according to the recent proposals of Walter M. Spink. The site is a protected monument in the care of the Archaeological Survey of India, and since 1983, the Ajanta Caves have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

The caves are located in the Indian state of Maharashtra, near Jalgaon and just outside the village of Ajinṭhā 20°31′56″N 75°44′44″E), about 59 kilometres from Jalgaon railway station on the Delhi – Mumbai line and Howrah-Nagpur-Mumbai line of the Central Railway zone, and 104 kilometres from the city of Aurangabad. They are 100 kilometres from the Ellora Caves, which contain Hindu and Jain temples as well as Buddhist caves, the last dating from a period similar to Ajanta. The Ajanta caves are cut into the side of a cliff that is on the south side of a U-shaped gorge on the small river Waghur, and although they are now along and above a modern pathway running across the cliff they were originally reached by individual stairs or ladders from the side of the river 35 to 110 feet below.

 

The area was previously heavily forested, and after the site ceased to be used the caves were covered by jungle until accidentally rediscovered in 1819 by a British officer on a hunting party. They are Buddhist monastic buildings, apparently representing a number of distinct "monasteries" or colleges. The caves are numbered 1 to 28 according to their place along the path, beginning at the entrance. Several are unfinished and some barely begun and others are small shrines, included in the traditional numbering as e.g. "9A"; "Cave 15A" was still hidden under rubble when the numbering was done. Further round the gorge are a number of waterfalls, which when the river is high are audible from outside the caves.

 

The caves form the largest corpus of early Indian wall-painting; other survivals from the area of modern India are very few, though they are related to 5th-century paintings at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. The elaborate architectural carving in many caves is also very rare, and the style of the many figure sculptures is highly local, found only at a few nearby contemporary sites, although the Ajanta tradition can be related to the later Hindu Ellora Caves and other sites.

 

HISTORY

Like the other ancient Buddhist monasteries, Ajanta had a large emphasis on teaching, and was divided into several different caves for living, education and worship, under a central direction. Monks were probably assigned to specific caves for living. The layout reflects this organizational structure, with most of the caves only connected through the exterior. The 7th-century travelling Chinese scholar Xuanzang informs us that Dignaga, a celebrated Buddhist philosopher and controversialist, author of well-known books on logic, lived at Ajanta in the 5th century. In its prime the settlement would have accommodated several hundred teachers and pupils. Many monks who had finished their first training may have returned to Ajanta during the monsoon season from an itinerant lifestyle.

 

The caves are generally agreed to have been made in two distinct periods, separated by several centuries.

 

CAVES OF THE FIRST (SATAVAHANA) PERIOD

The earliest group of caves consists of caves 9, 10, 12, 13 and 15A. According to Walter Spink, they were made during the period 100 BCE to 100 CE, probably under the patronage of the Satavahana dynasty (230 BCE – c. 220 CE) who ruled the region. Other datings prefer the period 300 BCE to 100 BCE, though the grouping of the earlier caves is generally agreed. More early caves may have vanished through later excavations. Of these, caves 9 and 10 are stupa halls of chaitya-griha form, and caves 12, 13, and 15A are vihāras (see the architecture section below for descriptions of these types). The first phase is still often called the Hinayāna phase, as it originated when, using traditional terminology, the Hinayāna or Lesser Vehicle tradition of Buddhism was dominant, when the Buddha was revered symbolically. However the use of the term Hinayana for this period of Buddhism is now deprecated by historians; equally the caves of the second period are now mostly dated too early to be properly called Mahayana, and do not yet show the full expanded cast of supernatural beings characteristic of that phase of Buddhist art. The first Satavahana period caves lacked figurative sculpture, emphasizing the stupa instead, and in the caves of the second period the overwhelming majority of images represent the Buddha alone, or narrative scenes of his lives.

 

Spink believes that some time after the Satavahana period caves were made the site was abandoned for a considerable period until the mid-5th century, probably because the region had turned mainly Hindu

 

CAVES OF THE LATER OR VAKATAKA PERIOD

The second phase began in the 5th century. For a long time it was thought that the later caves were made over a long period from the 4th to the 7th centuries CE, but in recent decades a series of studies by the leading expert on the caves, Walter M. Spink, have argued that most of the work took place over the very brief period from 460 to 480 CE, during the reign of Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka dynasty. This view has been criticized by some scholars, but is now broadly accepted by most authors of general books on Indian art, for example Huntington and Harle.

 

The second phase is still often called the Mahāyāna or Greater Vehicle phase, but scholars now tend to avoid this nomenclature because of the problems that have surfaced regarding our understanding of Mahāyāna.

 

Some 20 cave temples were simultaneously created, for the most part viharas with a sanctuary at the back. The most elaborate caves were produced in this period, which included some "modernization" of earlier caves. Spink claims that it is possible to establish dating for this period with a very high level of precision; a fuller account of his chronology is given below. Although debate continues, Spink's ideas are increasingly widely accepted, at least in their broad conclusions. The Archaeological Survey of India website still presents the traditional dating: "The second phase of paintings started around 5th – 6th centuries A.D. and continued for the next two centuries". Caves of the second period are 1–8, 11, 14–29, some possibly extensions of earlier caves. Caves 19, 26, and 29 are chaitya-grihas, the rest viharas.

 

According to Spink, the Ajanta Caves appear to have been abandoned by wealthy patrons shortly after the fall of Harishena, in about 480 CE. They were then gradually abandoned and forgotten. During the intervening centuries, the jungle grew back and the caves were hidden, unvisited and undisturbed, although the local population were aware of at least some of them.

 

REDISCOVERY

On 28 April 1819, a British officer for the Madras Presidency, John Smith, of the 28th Cavalry, while hunting tiger, accidentally discovered the entrance to Cave No. 10 deep within the tangled undergrowth. There were local people already using the caves for prayers with a small fire, when he arrived. Exploring that first cave, long since a home to nothing more than birds and bats and a lair for other larger animals, Captain Smith vandalized the wall by scratching his name and the date, April 1819. Since he stood on a five-foot high pile of rubble collected over the years, the inscription is well above the eye-level gaze of an adult today. A paper on the caves by William Erskine was read to the Bombay Literary Society in 1822. Within a few decades, the caves became famous for their exotic setting, impressive architecture, and above all their exceptional, all but unique paintings. A number of large projects to copy the paintings were made in the century after rediscovery, covered below. In 1848 the Royal Asiatic Society established the "Bombay Cave Temple Commission" to clear, tidy and record the most important rock-cut sites in the Bombay Presidency, with John Wilson, as president. In 1861 this became the nucleus of the new Archaeological Survey of India. Until the Nizam of Hyderabad built the modern path between the caves, among other efforts to make the site easy to visit, a trip to Ajanta was a considerable adventure, and contemporary accounts dwell with relish on the dangers from falls off narrow ledges, animals and the Bhil people, who were armed with bows and arrows and had a fearsome reputation.

 

Today, fairly easily combined with Ellora in a single trip, the caves are the most popular tourist destination in Mahrashtra, and are often crowded at holiday times, increasing the threat to the caves, especially the paintings. In 2012, the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation announced plans to add to the ASI visitor centre at the entrance complete replicas of caves 1, 2, 16 & 17 to reduce crowding in the originals, and enable visitors to receive a better visual idea of the paintings, which are dimly-lit and hard to read in the caves. Figures for the year to March 2010 showed a total of 390,000 visitors to the site, divided into 362,000 domestic and 27,000 foreign. The trends over the previous few years show a considerable growth in domestic visitors, but a decline in foreign ones; the year to 2010 was the first in which foreign visitors to Ellora exceeded those to Ajanta.

 

PAINTINGS

Mural paintings survive from both the earlier and later groups of caves. Several fragments of murals preserved from the earlier caves (Caves 9 and 11) are effectively unique survivals of court-led painting in India from this period, and "show that by Sātavāhana times, if not earlier, the Indian painter had mastered an easy and fluent naturalistic style, dealing with large groups of people in a manner comparable to the reliefs of the Sāñcī toraņa crossbars".

 

Four of the later caves have large and relatively well-preserved mural paintings which "have come to represent Indian mural painting to the non-specialist", and fall into two stylistic groups, with the most famous in Caves 16 and 17, and apparently later paintings in Caves 1 and 2. The latter group were thought to be a century or more later than the others, but the revised chronology proposed by Spink would place them much closer to the earlier group, perhaps contemporary with it in a more progressive style, or one reflecting a team from a different region. The paintings are in "dry fresco", painted on top of a dry plaster surface rather than into wet plaster.

 

All the paintings appear to be the work of painters at least as used to decorating palaces as temples, and show a familiarity with and interest in details of the life of a wealthy court. We know from literary sources that painting was widely practised and appreciated in the courts of the Gupta period. Unlike much Indian painting, compositions are not laid out in horizontal compartments like a frieze, but show large scenes spreading in all directions from a single figure or group at the centre. The ceilings are also painted with sophisticated and elaborate decorative motifs, many derived from sculpture. The paintings in cave 1, which according to Spink was commissioned by Harisena himself, concentrate on those Jataka tales which show previous lives of the Buddha as a king, rather than as an animal or human commoner, and so show settings from contemporary palace life.

 

In general the later caves seem to have been painted on finished areas as excavating work continued elsewhere in the cave, as shown in caves 2 and 16 in particular. According to Spink's account of the chronology of the caves, the abandonment of work in 478 after a brief busy period accounts for the absence of painting in caves such as 4 and 17, the later being plastered in preparation for paintings that were never done.

 

COPIES

The paintings have deteriorated significantly since they were rediscovered, and a number of 19th-century copies and drawings are important for a complete understanding of the works. However, the earliest projects to copy the paintings were plagued by bad fortune. In 1846, Major Robert Gill, an Army officer from Madras presidency and a painter, was appointed by the Royal Asiatic Society to replicate the frescoes on the cave walls to exhibit these paintings in England. Gill worked on his painting at the site from 1844 to 1863 (though he continued to be based there until his death in 1875, writing books and photographing) and made 27 copies of large sections of murals, but all but four were destroyed in a fire at the Crystal Palace in London in 1866, where they were on display.

 

Another attempt was made in 1872 when the Bombay Presidency commissioned John Griffiths, then principal of the Bombay School of Art, to work with his students to make new copies, again for shipping to England. They worked on this for thirteen years and some 300 canvases were produced, many of which were displayed at the Imperial Institute on Exhibition Road in London, one of the forerunners of the Victoria and Albert Museum. But in 1885 another fire destroyed over a hundred paintings that were in storage. The V&A still has 166 paintings surviving from both sets, though none have been on permanent display since 1955. The largest are some 3 × 6 metres. A conservation project was undertaken on about half of them in 2006, also involving the University of Northumbria. Griffith and his students had unfortunately painted many of the paintings with "cheap varnish" in order to make them easier to see, which has added to the deterioration of the originals, as has, according to Spink and others, recent cleaning by the ASI.

 

A further set of copies were made between 1909 and 1911 by Christiana Herringham (Lady Herringham) and a group of students from the Calcutta School of Art that included the future Indian Modernist painter Nandalal Bose. The copies were published in full colour as the first publication of London's fledgling India Society. More than the earlier copies, these aimed to fill in holes and damage to recreate the original condition rather than record the state of the paintings as she was seeing them. According to one writer, unlike the paintings created by her predecessors Griffiths and Gill, whose copies were influenced by British Victorian styles of painting, those of the Herringham expedition preferred an 'Indian Renascence' aesthetic of the type pioneered by Abanindranath Tagore.

 

Early photographic surveys were made by Robert Gill, who learnt to use a camera from about 1856, and whose photos, including some using stereoscopy, were used in books by him and Fergusson (many are available online from the British Library), then Victor Goloubew in 1911 and E.L. Vassey, who took the photos in the four volume study of the caves by Ghulam Yazdani (published 1930–1955).

 

ARCHITECTURE

The monasteries mostly consist of vihara halls for prayer and living, which are typically rectangular with small square dormitory cells cut into the walls, and by the second period a shrine or sanctuary at the rear centred on a large statue of the Buddha, also carved from the living rock. This change reflects the movement from Hinayana to Mahāyāna Buddhism. The other type of main hall is the narrower and higher chaitya hall with a stupa as the focus at the far end, and a narrow aisle around the walls, behind a range of pillars placed close together. Other plainer rooms were for sleeping and other activities. Some of the caves have elaborate carved entrances, some with large windows over the door to admit light. There is often a colonnaded porch or verandah, with another space inside the doors running the width of the cave.

 

The central square space of the interior of the viharas is defined by square columns forming a more or less square open area. Outside this are long rectangular aisles on each side, forming a kind of cloister. Along the side and rear walls are a number of small cells entered by a narrow doorway; these are roughly square, and have small niches on their back walls. Originally they had wooden doors. The centre of the rear wall has a larger shrine-room behind, containing a large Buddha statue. The viharas of the earlier period are much simpler, and lack shrines. Spink in fact places the change to a design with a shrine to the middle of the second period, with many caves being adapted to add a shrine in mid-excavation, or after the original phase.

 

The plan of Cave 1 shows one of the largest viharas, but is fairly typical of the later group. Many others, such as Cave 16, lack the vestibule to the shrine, which leads straight off the main hall. Cave 6 is two viharas, one above the other, connected by internal stairs, with sanctuaries on both levels.

 

The four completed chaitya halls are caves 9 and 10 from the early period, and caves 19 and 26 from the later period of construction. All follow the typical form found elsewhere, with high ceilings and a central "nave" leading to the stupa, which is near the back, but allows walking behind it, as walking around stupas was (and remains) a common element of Buddhist worship (pradakshina). The later two have high ribbed roofs, which reflect timber forms, and the earlier two are thought to have used actual timber ribs, which have now perished. The two later halls have a rather unusual arrangement (also found in Cave 10 at Ellora) where the stupa is fronted by a large relief sculpture of the Buddha, standing in Cave 19 and seated in Cave 26. Cave 29 is a late and very incomplete chaitya hall.

 

The form of columns in the work of the first period is very plain and un-embellished, with both chaitya halls using simple octagonal columns, which were painted with figures. In the second period columns were far more varied and inventive, often changing profile over their height, and with elaborate carved capitals, often spreading wide. Many columns are carved over all their surface, some fluted and others carved with decoration all over, as in cave 1.

 

The flood basalt rock of the cliff, part of the Deccan Traps formed by successive volcanic eruptions at the end of the Cretaceous, is layered horizontally, and somewhat variable in quality, so the excavators had to amend their plans in places, and in places there have been collapses in the intervening centuries, as with the lost portico to cave 1. Excavation began by cutting a narrow tunnel at roof level, which was expanded downwards and outwards; the half-built vihara cave 24 shows the method. Spink believes that for the first caves of the second period the excavators had to relearn skills and techniques that had been lost in the centuries since the first period, which were then transmitted to be used at later rock-cut sites in the region, such as Ellora, and the Elephanta, Bagh, Badami and Aurangabad Caves.

 

The caves from the first period seem to have been paid for by a number of different patrons, with several inscriptions recording the donation of particular portions of a single cave, but according to Spink the later caves were each commissioned as a complete unit by a single patron from the local rulers or their court elites. After the death of Harisena smaller donors got their chance to add small "shrinelets" between the caves or add statues to existing caves, and some two hundred of these "intrusive" additions were made in sculpture, with a further number of intrusive paintings, up to three hundred in cave 10 alone.

 

A grand gateway to the site, at the apex of the gorge's horsehoe between caves 15 and 16, was approached from the river, and is decorated with elephants on either side and a nāga, or protective snake deity.

 

ICONOGRAPHY OF THE CAVES

In the pre-Christian era, the Buddha was represented symbolically, in the form of the stupa. Thus, halls were made with stupas to venerate the Buddha. In later periods the images of the Buddha started to be made in coins, relic caskets, relief or loose sculptural forms, etc. However, it took a while for the human representation of the Buddha to appear in Buddhist art. One of the earliest evidences of the Buddha's human representations are found at Buddhist archaeological sites, such as Goli, Nagarjunakonda, and Amaravati. The monasteries of those sites were built in less durable media, such as wood, brick, and stone. As far as the genre of rock-cut architecture is concerned it took many centuries for the Buddha image to be depicted. Nobody knows for sure at which rock-cut cave site the first image of the Buddha was depicted. Current research indicates that Buddha images in a portable form, made of wood or stone, were introduced, for the first time, at Kanheri, to be followed soon at Ajanta Cave 8 (Dhavalikar, Jadhav, Spink, Singh). While the Kanheri example dates to 4th or 5th century CE, the Ajanta example has been dated to c. 462–478 CE (Spink). None of the rock-cut monasteries prior to these dates, and other than these examples, show any Buddha image although hundreds of rock-cut caves were made throughout India during the first few centuries CE. And, in those caves, it is the stupa that is the object of veneration, not the image. Images of the Buddha are not found in Buddhist sailagrhas (rock-cut complexes) until the times of the Kanheri (4th–5th century CE) and Ajanta examples (c. 462–478 CE).

 

The caves of the second period, now all dated to the 5th century, were typically described as "Mahayana", but do not show the features associated with later Mahayana Buddhism. Although the beginnings of Mahāyāna teachings go back to the 1st century there is little art and archaeological evidence to suggest that it became a mainstream cult for several centuries. In Mahayana it is not Gautama Buddha but the Bodhisattva who is important, including "deity" Bodhisattva like Manjushri and Tara, as well as aspects of the Buddha such as Aksobhya, and Amitabha. Except for a few Bodhisattva, these are not depicted at Ajanta, where the Buddha remains the dominant figure. Even the Bodhisattva images of Ajanta are never central objects of worship, but are always shown as attendants of the Buddha in the shrine. If a Bodhisattva is shown in isolation, as in the Astabhaya scenes, these were done in the very last years of activities at Ajanta, and are mostly 'intrusive' in nature, meaning that they were not planned by the original patrons, and were added by new donors after the original patrons had suddenly abandoned the region in the wake of Emperor Harisena's death.

 

The contrast between iconic and aniconic representations, that is, the stupa on one hand and the image of the Buddha on the other, is now being seen as a construct of the modern scholar rather than a reality of the past. The second phase of Ajanta shows that the stupa and image coincided together. If the entire corpus of the art of Ajanta including sculpture, iconography, architecture, epigraphy, and painting are analysed afresh it will become clear that there was no duality between the symbolic and human forms of the Buddha, as far as the 5th-century phase of Ajanta is concerned. That is why most current scholars tend to avoid the terms 'Hinayana' and 'Mahayana' in the context of Ajanta. They now prefer to call the second phase by the ruling dynasty, as the Vākāţaka phase.

 

CAVES

CAVE 1

Cave 1 was built on the eastern end of the horse-shoe shaped scarp, and is now the first cave the visitor encounters. This would when first made have been a less prominent position, right at the end of the row. According to Spink, it is one of the latest caves to have been excavated, when the best sites had been taken, and was never fully inaugurated for worship by the dedication of the Buddha image in the central shrine. This is shown by the absence of sooty deposits from butter lamps on the base of the shrine image, and the lack of damage to the paintings that would have been happened if the garland-hooks around the shrine had been in use for any period of time. Although there is no epigraphic evidence, Spink believes that the Vākāţaka Emperor Harishena was the benefactor of the work, and this is reflected in the emphasis on imagery of royalty in the cave, with those Jakata tales being selected that tell of those previous lives of the Buddha in which he was royal.

 

The cliff has a more steep slope here than at other caves, so to achieve a tall grand facade it was necessary to cut far back into the slope, giving a large courtyard in front of the facade. There was originally a columned portico in front of the present facade, which can be seen "half-intact in the 1880s" in pictures of the site, but this fell down completely and the remains, despite containing fine carving, were carelessly thrown down the slope into the river, from where they have been lost, presumably carried away in monsoon torrents.

 

This cave has one of the most elaborate carved façades, with relief sculptures on entablature and ridges, and most surfaces embellished with decorative carving. There are scenes carved from the life of the Buddha as well as a number of decorative motifs. A two pillared portico, visible in the 19th-century photographs, has since perished. The cave has a front-court with cells fronted by pillared vestibules on either side. These have a high plinth level. The cave has a porch with simple cells on both ends. The absence of pillared vestibules on the ends suggest that the porch was not excavated in the latest phase of Ajanta when pillared vestibules had become a necessity and norm. Most areas of the porch were once covered with murals, of which many fragments remain, especially on the ceiling. There are three doorways: a central doorway and two side doorways. Two square windows were carved between the doorways to brighten the interiors.

 

Each wall of the hall inside is nearly 12 m long and 6.1 m high. Twelve pillars make a square colonnade inside supporting the ceiling, and creating spacious aisles along the walls. There is a shrine carved on the rear wall to house an impressive seated image of the Buddha, his hands being in the dharmachakrapravartana mudra. There are four cells on each of the left, rear, and the right walls, though due to rock fault there are none at the ends of the rear aisle. The walls are covered with paintings in a fair state of preservation, though the full scheme was never completed. The scenes depicted are mostly didactic, devotional, and ornamental, with scenes from the Jataka stories of the Buddha's former existences as a bodhisattva), the life of the Gautama Buddha, and those of his veneration. The two most famous individual painted images at Ajanta are the two over-life size figures of the protective bodhisattvas Padmapani and Vajrapani on either side of the entrance to the Buddha shrine on the wall of the rear aisle (see illustrations above). According to Spink, the original dating of the paintings to about 625 arose largely or entirely because James Fegusson, a 19th-century architectural historian, had decided that a scene showing an ambassador being received, with figures in Persian dress, represented a recorded embassy to Persia (from a Hindu monarch at that) around that date.

 

CAVE 2

Cave 2, adjacent to Cave 1, is known for the paintings that have been preserved on its walls, ceilings, and pillars. It looks similar to Cave 1 and is in a better state of preservation.

 

Cave 2 has a porch quite different from Cave one. Even the façade carvings seem to be different. The cave is supported by robust pillars, ornamented with designs. The front porch consists of cells supported by pillared vestibules on both ends. The cells on the previously "wasted areas" were needed to meet the greater housing requirements in later years. Porch-end cells became a trend in all later Vakataka excavations. The simple single cells on porch-ends were converted into CPVs or were planned to provide more room, symmetry, and beauty.

 

The paintings on the ceilings and walls of this porch have been widely published. They depict the Jataka tales that are stories of the Buddha's life in former existences as Bodhisattva. Just as the stories illustrated in cave 1 emphasize kingship, those in cave 2 show many "noble and powerful" women in prominent roles, leading to suggestions that the patron was an unknown woman. The porch's rear wall has a doorway in the center, which allows entrance to the hall. On either side of the door is a square-shaped window to brighten the interior.

 

The hall has four colonnades which are supporting the ceiling and surrounding a square in the center of the hall. Each arm or colonnade of the square is parallel to the respective walls of the hall, making an aisle in between. The colonnades have rock-beams above and below them. The capitals are carved and painted with various decorative themes that include ornamental, human, animal, vegetative, and semi-divine forms.

 

Paintings appear on almost every surface of the cave except for the floor. At various places the art work has become eroded due to decay and human interference. Therefore, many areas of the painted walls, ceilings, and pillars are fragmentary. The painted narratives of the Jataka tales are depicted only on the walls, which demanded the special attention of the devotee. They are didactic in nature, meant to inform the community about the Buddha's teachings and life through successive rebirths. Their placement on the walls required the devotee to walk through the aisles and 'read' the narratives depicted in various episodes. The narrative episodes are depicted one after another although not in a linear order. Their identification has been a core area of research since the site's rediscovery in 1819. Dieter Schlingloff's identifications have updated our knowledge on the subject.

 

CAVE 4

The Archeological Survey of India board outside the caves gives the following detail about cave 4: "This is the largest monastery planned on a grandiose scale but was never finished. An inscription on the pedestal of the buddha's image mentions that it was a gift from a person named Mathura and paleographically belongs to 6th century A.D. It consists of a verandah, a hypostylar hall, sanctum with an antechamber and a series of unfinished cells. The rear wall of the verandah contains the panel of Litany of Avalokiteśvara".

 

The sanctuary houses a colossal image of the Buddha in preaching pose flanked by bodhisattvas and celestial nymphs hovering above.

 

CAVES 9-10

Caves 9 and 10 are the two chaitya halls from the first period of construction, though both were also undergoing an uncompleted reworking at the end of the second period. Cave 10 was perhaps originally of the 1st century BCE, and cave 9 about a hundred years later. The small "shrinelets" called caves 9A to 9D and 10A also date from the second period, and were commissioned by individuals.

 

The paintings in cave 10 include some surviving from the early period, many from an incomplete programme of modernization in the second period, and a very large number of smaller late intrusive images, nearly all Buddhas and many with donor inscriptions from individuals. These mostly avoided over-painting the "official" programme and after the best positions were used up are tucked away in less prominent positions not yet painted; the total of these (including those now lost) was probably over 300, and the hands of many different artists are visible.

 

OTHER CAVES

Cave 3 is merely a start of an excavation; according to Spink it was begun right at the end of the final period of work and soon abandoned. Caves 5 and 6 are viharas, the latter on two floors, that were late works of which only the lower floor of cave 6 was ever finished. The upper floor of cave 6 has many private votive sculptures, and a shrine Buddha, but is otherwise unfinished. Cave 7 has a grand facade with two porticos but, perhaps because of faults in the rock, which posed problems in many caves, was never taken very deep into the cliff, and consists only of the two porticos and a shrine room with antechamber, with no central hall. Some cells were fitted in.

 

Cave 8 was long thought to date to the first period of construction, but Spink sees it as perhaps the earliest cave from the second period, its shrine an "afterthought". The statue may have been loose rather than carved from the living rock, as it has now vanished. The cave was painted, but only traces remain.

 

SPINK´S DETAILED CHRONOLOGY

Walter M. Spink has over recent decades developed a very precise and circumstantial chronology for the second period of work on the site, which unlike earlier scholars, he places entirely in the 5th century. This is based on evidence such as the inscriptions and artistic style, combined with the many uncompleted elements of the caves. He believes the earlier group of caves, which like other scholars he dates only approximately, to the period "between 100 BCE – 100 CE", were at some later point completely abandoned and remained so "for over three centuries", as the local population had turned mainly Hindu. This changed with the accession of the Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka Dynasty, who reigned from 460 to his death in 477. Harisena extended the Central Indian Vakataka Empire to include a stretch of the east coast of India; the Gupta Empire ruled northern India at the same period, and the Pallava dynasty much of the south.

 

According to Spink, Harisena encouraged a group of associates, including his prime minister Varahadeva and Upendragupta, the sub-king in whose territory Ajanta was, to dig out new caves, which were individually commissioned, some containing inscriptions recording the donation. This activity began in 462 but was mostly suspended in 468 because of threats from the neighbouring Asmaka kings. Work continued on only caves 1, Harisena's own commission, and 17–20, commissioned by Upendragupta. In 472 the situation was such that work was suspended completely, in a period that Spink calls "the Hiatus", which lasted until about 475, by which time the Asmakas had replaced Upendragupta as the local rulers.

 

Work was then resumed, but again disrupted by Harisena's death in 477, soon after which major excavation ceased, except at cave 26, which the Asmakas were sponsoring themselves. The Asmakas launched a revolt against Harisena's son, which brought about the end of the Vakataka Dynasty. In the years 478–480 major excavation by important patrons was replaced by a rash of "intrusions" – statues added to existing caves, and small shrines dotted about where there was space between them. These were commissioned by less powerful individuals, some monks, who had not previously been able to make additions to the large excavations of the rulers and courtiers. They were added to the facades, the return sides of the entrances, and to walls inside the caves. According to Spink, "After 480, not a single image was ever made again at the site", and as Hinduism again dominated the region, the site was again abandoned, this time for over a millennium.

 

Spink does not use "circa" in his dates, but says that "one should allow a margin of error of one year or perhaps even two in all cases".

 

IMPACT ON MODERN INDIAN PAINTINGS

The Ajanta paintings, or more likely the general style they come from, influenced painting in Tibet and Sri Lanka.

 

The rediscovery of ancient Indian paintings at Ajanta provided Indian artists examples from ancient India to follow. Nandlal Bose experimented with techniques to follow the ancient style which allowed him to develop his unique style. Abanindranath Tagore also used the Ajanta paintings for inspiration.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Poses Include:

 

Dat Ass - Rare

Hypnotizing - Rare

Boobie Packs 1 & 2

Jewelry Packs 1 & 2

Booty Packs 1 & 2

Long Hair Packs 1 & 2

Shoes Packs 1 & 2

 

Available now @ Oh My Gacha!

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More from this afternoon's stroll around Widewater, a ruffled looking Black Headed Gull - there was a cold down there today

The White River is a 23.6-mile-long (38.0 km) river located on the western side of the Lower Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. The White River rises from the extensive Oxford Swamp in north central Newaygo County and flows out into an upland area. The rural town of Hesperia borders the river here.

 

Continuing onward, the White River flows in a southwesterly direction through the southern section of Manistee National Forest. The river passes through Oceana County and into Muskegon County and White Lake. The lake and river discharge into Lake Michigan, near the towns of Whitehall and Montague.

 

The White River system drains a surface area of approximately 300,000 acres (1,200 km2) and includes about 253 miles (407 km) of streams.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_River_(White_Lake)

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...

Includes heads of my opponent's armies.

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Festive wreaths on some of Shoreham's characterful front doors

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The Ajanta Caves (Ajiṇṭhā leni; Marathi: अजिंठा लेणी) in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, India are about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments which date from the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE. The caves include paintings and sculptures described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as "the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly painting", which are masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, with figures of the Buddha and depictions of the Jataka tales. The caves were built in two phases starting around the 2nd century BCE, with the second group of caves built around 400–650 CE according to older accounts, or all in a brief period of 460 to 480 according to the recent proposals of Walter M. Spink. The site is a protected monument in the care of the Archaeological Survey of India, and since 1983, the Ajanta Caves have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

The caves are located in the Indian state of Maharashtra, near Jalgaon and just outside the village of Ajinṭhā 20°31′56″N 75°44′44″E), about 59 kilometres from Jalgaon railway station on the Delhi – Mumbai line and Howrah-Nagpur-Mumbai line of the Central Railway zone, and 104 kilometres from the city of Aurangabad. They are 100 kilometres from the Ellora Caves, which contain Hindu and Jain temples as well as Buddhist caves, the last dating from a period similar to Ajanta. The Ajanta caves are cut into the side of a cliff that is on the south side of a U-shaped gorge on the small river Waghur, and although they are now along and above a modern pathway running across the cliff they were originally reached by individual stairs or ladders from the side of the river 35 to 110 feet below.

 

The area was previously heavily forested, and after the site ceased to be used the caves were covered by jungle until accidentally rediscovered in 1819 by a British officer on a hunting party. They are Buddhist monastic buildings, apparently representing a number of distinct "monasteries" or colleges. The caves are numbered 1 to 28 according to their place along the path, beginning at the entrance. Several are unfinished and some barely begun and others are small shrines, included in the traditional numbering as e.g. "9A"; "Cave 15A" was still hidden under rubble when the numbering was done. Further round the gorge are a number of waterfalls, which when the river is high are audible from outside the caves.

 

The caves form the largest corpus of early Indian wall-painting; other survivals from the area of modern India are very few, though they are related to 5th-century paintings at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. The elaborate architectural carving in many caves is also very rare, and the style of the many figure sculptures is highly local, found only at a few nearby contemporary sites, although the Ajanta tradition can be related to the later Hindu Ellora Caves and other sites.

 

HISTORY

Like the other ancient Buddhist monasteries, Ajanta had a large emphasis on teaching, and was divided into several different caves for living, education and worship, under a central direction. Monks were probably assigned to specific caves for living. The layout reflects this organizational structure, with most of the caves only connected through the exterior. The 7th-century travelling Chinese scholar Xuanzang informs us that Dignaga, a celebrated Buddhist philosopher and controversialist, author of well-known books on logic, lived at Ajanta in the 5th century. In its prime the settlement would have accommodated several hundred teachers and pupils. Many monks who had finished their first training may have returned to Ajanta during the monsoon season from an itinerant lifestyle.

 

The caves are generally agreed to have been made in two distinct periods, separated by several centuries.

 

CAVES OF THE FIRST (SATAVAHANA) PERIOD

The earliest group of caves consists of caves 9, 10, 12, 13 and 15A. According to Walter Spink, they were made during the period 100 BCE to 100 CE, probably under the patronage of the Satavahana dynasty (230 BCE – c. 220 CE) who ruled the region. Other datings prefer the period 300 BCE to 100 BCE, though the grouping of the earlier caves is generally agreed. More early caves may have vanished through later excavations. Of these, caves 9 and 10 are stupa halls of chaitya-griha form, and caves 12, 13, and 15A are vihāras (see the architecture section below for descriptions of these types). The first phase is still often called the Hinayāna phase, as it originated when, using traditional terminology, the Hinayāna or Lesser Vehicle tradition of Buddhism was dominant, when the Buddha was revered symbolically. However the use of the term Hinayana for this period of Buddhism is now deprecated by historians; equally the caves of the second period are now mostly dated too early to be properly called Mahayana, and do not yet show the full expanded cast of supernatural beings characteristic of that phase of Buddhist art. The first Satavahana period caves lacked figurative sculpture, emphasizing the stupa instead, and in the caves of the second period the overwhelming majority of images represent the Buddha alone, or narrative scenes of his lives.

 

Spink believes that some time after the Satavahana period caves were made the site was abandoned for a considerable period until the mid-5th century, probably because the region had turned mainly Hindu

 

CAVES OF THE LATER OR VAKATAKA PERIOD

The second phase began in the 5th century. For a long time it was thought that the later caves were made over a long period from the 4th to the 7th centuries CE, but in recent decades a series of studies by the leading expert on the caves, Walter M. Spink, have argued that most of the work took place over the very brief period from 460 to 480 CE, during the reign of Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka dynasty. This view has been criticized by some scholars, but is now broadly accepted by most authors of general books on Indian art, for example Huntington and Harle.

 

The second phase is still often called the Mahāyāna or Greater Vehicle phase, but scholars now tend to avoid this nomenclature because of the problems that have surfaced regarding our understanding of Mahāyāna.

 

Some 20 cave temples were simultaneously created, for the most part viharas with a sanctuary at the back. The most elaborate caves were produced in this period, which included some "modernization" of earlier caves. Spink claims that it is possible to establish dating for this period with a very high level of precision; a fuller account of his chronology is given below. Although debate continues, Spink's ideas are increasingly widely accepted, at least in their broad conclusions. The Archaeological Survey of India website still presents the traditional dating: "The second phase of paintings started around 5th – 6th centuries A.D. and continued for the next two centuries". Caves of the second period are 1–8, 11, 14–29, some possibly extensions of earlier caves. Caves 19, 26, and 29 are chaitya-grihas, the rest viharas.

 

According to Spink, the Ajanta Caves appear to have been abandoned by wealthy patrons shortly after the fall of Harishena, in about 480 CE. They were then gradually abandoned and forgotten. During the intervening centuries, the jungle grew back and the caves were hidden, unvisited and undisturbed, although the local population were aware of at least some of them.

 

REDISCOVERY

On 28 April 1819, a British officer for the Madras Presidency, John Smith, of the 28th Cavalry, while hunting tiger, accidentally discovered the entrance to Cave No. 10 deep within the tangled undergrowth. There were local people already using the caves for prayers with a small fire, when he arrived. Exploring that first cave, long since a home to nothing more than birds and bats and a lair for other larger animals, Captain Smith vandalized the wall by scratching his name and the date, April 1819. Since he stood on a five-foot high pile of rubble collected over the years, the inscription is well above the eye-level gaze of an adult today. A paper on the caves by William Erskine was read to the Bombay Literary Society in 1822. Within a few decades, the caves became famous for their exotic setting, impressive architecture, and above all their exceptional, all but unique paintings. A number of large projects to copy the paintings were made in the century after rediscovery, covered below. In 1848 the Royal Asiatic Society established the "Bombay Cave Temple Commission" to clear, tidy and record the most important rock-cut sites in the Bombay Presidency, with John Wilson, as president. In 1861 this became the nucleus of the new Archaeological Survey of India. Until the Nizam of Hyderabad built the modern path between the caves, among other efforts to make the site easy to visit, a trip to Ajanta was a considerable adventure, and contemporary accounts dwell with relish on the dangers from falls off narrow ledges, animals and the Bhil people, who were armed with bows and arrows and had a fearsome reputation.

 

Today, fairly easily combined with Ellora in a single trip, the caves are the most popular tourist destination in Mahrashtra, and are often crowded at holiday times, increasing the threat to the caves, especially the paintings. In 2012, the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation announced plans to add to the ASI visitor centre at the entrance complete replicas of caves 1, 2, 16 & 17 to reduce crowding in the originals, and enable visitors to receive a better visual idea of the paintings, which are dimly-lit and hard to read in the caves. Figures for the year to March 2010 showed a total of 390,000 visitors to the site, divided into 362,000 domestic and 27,000 foreign. The trends over the previous few years show a considerable growth in domestic visitors, but a decline in foreign ones; the year to 2010 was the first in which foreign visitors to Ellora exceeded those to Ajanta.

 

PAINTINGS

Mural paintings survive from both the earlier and later groups of caves. Several fragments of murals preserved from the earlier caves (Caves 9 and 11) are effectively unique survivals of court-led painting in India from this period, and "show that by Sātavāhana times, if not earlier, the Indian painter had mastered an easy and fluent naturalistic style, dealing with large groups of people in a manner comparable to the reliefs of the Sāñcī toraņa crossbars".

 

Four of the later caves have large and relatively well-preserved mural paintings which "have come to represent Indian mural painting to the non-specialist", and fall into two stylistic groups, with the most famous in Caves 16 and 17, and apparently later paintings in Caves 1 and 2. The latter group were thought to be a century or more later than the others, but the revised chronology proposed by Spink would place them much closer to the earlier group, perhaps contemporary with it in a more progressive style, or one reflecting a team from a different region. The paintings are in "dry fresco", painted on top of a dry plaster surface rather than into wet plaster.

 

All the paintings appear to be the work of painters at least as used to decorating palaces as temples, and show a familiarity with and interest in details of the life of a wealthy court. We know from literary sources that painting was widely practised and appreciated in the courts of the Gupta period. Unlike much Indian painting, compositions are not laid out in horizontal compartments like a frieze, but show large scenes spreading in all directions from a single figure or group at the centre. The ceilings are also painted with sophisticated and elaborate decorative motifs, many derived from sculpture. The paintings in cave 1, which according to Spink was commissioned by Harisena himself, concentrate on those Jataka tales which show previous lives of the Buddha as a king, rather than as an animal or human commoner, and so show settings from contemporary palace life.

 

In general the later caves seem to have been painted on finished areas as excavating work continued elsewhere in the cave, as shown in caves 2 and 16 in particular. According to Spink's account of the chronology of the caves, the abandonment of work in 478 after a brief busy period accounts for the absence of painting in caves such as 4 and 17, the later being plastered in preparation for paintings that were never done.

 

COPIES

The paintings have deteriorated significantly since they were rediscovered, and a number of 19th-century copies and drawings are important for a complete understanding of the works. However, the earliest projects to copy the paintings were plagued by bad fortune. In 1846, Major Robert Gill, an Army officer from Madras presidency and a painter, was appointed by the Royal Asiatic Society to replicate the frescoes on the cave walls to exhibit these paintings in England. Gill worked on his painting at the site from 1844 to 1863 (though he continued to be based there until his death in 1875, writing books and photographing) and made 27 copies of large sections of murals, but all but four were destroyed in a fire at the Crystal Palace in London in 1866, where they were on display.

 

Another attempt was made in 1872 when the Bombay Presidency commissioned John Griffiths, then principal of the Bombay School of Art, to work with his students to make new copies, again for shipping to England. They worked on this for thirteen years and some 300 canvases were produced, many of which were displayed at the Imperial Institute on Exhibition Road in London, one of the forerunners of the Victoria and Albert Museum. But in 1885 another fire destroyed over a hundred paintings that were in storage. The V&A still has 166 paintings surviving from both sets, though none have been on permanent display since 1955. The largest are some 3 × 6 metres. A conservation project was undertaken on about half of them in 2006, also involving the University of Northumbria. Griffith and his students had unfortunately painted many of the paintings with "cheap varnish" in order to make them easier to see, which has added to the deterioration of the originals, as has, according to Spink and others, recent cleaning by the ASI.

 

A further set of copies were made between 1909 and 1911 by Christiana Herringham (Lady Herringham) and a group of students from the Calcutta School of Art that included the future Indian Modernist painter Nandalal Bose. The copies were published in full colour as the first publication of London's fledgling India Society. More than the earlier copies, these aimed to fill in holes and damage to recreate the original condition rather than record the state of the paintings as she was seeing them. According to one writer, unlike the paintings created by her predecessors Griffiths and Gill, whose copies were influenced by British Victorian styles of painting, those of the Herringham expedition preferred an 'Indian Renascence' aesthetic of the type pioneered by Abanindranath Tagore.

 

Early photographic surveys were made by Robert Gill, who learnt to use a camera from about 1856, and whose photos, including some using stereoscopy, were used in books by him and Fergusson (many are available online from the British Library), then Victor Goloubew in 1911 and E.L. Vassey, who took the photos in the four volume study of the caves by Ghulam Yazdani (published 1930–1955).

 

ARCHITECTURE

The monasteries mostly consist of vihara halls for prayer and living, which are typically rectangular with small square dormitory cells cut into the walls, and by the second period a shrine or sanctuary at the rear centred on a large statue of the Buddha, also carved from the living rock. This change reflects the movement from Hinayana to Mahāyāna Buddhism. The other type of main hall is the narrower and higher chaitya hall with a stupa as the focus at the far end, and a narrow aisle around the walls, behind a range of pillars placed close together. Other plainer rooms were for sleeping and other activities. Some of the caves have elaborate carved entrances, some with large windows over the door to admit light. There is often a colonnaded porch or verandah, with another space inside the doors running the width of the cave.

 

The central square space of the interior of the viharas is defined by square columns forming a more or less square open area. Outside this are long rectangular aisles on each side, forming a kind of cloister. Along the side and rear walls are a number of small cells entered by a narrow doorway; these are roughly square, and have small niches on their back walls. Originally they had wooden doors. The centre of the rear wall has a larger shrine-room behind, containing a large Buddha statue. The viharas of the earlier period are much simpler, and lack shrines. Spink in fact places the change to a design with a shrine to the middle of the second period, with many caves being adapted to add a shrine in mid-excavation, or after the original phase.

 

The plan of Cave 1 shows one of the largest viharas, but is fairly typical of the later group. Many others, such as Cave 16, lack the vestibule to the shrine, which leads straight off the main hall. Cave 6 is two viharas, one above the other, connected by internal stairs, with sanctuaries on both levels.

 

The four completed chaitya halls are caves 9 and 10 from the early period, and caves 19 and 26 from the later period of construction. All follow the typical form found elsewhere, with high ceilings and a central "nave" leading to the stupa, which is near the back, but allows walking behind it, as walking around stupas was (and remains) a common element of Buddhist worship (pradakshina). The later two have high ribbed roofs, which reflect timber forms, and the earlier two are thought to have used actual timber ribs, which have now perished. The two later halls have a rather unusual arrangement (also found in Cave 10 at Ellora) where the stupa is fronted by a large relief sculpture of the Buddha, standing in Cave 19 and seated in Cave 26. Cave 29 is a late and very incomplete chaitya hall.

 

The form of columns in the work of the first period is very plain and un-embellished, with both chaitya halls using simple octagonal columns, which were painted with figures. In the second period columns were far more varied and inventive, often changing profile over their height, and with elaborate carved capitals, often spreading wide. Many columns are carved over all their surface, some fluted and others carved with decoration all over, as in cave 1.

 

The flood basalt rock of the cliff, part of the Deccan Traps formed by successive volcanic eruptions at the end of the Cretaceous, is layered horizontally, and somewhat variable in quality, so the excavators had to amend their plans in places, and in places there have been collapses in the intervening centuries, as with the lost portico to cave 1. Excavation began by cutting a narrow tunnel at roof level, which was expanded downwards and outwards; the half-built vihara cave 24 shows the method. Spink believes that for the first caves of the second period the excavators had to relearn skills and techniques that had been lost in the centuries since the first period, which were then transmitted to be used at later rock-cut sites in the region, such as Ellora, and the Elephanta, Bagh, Badami and Aurangabad Caves.

 

The caves from the first period seem to have been paid for by a number of different patrons, with several inscriptions recording the donation of particular portions of a single cave, but according to Spink the later caves were each commissioned as a complete unit by a single patron from the local rulers or their court elites. After the death of Harisena smaller donors got their chance to add small "shrinelets" between the caves or add statues to existing caves, and some two hundred of these "intrusive" additions were made in sculpture, with a further number of intrusive paintings, up to three hundred in cave 10 alone.

 

A grand gateway to the site, at the apex of the gorge's horsehoe between caves 15 and 16, was approached from the river, and is decorated with elephants on either side and a nāga, or protective snake deity.

 

ICONOGRAPHY OF THE CAVES

In the pre-Christian era, the Buddha was represented symbolically, in the form of the stupa. Thus, halls were made with stupas to venerate the Buddha. In later periods the images of the Buddha started to be made in coins, relic caskets, relief or loose sculptural forms, etc. However, it took a while for the human representation of the Buddha to appear in Buddhist art. One of the earliest evidences of the Buddha's human representations are found at Buddhist archaeological sites, such as Goli, Nagarjunakonda, and Amaravati. The monasteries of those sites were built in less durable media, such as wood, brick, and stone. As far as the genre of rock-cut architecture is concerned it took many centuries for the Buddha image to be depicted. Nobody knows for sure at which rock-cut cave site the first image of the Buddha was depicted. Current research indicates that Buddha images in a portable form, made of wood or stone, were introduced, for the first time, at Kanheri, to be followed soon at Ajanta Cave 8 (Dhavalikar, Jadhav, Spink, Singh). While the Kanheri example dates to 4th or 5th century CE, the Ajanta example has been dated to c. 462–478 CE (Spink). None of the rock-cut monasteries prior to these dates, and other than these examples, show any Buddha image although hundreds of rock-cut caves were made throughout India during the first few centuries CE. And, in those caves, it is the stupa that is the object of veneration, not the image. Images of the Buddha are not found in Buddhist sailagrhas (rock-cut complexes) until the times of the Kanheri (4th–5th century CE) and Ajanta examples (c. 462–478 CE).

 

The caves of the second period, now all dated to the 5th century, were typically described as "Mahayana", but do not show the features associated with later Mahayana Buddhism. Although the beginnings of Mahāyāna teachings go back to the 1st century there is little art and archaeological evidence to suggest that it became a mainstream cult for several centuries. In Mahayana it is not Gautama Buddha but the Bodhisattva who is important, including "deity" Bodhisattva like Manjushri and Tara, as well as aspects of the Buddha such as Aksobhya, and Amitabha. Except for a few Bodhisattva, these are not depicted at Ajanta, where the Buddha remains the dominant figure. Even the Bodhisattva images of Ajanta are never central objects of worship, but are always shown as attendants of the Buddha in the shrine. If a Bodhisattva is shown in isolation, as in the Astabhaya scenes, these were done in the very last years of activities at Ajanta, and are mostly 'intrusive' in nature, meaning that they were not planned by the original patrons, and were added by new donors after the original patrons had suddenly abandoned the region in the wake of Emperor Harisena's death.

 

The contrast between iconic and aniconic representations, that is, the stupa on one hand and the image of the Buddha on the other, is now being seen as a construct of the modern scholar rather than a reality of the past. The second phase of Ajanta shows that the stupa and image coincided together. If the entire corpus of the art of Ajanta including sculpture, iconography, architecture, epigraphy, and painting are analysed afresh it will become clear that there was no duality between the symbolic and human forms of the Buddha, as far as the 5th-century phase of Ajanta is concerned. That is why most current scholars tend to avoid the terms 'Hinayana' and 'Mahayana' in the context of Ajanta. They now prefer to call the second phase by the ruling dynasty, as the Vākāţaka phase.

 

CAVES

CAVE 1

Cave 1 was built on the eastern end of the horse-shoe shaped scarp, and is now the first cave the visitor encounters. This would when first made have been a less prominent position, right at the end of the row. According to Spink, it is one of the latest caves to have been excavated, when the best sites had been taken, and was never fully inaugurated for worship by the dedication of the Buddha image in the central shrine. This is shown by the absence of sooty deposits from butter lamps on the base of the shrine image, and the lack of damage to the paintings that would have been happened if the garland-hooks around the shrine had been in use for any period of time. Although there is no epigraphic evidence, Spink believes that the Vākāţaka Emperor Harishena was the benefactor of the work, and this is reflected in the emphasis on imagery of royalty in the cave, with those Jakata tales being selected that tell of those previous lives of the Buddha in which he was royal.

 

The cliff has a more steep slope here than at other caves, so to achieve a tall grand facade it was necessary to cut far back into the slope, giving a large courtyard in front of the facade. There was originally a columned portico in front of the present facade, which can be seen "half-intact in the 1880s" in pictures of the site, but this fell down completely and the remains, despite containing fine carving, were carelessly thrown down the slope into the river, from where they have been lost, presumably carried away in monsoon torrents.

 

This cave has one of the most elaborate carved façades, with relief sculptures on entablature and ridges, and most surfaces embellished with decorative carving. There are scenes carved from the life of the Buddha as well as a number of decorative motifs. A two pillared portico, visible in the 19th-century photographs, has since perished. The cave has a front-court with cells fronted by pillared vestibules on either side. These have a high plinth level. The cave has a porch with simple cells on both ends. The absence of pillared vestibules on the ends suggest that the porch was not excavated in the latest phase of Ajanta when pillared vestibules had become a necessity and norm. Most areas of the porch were once covered with murals, of which many fragments remain, especially on the ceiling. There are three doorways: a central doorway and two side doorways. Two square windows were carved between the doorways to brighten the interiors.

 

Each wall of the hall inside is nearly 12 m long and 6.1 m high. Twelve pillars make a square colonnade inside supporting the ceiling, and creating spacious aisles along the walls. There is a shrine carved on the rear wall to house an impressive seated image of the Buddha, his hands being in the dharmachakrapravartana mudra. There are four cells on each of the left, rear, and the right walls, though due to rock fault there are none at the ends of the rear aisle. The walls are covered with paintings in a fair state of preservation, though the full scheme was never completed. The scenes depicted are mostly didactic, devotional, and ornamental, with scenes from the Jataka stories of the Buddha's former existences as a bodhisattva), the life of the Gautama Buddha, and those of his veneration. The two most famous individual painted images at Ajanta are the two over-life size figures of the protective bodhisattvas Padmapani and Vajrapani on either side of the entrance to the Buddha shrine on the wall of the rear aisle (see illustrations above). According to Spink, the original dating of the paintings to about 625 arose largely or entirely because James Fegusson, a 19th-century architectural historian, had decided that a scene showing an ambassador being received, with figures in Persian dress, represented a recorded embassy to Persia (from a Hindu monarch at that) around that date.

 

CAVE 2

Cave 2, adjacent to Cave 1, is known for the paintings that have been preserved on its walls, ceilings, and pillars. It looks similar to Cave 1 and is in a better state of preservation.

 

Cave 2 has a porch quite different from Cave one. Even the façade carvings seem to be different. The cave is supported by robust pillars, ornamented with designs. The front porch consists of cells supported by pillared vestibules on both ends. The cells on the previously "wasted areas" were needed to meet the greater housing requirements in later years. Porch-end cells became a trend in all later Vakataka excavations. The simple single cells on porch-ends were converted into CPVs or were planned to provide more room, symmetry, and beauty.

 

The paintings on the ceilings and walls of this porch have been widely published. They depict the Jataka tales that are stories of the Buddha's life in former existences as Bodhisattva. Just as the stories illustrated in cave 1 emphasize kingship, those in cave 2 show many "noble and powerful" women in prominent roles, leading to suggestions that the patron was an unknown woman. The porch's rear wall has a doorway in the center, which allows entrance to the hall. On either side of the door is a square-shaped window to brighten the interior.

 

The hall has four colonnades which are supporting the ceiling and surrounding a square in the center of the hall. Each arm or colonnade of the square is parallel to the respective walls of the hall, making an aisle in between. The colonnades have rock-beams above and below them. The capitals are carved and painted with various decorative themes that include ornamental, human, animal, vegetative, and semi-divine forms.

 

Paintings appear on almost every surface of the cave except for the floor. At various places the art work has become eroded due to decay and human interference. Therefore, many areas of the painted walls, ceilings, and pillars are fragmentary. The painted narratives of the Jataka tales are depicted only on the walls, which demanded the special attention of the devotee. They are didactic in nature, meant to inform the community about the Buddha's teachings and life through successive rebirths. Their placement on the walls required the devotee to walk through the aisles and 'read' the narratives depicted in various episodes. The narrative episodes are depicted one after another although not in a linear order. Their identification has been a core area of research since the site's rediscovery in 1819. Dieter Schlingloff's identifications have updated our knowledge on the subject.

 

CAVE 4

The Archeological Survey of India board outside the caves gives the following detail about cave 4: "This is the largest monastery planned on a grandiose scale but was never finished. An inscription on the pedestal of the buddha's image mentions that it was a gift from a person named Mathura and paleographically belongs to 6th century A.D. It consists of a verandah, a hypostylar hall, sanctum with an antechamber and a series of unfinished cells. The rear wall of the verandah contains the panel of Litany of Avalokiteśvara".

 

The sanctuary houses a colossal image of the Buddha in preaching pose flanked by bodhisattvas and celestial nymphs hovering above.

 

CAVES 9-10

Caves 9 and 10 are the two chaitya halls from the first period of construction, though both were also undergoing an uncompleted reworking at the end of the second period. Cave 10 was perhaps originally of the 1st century BCE, and cave 9 about a hundred years later. The small "shrinelets" called caves 9A to 9D and 10A also date from the second period, and were commissioned by individuals.

 

The paintings in cave 10 include some surviving from the early period, many from an incomplete programme of modernization in the second period, and a very large number of smaller late intrusive images, nearly all Buddhas and many with donor inscriptions from individuals. These mostly avoided over-painting the "official" programme and after the best positions were used up are tucked away in less prominent positions not yet painted; the total of these (including those now lost) was probably over 300, and the hands of many different artists are visible.

 

OTHER CAVES

Cave 3 is merely a start of an excavation; according to Spink it was begun right at the end of the final period of work and soon abandoned. Caves 5 and 6 are viharas, the latter on two floors, that were late works of which only the lower floor of cave 6 was ever finished. The upper floor of cave 6 has many private votive sculptures, and a shrine Buddha, but is otherwise unfinished. Cave 7 has a grand facade with two porticos but, perhaps because of faults in the rock, which posed problems in many caves, was never taken very deep into the cliff, and consists only of the two porticos and a shrine room with antechamber, with no central hall. Some cells were fitted in.

 

Cave 8 was long thought to date to the first period of construction, but Spink sees it as perhaps the earliest cave from the second period, its shrine an "afterthought". The statue may have been loose rather than carved from the living rock, as it has now vanished. The cave was painted, but only traces remain.

 

SPINK´S DETAILED CHRONOLOGY

Walter M. Spink has over recent decades developed a very precise and circumstantial chronology for the second period of work on the site, which unlike earlier scholars, he places entirely in the 5th century. This is based on evidence such as the inscriptions and artistic style, combined with the many uncompleted elements of the caves. He believes the earlier group of caves, which like other scholars he dates only approximately, to the period "between 100 BCE – 100 CE", were at some later point completely abandoned and remained so "for over three centuries", as the local population had turned mainly Hindu. This changed with the accession of the Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka Dynasty, who reigned from 460 to his death in 477. Harisena extended the Central Indian Vakataka Empire to include a stretch of the east coast of India; the Gupta Empire ruled northern India at the same period, and the Pallava dynasty much of the south.

 

According to Spink, Harisena encouraged a group of associates, including his prime minister Varahadeva and Upendragupta, the sub-king in whose territory Ajanta was, to dig out new caves, which were individually commissioned, some containing inscriptions recording the donation. This activity began in 462 but was mostly suspended in 468 because of threats from the neighbouring Asmaka kings. Work continued on only caves 1, Harisena's own commission, and 17–20, commissioned by Upendragupta. In 472 the situation was such that work was suspended completely, in a period that Spink calls "the Hiatus", which lasted until about 475, by which time the Asmakas had replaced Upendragupta as the local rulers.

 

Work was then resumed, but again disrupted by Harisena's death in 477, soon after which major excavation ceased, except at cave 26, which the Asmakas were sponsoring themselves. The Asmakas launched a revolt against Harisena's son, which brought about the end of the Vakataka Dynasty. In the years 478–480 major excavation by important patrons was replaced by a rash of "intrusions" – statues added to existing caves, and small shrines dotted about where there was space between them. These were commissioned by less powerful individuals, some monks, who had not previously been able to make additions to the large excavations of the rulers and courtiers. They were added to the facades, the return sides of the entrances, and to walls inside the caves. According to Spink, "After 480, not a single image was ever made again at the site", and as Hinduism again dominated the region, the site was again abandoned, this time for over a millennium.

 

Spink does not use "circa" in his dates, but says that "one should allow a margin of error of one year or perhaps even two in all cases".

 

IMPACT ON MODERN INDIAN PAINTINGS

The Ajanta paintings, or more likely the general style they come from, influenced painting in Tibet and Sri Lanka.

 

The rediscovery of ancient Indian paintings at Ajanta provided Indian artists examples from ancient India to follow. Nandlal Bose experimented with techniques to follow the ancient style which allowed him to develop his unique style. Abanindranath Tagore also used the Ajanta paintings for inspiration.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Include in this kit:

 

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* LaraX

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* Baked Map/Ao Map/ Normal Map/ Specular Map/

Wirefrime Map (UV Map )

* Textures

 

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DEMO Bodysuit 001

Some graffiti that's a bit different to the normal tagging . . .

 

I think they may be coders, LOL!

More from Sunday's Pioneer Run - the first time the route has come through Shoreham en route to Brighton

A doughnut or donut (/ˈdoʊnət/ or /ˈdoʊnʌt/; see spelling differences) is a type of fried dough confectionery or dessert food. The doughnut is popular in many countries and prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franchised specialty outlets. Donuts are usually deep-fried from a flour dough, and typically either ring-shaped or without a hole, and often filled. Other types of batters can also be used, and various toppings and flavorings are used for different types, such as sugar, chocolate, or maple glazing. In addition to flour, doughnuts may also include such ingredients as water, leavening, eggs, milk, sugar, oil/shortening, natural flavors and/or artificial flavors.

 

The two most common types are the toroidal ring doughnut and the filled doughnut - which is injected with fruit preserves, cream, custard, or other sweet fillings. A small spherical piece of dough may be cooked as a doughnut hole. Other shapes include rings, balls, and flattened spheres, as well as ear shapes, twists and other forms. Doughnut varieties are also divided into cake and risen type doughnuts.

 

SHAPES

RINGS

Ring doughnuts are formed by joining the ends of a long, skinny piece of dough into a ring or by using a doughnut cutter, which simultaneously cuts the outside and inside shape, leaving a doughnut-shaped piece of dough and a doughnut hole from dough removed from the center. This smaller piece of dough can be cooked or added back to the batch to make more doughnuts. A disk-shaped doughnut can also be stretched and pinched into a torus until the center breaks to form a hole. Alternatively, a doughnut depositor can be used to place a circle of liquid dough (batter) directly into the fryer.

 

There are two types of ring doughnuts, those made from a yeast-based dough for raised doughnuts or made from a special type of cake batter. Yeast-raised doughnuts contain about 25% oil by weight, whereas cake doughnuts' oil content is around 20%, but they have extra fat included in the batter before frying. Cake doughnuts are fried for about 90 seconds at approximately 190 °C to 198 °C, turning once. Yeast-raised doughnuts absorb more oil because they take longer to fry, about 150 seconds, at 182 °C to 190 °C. Cake doughnuts typically weigh between 24 g and 28 g, whereas yeast-raised doughnuts average 38 g and are generally larger, and taller (due to rising) when finished.

 

TOPPING

After frying, ring doughnuts are often topped. Raised doughnuts are generally covered with a glaze (icing). Cake doughnuts can also be glazed, or powdered with confectioner's sugar, or covered with cinnamon and granulated sugar. They are also often topped with cake frosting (top-side only) and sometimes sprinkled with coconut, chopped peanuts, or sprinkles (also called jimmies).

 

HOLES

Doughnut holes are small, bite-sized doughnuts that were traditionally made from the dough taken from the center of ring doughnuts. Before long, doughnut sellers saw the opportunity to market "holes" as a novelty and many chains offer their own variety, some with their own brand names such as "Munchkins" from Dunkin' Donuts and "Timbits" from Tim Hortons.

 

Traditionally, doughnut holes are made by frying the dough removed from the center portion of the doughnut. Consequently, they are considerably smaller than a standard doughnut and tend to be spherical. Similar to standard doughnuts, doughnut holes may be topped with confections, such as glaze or powdered sugar.

 

Originally, most varieties of doughnut holes were derivatives of their ring doughnut (yeast-based dough or cake batter) counterparts. However, doughnut holes can also be made by dropping a small ball of dough into hot oil from a specially shaped nozzle or cutter. This production method has allowed doughnut sellers to produce bite-sized versions of non-ring doughnuts, such as filled doughnuts, fritters and Dutchies.

 

FILLED

The filled doughnut is a flattened sphere injected with fruit preserves, cream, custard, or other sweet fillings, and often dipped into powdered sugar or topped off with frosting. Common varieties include the Boston cream, coconut, key lime, and jelly.

 

OTHER SHAPES

Others include the fritter and the Dutchie, which are usually glazed. These have been available on Tim Hortons' doughnut menu since the chain's inception in 1964, and a 1991 Toronto Star report found out that these two were the chain's most popular type of fried dough in Canada.

 

There are many other specialized doughnut shapes such as old-fashioned, bars or Long Johns (a rectangular shape), or with the dough twisted around itself before cooking. In the northeast U.S., bars and twists are usually referred to as crullers. Another is the beignet, which is square-shaped, covered with powdered sugar.

 

HISTORY

POSSIBLE ORIGINS

Doughnuts have a disputed history. One theory suggests they were invented in North America by Dutch settlers,[6] and in the 19th century, doughnuts were sometimes referred to as one kind of oliekoek (a Dutch word literally meaning "oil cake"), a "sweetened cake fried in fat."

 

Hanson Gregory, an American, claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 aboard a lime-trading ship when he was only 16 years old. Gregory was dissatisfied with the greasiness of doughnuts twisted into various shapes and with the raw center of regular doughnuts. He claimed to have punched a hole in the center of dough with the ship's tin pepper box, and to have later taught the technique to his mother. Smithsonian Magazine states that his mother, Elizabeth Gregory, "made a wicked deep-fried dough that cleverly used her son's spice cargo of nutmeg and cinnamon, along with lemon rind," and "put hazelnuts or walnuts in the center, where the dough might not cook through", and called the food 'doughnuts'.

 

According to anthropologist Paul R. Mullins, the first cookbook mentioning doughnuts was an 1803 English volume which included doughnuts in an appendix of American recipes. By the mid-19th century, the doughnut looked and tasted like today’s doughnut, and was viewed as a thoroughly American food.

 

Another theory on their origin came to light in 2013, appearing to predate all previous claims, when a recipe for "dow nuts" was found in a book of recipes and domestic tips written in 1800 by the wife of Baron Thomas Dimsdale, the recipe being given to the dowager Baroness by an acquaintance who transcribed for her the cooking instructions of a local delicacy, the "Hertfordshire nut".

 

ETHYMOLOGY

"DOUGH NUT"

The earliest known recorded usage of the term dates to an 1808 short story describing a spread of "fire-cakes and dough-nuts." Washington Irving's reference to "doughnuts" in 1809 in his History of New York is more commonly cited as the first written recording of the term. Irving described "balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks." These "nuts" of fried dough might now be called doughnut holes. Doughnut is the more traditional spelling, and still dominates outside the US. At present, doughnut and the shortened form donut are both pervasive in American English.

 

"DONUT"

The first known printed use of donut was in Peck's Bad Boy and his Pa by George W. Peck, published in 1900, in which a character is quoted as saying, "Pa said he guessed he hadn't got much appetite, and he would just drink a cup of coffee and eat a donut." According to John T. Edge (Donuts, an American passion 2006) the alternative spelling “donut” was invented when the New York–based Display Doughnut Machine Corporation abbreviated the word to make it more pronounceable by the foreigners they hoped would buy their automated doughnut making equipment. The donut spelling also showed up in a Los Angeles Times article dated August 10, 1929 in which Bailey Millard jokingly complains about the decline of spelling, and that he "can't swallow the 'wel-dun donut' nor the ever so 'gud bred'." The interchangeability of the two spellings can be found in a series of "National Donut Week" articles in The New York Times that covered the 1939 World's Fair. In four articles beginning October 9, two mention the donut spelling. Dunkin' Donuts, which was so-named in 1950, following its 1948 founding under the name Open Kettle (Quincy, Massachusetts), is the oldest surviving company to use the donut variation; other chains, such as the defunct Mayflower Doughnut Corporation (1931), did not use that spelling. According to the Oxford Dictionary while "doughnut" is used internationally, the spelling "donut" is American. The spelling "donut" remained rare until the 1950s, and has since grown significantly in popularity; this growth in use has possibly been influenced by the spread of Dunkin' Donuts.

 

NATIONAL DOUGHNUT DAY

National Doughnut Day, also known as National Donut Day, celebrated in the United States of America, is on the first Friday of June each year, succeeding the Doughnut Day event created by The Salvation Army in 1938 to honor those of their members who served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I. About 250 Salvation Army volunteers went to France. Because of the difficulties of providing freshly baked goods from huts established in abandoned buildings near the front lines, the two Salvation Army volunteers (Ensign Margaret Sheldon and Adjutant Helen Purviance) came up with the idea of providing doughnuts. These are reported to have been an "instant hit", and "soon many soldiers were visiting The Salvation Army huts". Margaret Sheldon wrote of one busy day: "Today I made 22 pies, 300 doughnuts, 700 cups of coffee." Soon, the women who did this work became known by the servicemen as "Doughnut Dollies".

Regional variations

 

AFRICA

SOUTH AFRICA

In South Africa, an Afrikaans variation known as the koeksister is popular. Another variation, similar in name, is the Cape Malay koesister being soaked in a spiced syrup and coated in coconut. It has a texture similar to more traditional doughnuts as opposed to the Afrikaans variety.[26] A further variation is the vetkoek, which is also dough deep fried in oil. It is served with mince, syrup, honey or jam.

 

TUNISIA

In Tunisia, a pastry similar to doughnuts are yo-yos. They are very traditional and popular. They come in different versions both as balls and in shape of doughnuts. They are deep-fried and covered in a honey syrup or a kind of frosting. Sesame seeds are also used for flavor and decoration along with orange juice and vanilla.

 

MOROCCO

In Morocco, Sfenj is a similar pastry eaten sprinkled with sugar or soaked in honey.

 

ASIA

CHINA

A few sweet, doughnut-style pastries are regional in nature. Cantonese cuisine features an oval-shaped pastry called ngàuhleisōu (牛脷酥, lit. "ox-tongue pastry" due to its tongue-like shape).

 

A spherical food called saa1 jung (沙翁) which is also similar to cream puff, but denser in texture (doughnut-like texture) with sugar sprinkled on top, is normally available in Cantonese restaurants in the dim sum style. An oilier Beijing variant of this called 高力豆沙, gaoli dousha, is filled with red bean paste; originally, it was made with egg white instead of dough. Many Chinese cultures make a chewy doughnut known as shuangbaotai (雙包胎), which consists of two conjoined balls of dough.

 

Chinese restaurants in the US sometimes serve small fried pastries similar to doughnut holes, served with condensed milk as a sauce.

 

Chinese cuisine features long, deep-fried doughnut sticks that are often quite oily, hence their name in Mandarin, yóutiáo (油條, lit. oil strips.); in Cantonese, this doughnut-style pastry is called yàuhjagwái (油炸鬼, ghosts fried in oil). These pastries are not sweet and are often served with congee, a traditional rice porridge.

 

INDIA

In India, a savory, fried, ring-shaped snack called a vada is often referred to as the Indian doughnut. The vada is made from dal, lentil or potato flours rather than wheat flour. In North India, it is in the form of a bulging disc called dahi-vada, and is soaked in curd, sprinkled with spices and sliced vegetables, and topped with a sweet and sour chutney. In South India, a vada is eaten with sambar and a coconut chutney.

 

Sweet pastries similar to old-fashioned doughnuts called badushahi and jalebi are also popular. Balushahi, also called badushah, is made from flour, deep fried in clarified butter, and dipped in sugar syrup. Balushahi is ring-shaped, but the hole in the center does not go all the way through. Jalebi, which is typically pretzel-shaped, is made by deep frying batter in oil and soaking it in sugar syrup. A variant of jalebi, called imarti, is shaped with a small ring in the center around which a geometric pattern is arranged.

 

Along with these Indian variants, American variants of doughnuts are also available with American brands such as Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Donuts setting up retail outlets in India, as well as local brands such as Mad Over Donuts and the Donut Baker.

 

INDONESIA

The Indonesian, donat kentang is a potato doughnut, a ring-shaped fritter made from flour and mashed potatoes, coated in powder sugar or icing sugar.

 

IRAN

The Persian zoolbia and bamiyeh are fritters of various shapes and sizes coated in a sugar syrup. Doughnuts are also made in the home in Iran, referred to as doughnuts, even in the singular.

  

ISRAEL

Jelly doughnuts, known as sufganiyah (סופגניה, pl. sufganiyot סופגניות) in Israel, have become a traditional Hanukkah food in the recent era, as they are cooked in oil, associated with the holiday account of the miracle of the oil. Traditional sufganiyot are filled with red jelly and topped with icing sugar. However, many other varieties exist, with some being filled with dulce de leche (particularly common after the South American aliyah early in the 21st century).

 

JAPAN

In Japan, an-doughnut (あんドーナッツ, "bean paste doughnut") is widely available at bakeries. An-doughnut is similar to Germany's Berliner, except it contains red azuki bean paste. Mister Donut is one of the most popular doughnut chains in Japan. Native to Okinawa is a spheroid pastry similar to doughnuts called sata andagi.

 

MALAYSIA

Kuih keria is a hole doughnut made from boiled sweet potato that is mashed. The sweet potato mash is shaped into rings and fried. The hot doughnut is then rolled in granulated sugar. The result is a doughnut with a sugar-crusted skin.

 

NEPAL

Sel roti is a Nepali homemade, ring-shaped, rice doughnut prepared during Tihar, the widely celebrated Hindu festival in Nepal. A semiliquid dough is usually prepared by adding milk, water, sugar, butter, cardamom, and mashed banana to rice flour, which is often left to ferment for up to 24 hours. A sel roti is traditionally fried in ghee.

 

PAKISTAN

Doughnuts are available at most bakeries across Pakistan. The Navaz Sharif variety, available mainly in the city of Karachi, is covered in chocolate and filled with cream, similar to a Boston cream. Doughnuts can readily be found at the many Dunkin' Donuts branches spread across Pakistan.

 

PHILIPPINES

Local varieties of doughnuts sold by peddlers and street vendors throughout the Philippines are usually made of plain well-kneaded dough, deep-fried in refined coconut oil and sprinkled with refined (not powdered or confectioner's) sugar. Doughnuts are a popular mid-day snack. A native variant from the Visayas islands known as shakoy or siyakoy (also known as lubid-lubid in the northern Philippines) uses a length of dough twisted into a distinctive rope-like shape before being fried. The preparation is almost exactly the same as doughnuts, though there are variants made from glutinous rice flour. The texture can range from soft and fluffy, to sticky and chewy, to hard and crunchy. They are sprinkled with white sugar, but can also be topped with sesame seeds or caramelized sugar.

 

TAIWAN

In Taiwan, shuāngbāotāi (雙胞胎, lit. twins) is two pieces of dough wrapped together before frying.

 

THAILAND

In Thailand, a popular breakfast food is Pa Thong Ko, also known as Thai Donuts, a version of the Chinese Yiu Ja Guoy/Youtiao. Often sold from food stalls in markets or by the side of the road, these doughnuts are small sometimes X-shaped and sold by the bag full. They are often eaten in the morning with hot Thai tea.

 

VIETNAM

Vietnamese varieties of doughnuts include bánh tiêu, bánh cam, and bánh rán. Bánh tiêu is a sesame-topped, deep-fried pastry that is hallow. It can be eaten alone or cut in half and served with bánh bò, a gelatinous cake, placed inside the pastry. Bánh cam is from Southern Vietnam and is a ball-shaped, deep-fried pastry coated entirely in sesame seeds and inside of which contains a mung bean paste filling. Bánh rán is from Northern Vietnam and is similar to bánh cam; however, the difference is that bánh rán is covered with a sugar glaze after being deep-fried and its mung bean paste filling includes a jasmine essence.

 

EUROPE

AUSTRIA

In Austria, doughnut equivalents are called Krapfen. They are especially popular during Carneval season (Fasching), and do not have the typical ring shape, but instead are solid and usually filled with apricot jam (traditional) or vanilla cream (Vanillekrapfen). A second variant, called Bauernkrapfen, probably more similar to doughnuts, are made of yeast dough, and have a thick outside ring, but are very thin in the middle.

 

BELGIUM

In Belgium, the smoutebollen in Dutch, or "croustillons" in French, are similar to the Dutch kind of oliebollen, but they usually do not contain any fruit, except for apple chunks sometimes. They are typical carnival and fair snacks and are coated with powdered sugar.

 

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVIA - CROATIA -

MACEDONIA AND SERBIA

Doughnuts similar to the Berliner are prepared in the northern Balkans, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia (pokladnice or krofne). They are also called krofna, krafna or krafne, a name derived from the Austrian Krapfen for this pastry. In Croatia, they are especially popular during Carneval season and do not have the typical ring shape, but instead are solid. Traditionally, they are filled with jam (apricot or plum). However, they can be filled with vanilla or chocolate cream. Another types of doughnuts are uštipci and fritule.

 

CZECH REPUBLIC

There are Czech Republic "American" style doughnuts, but before they were solid shape and filled with jelly (strawberry or peach). The shape is similar to doughnuts in Germany or Poland. They are called Kobliha (Koblihy in plural). They may be filed with nougat or with vanilla custard. There are now many fillings; cut in half or non-filled knots with sugar and cinnamon on top.

 

DENMARK

In Denmark, doughnuts exist in their "American" shape, and these can be obtained from various stores, e.g. McDonald's and most gas stations. The Berliner, however, is also available in bakeries.

 

FINLAND

in Finland, a sweet doughnut is called a munkki (the word also means monk) and are commonly eaten in cafés and cafeteria restaurants. They are sold cold and are sometimes filled with jam (U.S. jelly) or a vanilla sauce. A ring doughnut is also known as donitsi.A savory form of doughnut is the meat doughnut (in Finnish lihapiirakka, or literally meat pie). Being made of doughnut mixture and deep fried the end product is more akin to a savory doughnut than any pie known in the English speaking world.

 

FRANCE

The French beignet, literally "bump", is the French and New Orleans equivalent of a doughnut: A pastry made from made from deep-fried choux pastry.

 

GERMANY

In parts of Germany, the doughnut equivalents are called Berliner (sg. and pl.), but not in the capital city of Berlin itself and neighboring areas, where they are called Pfannkuchen (which is often found misleading by people in the rest of Germany, who use the word Pfannkuchen to describe a pancake, which is also the literal translation of it). In middle Germany, they are called Kreppel or Pfannkuchen. In southern Germany, they are also called Krapfen and are especially popular during Carnival season (Karneval/Fasching) in southern and middle Germany and on New Year's Eve in northern Germany. Berliner do not have the typical ring shape, but instead are solid and usually filled with jam, while a ring-shaped variant called Kameruner is common in Berlin and eastern Germany. Bismarcks and Berlin doughnuts are also found in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland and the U.S. Today, American style doughnuts are also available in Germany, but are less popular than their native counterparts.

 

GREECE

In Greece, there is a doughnut-like snack, called loukoumas (λουκουμάς), which is a doughnut with sugar and comes in two types (one is shaped like the number 8; the other is a torus). The first one is crispier, whereas the second one is larger and softer.

 

HUNGARY

Fánk is a sweet traditional Hungarian cake. The most commonly used ingredients are: flour, yeast, butter, egg yolk, a little bit of rum, a sniff of salt, milk and oil to deep fry with. After the pastry has risen for approximately 30 minutes the result is an extreme light doughnut-like pastry. Fánk is mostly served with powdered sugar and lekvar.

 

It is supposed that Fánk pastry is of the same origin as German Berliner, Dutch oliebol, and Polish pączki.

 

ICELAND

In Iceland kleinuhringur (pl. kleinuhringir and kleinuhringar) are a type of old Icelandic cuisine which resembles doughnuts. The Berliner and many other kinds of doughnuts can only be found on one day of the year and that is on a holiday called "Bolludagur" or in other words Doughnut Day.

 

ITALY

Italian doughnuts include ciambelle, krapfen, zippuli and zeppole from Calabria, maritozzi and bomboloni from Tuscany.

 

LITHUANIA

In Lithuania, a kind of doughnut called spurgos is widely known. Some spurgos are similar to Polish pączki, but some specific recipes, such as cottage cheese doughnuts (varškės spurgos), were invented independently.

 

NETHERLANDS

In the Netherlands, oliebollen, referred to in cookbooks as "Dutch doughnuts", are a type of fritter, with or without raisins or currants, and usually sprinkled with powdered sugar. Variations of the recipe contain slices of apple or other fruits. They are traditionally eaten as part of New Year celebrations.

 

NORWAY

In Norway, the traditional smultring is the prevailing type of doughnut traditionally sold in bakeries, shops, and stalls, however the American-style doughnuts are widely available in larger supermarkets, McDonald's restaurants, 7-elevens and bakeries. The Berliner is more common than the US doughnut, and sold in most supermarkets and bakeries alongside smultring doughnuts.

 

POLAND

In Poland and parts of the U.S. with a large Polish community, like Chicago and Detroit, the round, jam-filled doughnuts eaten especially - though not exclusively - during the Carnival are called pączki (pronounced [ˈpɔntʂkʲi]). Pączki have been known in Poland at least since the Middle Ages. Jędrzej Kitowicz has described that during the reign of the August III under influence of French cooks who came to Poland at that time, pączki dough fried in Poland has been improved, so that pączki became lighter, spongier, and more resilient.

 

PORTUGAL

See Malasada.

 

ROMANIA

The Romanian dessert gogoși are fried dough balls similar to filled doughnuts. They are stuffed with chocolate, jam, cheese and other combinations and may be dusted with icing sugar.

 

RUSSIA

In Russia and the CIS countries, ponchiki (Russian: пончики, plural form of пончик, ponchik) or pyshki (Russian: пышки, especially in St. Petersburg) are a very popular sweet doughnut, with many fast and simple recipes available in Russian cookbooks for making them at home as a breakfast or coffee pastry. In Ukraine and Belarus they are called pampushky (Ukrainian: пампушки).

 

SLOVENIA

In Slovenia, a jam-filled doughnut known as krofi, is very popular. It is the typical sweet during Carnival time, but is to be found in most bakeries during the whole year. The most famous krofi come from the village of Trojane in central Slovenia, and are originally filled with apricot jam filling.

 

SPAIN

In Spain, there are two different types of doughnuts. The first one, simply called "donuts" (in reference to the most famous commercial brand name for this type of food) or "berlinas" (a more traditional name), refer to the American-style doughnut, that is, a deep fried, sweet, soft, ring of flour dough.

 

The second type of doughnut is a traditional pastry called "rosquilla", made of fermented dough and which is fried or baked in an oven. They were purportedly introduced in Spain by the Romans.[citation needed] In Spain, there are several variants of them depending on the region where they are prepared and on the time of the year they are sold, as they are regarded in some parts as a pastry especially prepared only for Easter. Although overall they result in pastries of a tighter texture and less sugared than American doughnuts, they differ greatly in shape, size and taste from one region to another.

 

The 'churro' is a sweet pastry of deep-fried dough similar to a doughnut but shaped as a long, thin, ribbed cylinder rather than a ring or sphere. Churros are commonly served dusted in sugar as a snack or with a cup of hot chocolate.

 

SWITZERLAND

In Switzerland, there are Zigerkrapfen and Berliner.

 

UNITED KINGDOM

In some parts of Scotland, ring doughnuts are referred to as doughrings, with the 'doughnut' name being reserved exclusively for the nut-shaped variety. Glazed, twisted rope-shaped doughnuts are known as yum-yums. It is also possible to buy fudge doughnuts in certain regions of Scotland. Fillings include jam, custard, cream, sweet mincemeat, chocolate and apple. Common ring toppings are sprinkle-iced and chocolate.

 

In Northern Ireland, ring doughnuts are known as 'gravy rings', gravy being an archaic term for hot cooking oil.

 

NORTH AMERICA

CARIBBEAN REGION

A doughnut known as "kurma" originating in Eastern India but being sold as a delicacy in Trinidad and Tobago, is a small, sweet, and fried cubed or rectangular-shaped doughnut.

 

COSTA RICA

A traditional Puntarenas cream-filled doughnut is round and robust, managing to keep the cream inside liquified. They are popular in Costa Rica.

 

MEXICO

The Mexican donas are similar to doughnuts, including the name; the dona is a fried-dough pastry-based snack, commonly covered with powdered brown sugar and cinnamon, white sugar or chocolate.

 

UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Frosted, glazed, powdered, Boston cream, coconut, sour cream, cinnamon, chocolate, and jelly are some of the varieties eaten in the United States and Canada. Sweetening, filling, and fancy toppings are now so common that plain doughnuts are now commonly labeled and sold as "old fashioned".

 

There are also potato doughnuts (sometimes referred to as spudnuts). Doughnuts are ubiquitous in the United States and can be found in most grocery stores, as well as in specialty doughnut shops.

 

A popular doughnut in Hawaii is the malasada. Malasadas were brought to the Hawaiian Islands by early Portuguese settlers, and are a variation on Portugal's filhós. They are small eggy balls of yeast dough deep-fried and coated in sugar.

 

Immigrants have brought various doughnut varieties to the United States. To celebrate Fat Tuesday in eastern Pennsylvania, churches sell a potato starch doughnut called a Fastnacht (or Fasnacht). The treats are so popular there that Fat Tuesday is often called Fastnacht Day. The Polish doughnut, the pączki, is popular in U.S. cities with large Polish communities such as Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit.

 

In regions of the country where apples are widely grown, especially the Northeast and Midwest states, cider doughnuts are a harvest season specialty, especially at orchards open to tourists, where they can be served fresh. Cider doughnuts are a cake doughnut with apple cider in the batter. The use of cider affects both the texture and flavor, resulting in a denser, moister product. They are often coated with either granulated or powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar.

 

In Southern Louisiana, a popular variety of the doughnut is the beignet, a fried, square doughnut served traditionally with powdered sugar. Perhaps the most famous purveyor of beignets is New Orleans restaurant Cafe Du Monde.

 

In Quebec, homemade doughnuts called beignes de Noël are traditional Christmas desserts.

 

OCEANIA

AUSTRALIA

In Australia, the doughnut is a popular snack food. Jam doughnuts are particularly popular and a unique aspect of Australian culture, especially in Melbourne, Victoria and the Queen Victoria Market, where they are a tradition. Jam doughnuts are similar to a Berliner, but are served hot with red jam (raspberry or strawberry) injected into a bun that is deep-fried and then frosted in either sugar or cinnamon. Jam doughnuts are sometimes also bought frozen. In South Australia, they are known as Berliner or Kitchener and often served in cafes. A variant is the custard-filled doughnut.

 

Mobile vans that serve doughnuts, traditional or jam, are often seen at spectator events, carnivals and fetes and by the roadside near high-traffic areas like airports and the carparks of large shopping centers. Traditional cinnamon doughnuts are readily available in Australia from specialised retailers and convenience stores. Doughnuts are a popular choice for schools and other not-for-profit groups to cook and sell as a fundraiser.

 

NEW ZEALAND

In New Zealand, the doughnut is a popular food snack available in corner dairies. They are in the form of a long sweet bread roll with a deep cut down its long axis. In this cut is placed a long dollop of sweetened clotted cream and on top of this is a spot of strawberry jam. Doughnuts are of two varieties: fresh cream or mock cream.

 

The rounded variety is widely available as well.

 

SOUTH AMERICA

BRAZIL

In Brazil, bakeries, grocery stores and pastry shops sell ball-shaped doughnuts popularly known as "sonhos" (lit. dreams). The dessert was brought to Brazil by Portuguese colonizers that had contact with Dutch and German traders. They are the equivalent of nowadays "bolas de Berlim" (lit. balls of Berlin) in Portugal, but the traditional Portuguese yellow cream was substituted by local dairy and fruit products. They are made of a special type of bread filled with "goiabada" (guava jelly) or milk cream, and covered by white sugar.

 

CHILE

Berlin (plural Berlines) doughnut is popular in Chile because of the large German community. It may be filled with jam or with manjar, the Chilean version of dulce de leche.

 

PERU

Peruvian cuisine includes picarones which are doughnut-shaped fritters made with a squash and sweet potato base. These snacks are almost always served with a drizzle of sweet molasses-based sauce.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Friday at the Festival of Speed - wet, very wet at times.

The United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, located inside the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex Heroes & Legends building on Merritt Island, Florida, honors American astronauts and features the world's largest collection of their personal memorabilia, focusing on those astronauts who have been inducted into the Hall. Exhibits include Wally Schirra's Sigma 7 space capsule from the fifth crewed Mercury mission and the Gemini IX spacecraft flown by Gene Cernan and Thomas P. Stafford in 1966.

 

In the 1980s, the six then-surviving Mercury Seven astronauts conceived of establishing a place where US space travelers could be remembered and honored, along the lines of halls of fame for other fields. The Mercury Seven Foundation and Astronaut Scholarship Foundation were formed, and have a role in the ongoing operations of the Hall of Fame. The foundation's first executive director was former Associated Press space reporter Howard Benedict.

 

The Astronaut Hall of Fame was opened on October 29, 1990, by the U.S. Space Camp Foundation, which was the first owner of the facility. It was located next to the Florida branch of Space Camp.

 

The Hall of Fame closed for several months in 2002 when U.S. Space Camp Foundation's creditors foreclosed on the property due to low attendance and mounting debt. That September, an auction was held and the property was purchased by Delaware North Park Services on behalf of NASA and the property was added to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. The Hall of Fame re-opened December 14, 2002.

 

The Hall of Fame, which was originally located just west of the NASA Causeway, closed to the public on November 2, 2015, in preparation for its relocation to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex 6 miles (9.7 km) to the east on Merritt Island. Outside of the original building was a full-scale replica of a Space Shuttle orbiter named Inspiration (originally named "Shuttle To Tomorrow" where visitors could enter and view a program). Inspiration served only as an outdoor, full scale, static display which visitors could not enter. After the Hall of Fame was transferred to the KSC Visitor Complex, Inspiration was acquired by LVX System and was placed in storage at the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center; in 2016, the shuttle was loaded on to a barge to be taken for refurbishment before going on an educational tour.

 

The building was purchased at auction by visitor complex operator Delaware North and renamed the ATX Center, and for a time housed educational programs including Camp Kennedy Space Center and the Astronaut Training Experience. Those programs have since been moved to the KSC Visitor Complex, and as of December 2019, the structure was being offered for lease. In July 2020, Lockheed Martin announced it would lease the building to support work on the NASA Orion crew capsule.

 

Inductees into the Hall of Fame are selected by a blue ribbon committee of former NASA officials and flight controllers, historians, journalists, and other space authorities (including former astronauts) based on their accomplishments in space or their contributions to the advancement of space exploration. Except for 2002, inductions have been held every year since 2001.

 

As its inaugural class in 1990, the Hall of Fame inducted the United States' original group of astronauts: the Mercury Seven. In addition to being the first American astronauts, they set several firsts in American spaceflight, both auspicious and tragic. Alan Shepard was the first American in space and later became one of the twelve people to walk on the Moon. John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth and after his induction went on, in 1998, to become the oldest man to fly in space, aged 77. Gus Grissom was the first American to fly in space twice and was the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 1, which resulted in the first astronaut deaths directly related to preparation for spaceflight.

 

Thirteen astronauts from the Gemini and Apollo programs were inducted in the second class of 1993. This class included the first and last humans to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan; Ed White, the first American to walk in space (also killed in the Apollo 1 accident); Jim Lovell, commander of the famously near-tragic Apollo 13; and John Young, whose six flights included a moonwalk and command of the first Space Shuttle mission.

 

The third class was inducted in 1997 and consisted of the 24 additional Apollo, Skylab, and ASTP astronauts. Notable members of the class were Roger Chaffee, the third astronaut killed in the Apollo 1 fire and the only unflown astronaut in the Hall; Harrison Schmitt, the first scientist and next-to-last person to walk on the Moon; and Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, the Apollo 13 crewmembers not previously inducted.

 

The philosophy regarding the first three groups of inductees was that all astronauts who flew in NASA's "pioneering" programs (which would include Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Apollo Applications Program (Skylab), and Apollo-Soyuz Test Project) would be included simply by virtue of their participation in a spaceflight in these early programs. The first group (the inaugural class of 1990) would only include the original Mercury astronauts (most of whom would go on to fly in later programs). The second group of inductees would include those astronauts who began their spaceflight careers during Gemini (all of whom would go on to fly in later programs). The third group of inductees would include those astronauts who began their spaceflight careers during Apollo, Skylab, and ASTP (some of whom would go on to fly in the Space Shuttle program). Since it would not be practical (or meaningful) to induct all astronauts who ever flew in space, all subsequent inductees (Space Shuttle program and beyond) are considered based on their accomplishments and contributions to the human spaceflight endeavor which would set them apart from their peers.

 

Over four dozen astronauts from the Space Shuttle program have been inducted since 2001. Among these are Sally Ride, the first American woman in space; Story Musgrave, who flew six missions in the 1980s and 90s; and Francis Scobee, commander of the ill-fated final Challenger mission.

 

The 2010 class consisted of Guion Bluford Jr., Kenneth Bowersox, Frank Culbertson and Kathryn Thornton. The 2011 inductees were Karol Bobko and Susan Helms. The 2012 inductees were Franklin Chang-Diaz, Kevin Chilton and Charles Precourt. Bonnie Dunbar, Curt Brown and Eileen Collins were inducted in 2013, and Shannon Lucid and Jerry Ross comprised the 2014 class.

 

Those inducted in 2015 were John Grunsfeld, Steven Lindsey, Kent Rominger, and Rhea Seddon. In 2016, inductees included Brian Duffy and Scott E. Parazynski. Ellen Ochoa and Michael Foale were announced as the 2017 class of the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame. Scott Altman and Thomas Jones followed in 2018. The 2019 inductees were James Buchli and Janet L. Kavandi.

 

Michael López-Alegría, Scott Kelly and Pamela Melroy were the 2020 inductees, inducted in a November 2021 ceremony. The 2022 inductees were Christopher Ferguson, David Leestma, and Sandra Magnus. Roy Bridges Jr. and Mark Kelly were the 2023 inductees.

 

The Hall of Heroes is composed of tributes to the inductees. Among the Hall of Fame's displays is Sigma 7, the Mercury spacecraft piloted by Wally Schirra which orbited the Earth six times in 1962, and the Gemini 9A capsule flown by Gene Cernan and Thomas P. Stafford in 1966. An Astronaut Adventure room includes simulators for use by children.

 

The spacesuit worn by Gus Grissom during his 1961 Liberty Bell 7 Mercury flight is on display and has been the subject of a dispute between NASA and Grissom's heirs and supporters since 2002. The spacesuit, along with other Grissom artifacts, were loaned to the original owners of the Hall of Fame by the Grissom family when it opened. After the Hall of Fame went into bankruptcy and was taken over by a NASA contractor in 2002, the family requested that all their items be returned. All of the items were returned to Grissom's family except the spacesuit, because both NASA and the Grissoms claim ownership of it. NASA claims Grissom checked out the spacesuit for a show and tell at his son's school, and then never returned it, while the Grissoms claim Gus rescued the spacesuit from a scrap heap.

 

The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968, KSC has been NASA's primary launch center of human spaceflight. Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC.[4] Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). The management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources and operate facilities on each other's property.

 

Though the first Apollo flights and all Project Mercury and Project Gemini flights took off from the then-Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the launches were managed by KSC and its previous organization, the Launch Operations Directorate. Starting with the fourth Gemini mission, the NASA launch control center in Florida (Mercury Control Center, later the Launch Control Center) began handing off control of the vehicle to the Mission Control Center in Houston, shortly after liftoff; in prior missions it held control throughout the entire mission.

 

Additionally, the center manages launch of robotic and commercial crew missions and researches food production and In-Situ Resource Utilization for off-Earth exploration. Since 2010, the center has worked to become a multi-user spaceport through industry partnerships, even adding a new launch pad (LC-39C) in 2015.

 

There are about 700 facilities and buildings grouped across the center's 144,000 acres (580 km2). Among the unique facilities at KSC are the 525-foot (160 m) tall Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking NASA's largest rockets, the Launch Control Center, which conducts space launches at KSC, the Operations and Checkout Building, which houses the astronauts dormitories and suit-up area, a Space Station factory, and a 3-mile (4.8 km) long Shuttle Landing Facility. There is also a Visitor Complex open to the public on site.

 

Since 1949, the military had been performing launch operations at what would become Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. In December 1959, the Department of Defense transferred 5,000 personnel and the Missile Firing Laboratory to NASA to become the Launch Operations Directorate under NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

 

President John F. Kennedy's 1961 goal of a crewed lunar landing by 1970 required an expansion of launch operations. On July 1, 1962, the Launch Operations Directorate was separated from MSFC to become the Launch Operations Center (LOC). Also, Cape Canaveral was inadequate to host the new launch facility design required for the mammoth 363-foot (111 m) tall, 7,500,000-pound-force (33,000 kN) thrust Saturn V rocket, which would be assembled vertically in a large hangar and transported on a mobile platform to one of several launch pads. Therefore, the decision was made to build a new LOC site located adjacent to Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island.

 

NASA began land acquisition in 1962, buying title to 131 square miles (340 km2) and negotiating with the state of Florida for an additional 87 square miles (230 km2). The major buildings in KSC's Industrial Area were designed by architect Charles Luckman. Construction began in November 1962, and Kennedy visited the site twice in 1962, and again just a week before his assassination on November 22, 1963.

 

On November 29, 1963, the facility was given its current name by President Lyndon B. Johnson under Executive Order 11129. Johnson's order joined both the civilian LOC and the military Cape Canaveral station ("the facilities of Station No. 1 of the Atlantic Missile Range") under the designation "John F. Kennedy Space Center", spawning some confusion joining the two in the public mind. NASA Administrator James E. Webb clarified this by issuing a directive stating the Kennedy Space Center name applied only to the LOC, while the Air Force issued a general order renaming the military launch site Cape Kennedy Air Force Station.

 

Located on Merritt Island, Florida, the center is north-northwest of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Miami and Jacksonville on Florida's Space Coast, due east of Orlando. It is 34 miles (55 km) long and roughly six miles (9.7 km) wide, covering 219 square miles (570 km2). KSC is a major central Florida tourist destination and is approximately one hour's drive from the Orlando area. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers public tours of the center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

 

The KSC Industrial Area, where many of the center's support facilities are located, is 5 miles (8 km) south of LC-39. It includes the Headquarters Building, the Operations and Checkout Building and the Central Instrumentation Facility. The astronaut crew quarters are in the O&C; before it was completed, the astronaut crew quarters were located in Hangar S[39] at the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex (now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station). Located at KSC was the Merritt Island Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network station (MILA), a key radio communications and spacecraft tracking complex.

 

Facilities at the Kennedy Space Center are directly related to its mission to launch and recover missions. Facilities are available to prepare and maintain spacecraft and payloads for flight. The Headquarters (HQ) Building houses offices for the Center Director, library, film and photo archives, a print shop and security. When the KSC Library first opened, it was part of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. However, in 1965, the library moved into three separate sections in the newly opened NASA headquarters before eventually becoming a single unit in 1970. The library contains over four million items related to the history and the work at Kennedy. As one of ten NASA center libraries in the country, their collection focuses on engineering, science, and technology. The archives contain planning documents, film reels, and original photographs covering the history of KSC. The library is not open to the public but is available for KSC, Space Force, and Navy employees who work on site. Many of the media items from the collection are digitized and available through NASA's KSC Media Gallery or through their more up-to-date Flickr gallery.

 

A new Headquarters Building was completed in 2019 as part of the Central Campus consolidation. Groundbreaking began in 2014.

 

The center operated its own 17-mile (27 km) short-line railroad. This operation was discontinued in 2015, with the sale of its final two locomotives. A third had already been donated to a museum. The line was costing $1.3 million annually to maintain.

 

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, operated by Delaware North since 1995, has a variety of exhibits, artifacts, displays and attractions on the history and future of human and robotic spaceflight. Bus tours of KSC originate from here. The complex also includes the separate Apollo/Saturn V Center, north of the VAB and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, six miles west near Titusville. There were 1.5 million visitors in 2009. It had some 700 employees.

 

It was announced on May 29, 2015, that the Astronaut Hall of Fame exhibit would be moved from its current location to another location within the Visitor Complex to make room for an upcoming high-tech attraction entitled "Heroes and Legends". The attraction, designed by Orlando-based design firm Falcon's Treehouse, opened November 11, 2016.

 

In March 2016, the visitor center unveiled the new location of the iconic countdown clock at the complex's entrance; previously, the clock was located with a flagpole at the press site. The clock was originally built and installed in 1969 and listed with the flagpole in the National Register of Historic Places in January 2000. In 2019, NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo program, and the launch of Apollo 10 on May 18. In summer of 2019, Lunar Module 9 (LM-9) was relocated to the Apollo/Saturn V Center as part of an initiative to rededicate the center and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Program.

 

The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten field centers. Since December 1968, KSC has been NASA's primary launch center of American spaceflight, research, and technology. Launch operations for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). The management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources and operate facilities on each other's property.

 

Though the first Apollo flights and all Project Mercury and Project Gemini flights took off from the then-Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the launches were managed by KSC and its previous organization, the Launch Operations Directorate. Starting with the fourth Gemini mission, the NASA launch control center in Florida (Mercury Control Center, later the Launch Control Center) began handing off control of the vehicle to the Mission Control Center in Houston, shortly after liftoff; in prior missions it held control throughout the entire mission.

 

Additionally, the center manages launch of robotic and commercial crew missions and researches food production and in-situ resource utilization for off-Earth exploration. Since 2010, the center has worked to become a multi-user spaceport through industry partnerships, even adding a new launch pad (LC-39C) in 2015.

 

There are about 700 facilities and buildings grouped throughout the center's 144,000 acres (580 km2). Among the unique facilities at KSC are the 525-foot (160 m) tall Vehicle Assembly Building for stacking NASA's largest rockets, the Launch Control Center, which conducts space launches at KSC, the Operations and Checkout Building, which houses the astronauts dormitories and suit-up area, a Space Station factory, and a 3-mile (4.8 km) long Shuttle Landing Facility. There is also a Visitor Complex on site that is open to the public.

 

Since 1949, the military had been performing launch operations at what would become Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. In December 1959, the Department of Defense transferred 5,000 personnel and the Missile Firing Laboratory to NASA to become the Launch Operations Directorate under NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

 

President John F. Kennedy's 1961 goal of a crewed lunar landing by 1970 required an expansion of launch operations. On July 1, 1962, the Launch Operations Directorate was separated from MSFC to become the Launch Operations Center (LOC). Also, Cape Canaveral was inadequate to host the new launch facility design required for the mammoth 363-foot (111 m) tall, 7,500,000-pound-force (33,000 kN) thrust Saturn V rocket, which would be assembled vertically in a large hangar and transported on a mobile platform to one of several launch pads. Therefore, the decision was made to build a new LOC site located adjacent to Cape Canaveral on Merritt Island.

 

NASA began land acquisition in 1962, buying title to 131 square miles (340 km2) and negotiating with the state of Florida for an additional 87 square miles (230 km2). The major buildings in KSC's Industrial Area were designed by architect Charles Luckman. Construction began in November 1962, and Kennedy visited the site twice in 1962, and again just a week before his assassination on November 22, 1963.

 

On November 29, 1963, the facility was named by President Lyndon B. Johnson under Executive Order 11129. Johnson's order joined both the civilian LOC and the military Cape Canaveral station ("the facilities of Station No. 1 of the Atlantic Missile Range") under the designation "John F. Kennedy Space Center", spawning some confusion joining the two in the public mind. NASA Administrator James E. Webb clarified this by issuing a directive stating the Kennedy Space Center name applied only to the LOC, while the Air Force issued a general order renaming the military launch site Cape Kennedy Air Force Station.

 

Located on Merritt Island, Florida, the center is north-northwest of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Miami and Jacksonville on Florida's Space Coast, due east of Orlando. It is 34 miles (55 km) long and roughly six miles (9.7 km) wide, covering 219 square miles (570 km2). KSC is a major central Florida tourist destination and is approximately one hour's drive from the Orlando area. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers public tours of the center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

 

From 1967 through 1973, there were 13 Saturn V launches, including the ten remaining Apollo missions after Apollo 7. The first of two uncrewed flights, Apollo 4 (Apollo-Saturn 501) on November 9, 1967, was also the first rocket launch from KSC. The Saturn V's first crewed launch on December 21, 1968, was Apollo 8's lunar orbiting mission. The next two missions tested the Lunar Module: Apollo 9 (Earth orbit) and Apollo 10 (lunar orbit). Apollo 11, launched from Pad A on July 16, 1969, made the first Moon landing on July 20. The Apollo 11 launch included crewmembers Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin, and attracted a record-breaking 650 million television viewers. Apollo 12 followed four months later. From 1970 to 1972, the Apollo program concluded at KSC with the launches of missions 13 through 17.

 

On May 14, 1973, the last Saturn V launch put the Skylab space station in orbit from Pad 39A. By this time, the Cape Kennedy pads 34 and 37 used for the Saturn IB were decommissioned, so Pad 39B was modified to accommodate the Saturn IB, and used to launch three crewed missions to Skylab that year, as well as the final Apollo spacecraft for the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project in 1975.

 

As the Space Shuttle was being designed, NASA received proposals for building alternative launch-and-landing sites at locations other than KSC, which demanded study. KSC had important advantages, including its existing facilities; location on the Intracoastal Waterway; and its southern latitude, which gives a velocity advantage to missions launched in easterly near-equatorial orbits. Disadvantages included: its inability to safely launch military missions into polar orbit, since spent boosters would be likely to fall on the Carolinas or Cuba; corrosion from the salt air; and frequent cloudy or stormy weather. Although building a new site at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico was seriously considered, NASA announced its decision in April 1972 to use KSC for the shuttle. Since the Shuttle could not be landed automatically or by remote control, the launch of Columbia on April 12, 1981 for its first orbital mission STS-1, was NASA's first crewed launch of a vehicle that had not been tested in prior uncrewed launches.

 

In 1976, the VAB's south parking area was the site of Third Century America, a science and technology display commemorating the U.S. Bicentennial. Concurrent with this event, the U.S. flag was painted on the south side of the VAB. During the late 1970s, LC-39 was reconfigured to support the Space Shuttle. Two Orbiter Processing Facilities were built near the VAB as hangars with a third added in the 1980s.

 

KSC's 2.9-mile (4.7 km) Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) was the orbiters' primary end-of-mission landing site, although the first KSC landing did not take place until the tenth flight, when Challenger completed STS-41-B on February 11, 1984; the primary landing site until then was Edwards Air Force Base in California, subsequently used as a backup landing site. The SLF also provided a return-to-launch-site (RTLS) abort option, which was not utilized. The SLF is among the longest runways in the world.

 

On October 28, 2009, the Ares I-X launch from Pad 39B was the first uncrewed launch from KSC since the Skylab workshop in 1973.

 

Beginning in 1958, NASA and military worked side by side on robotic mission launches (previously referred to as unmanned), cooperating as they broke ground in the field. In the early 1960s, NASA had as many as two robotic mission launches a month. The frequent number of flights allowed for quick evolution of the vehicles, as engineers gathered data, learned from anomalies and implemented upgrades. In 1963, with the intent of KSC ELV work focusing on the ground support equipment and facilities, a separate Atlas/Centaur organization was formed under NASA's Lewis Center (now Glenn Research Center (GRC)), taking that responsibility from the Launch Operations Center (aka KSC).

 

Though almost all robotics missions launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), KSC "oversaw the final assembly and testing of rockets as they arrived at the Cape." In 1965, KSC's Unmanned Launch Operations directorate became responsible for all NASA uncrewed launch operations, including those at Vandenberg Space Force Base. From the 1950s to 1978, KSC chose the rocket and payload processing facilities for all robotic missions launching in the U.S., overseeing their near launch processing and checkout. In addition to government missions, KSC performed this service for commercial and foreign missions also, though non-U.S. government entities provided reimbursement. NASA also funded Cape Canaveral Space Force Station launch pad maintenance and launch vehicle improvements.

 

All this changed with the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, after which NASA only coordinated its own and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ELV launches. Companies were able to "operate their own launch vehicles" and utilize NASA's launch facilities. Payload processing handled by private firms also started to occur outside of KSC. Reagan's 1988 space policy furthered the movement of this work from KSC to commercial companies. That same year, launch complexes on Cape Canaveral Air Force Force Station started transferring from NASA to Air Force Space Command management.

 

In the 1990s, though KSC was not performing the hands-on ELV work, engineers still maintained an understanding of ELVs and had contracts allowing them insight into the vehicles so they could provide knowledgeable oversight. KSC also worked on ELV research and analysis and the contractors were able to utilize KSC personnel as a resource for technical issues. KSC, with the payload and launch vehicle industries, developed advances in automation of the ELV launch and ground operations to enable competitiveness of U.S. rockets against the global market.

 

In 1998, the Launch Services Program (LSP) formed at KSC, pulling together programs (and personnel) that already existed at KSC, GRC, Goddard Space Flight Center, and more to manage the launch of NASA and NOAA robotic missions. Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and VAFB are the primary launch sites for LSP missions, though other sites are occasionally used. LSP payloads such as the Mars Science Laboratory have been processed at KSC before being transferred to a launch pad on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

 

On 16 November 2022, at 06:47:44 UTC the Space Launch System (SLS) was launched from Complex 39B as part of the Artemis 1 mission.

 

As the International Space Station modules design began in the early 1990s, KSC began to work with other NASA centers and international partners to prepare for processing before launch onboard the Space Shuttles. KSC utilized its hands-on experience processing the 22 Spacelab missions in the Operations and Checkout Building to gather expectations of ISS processing. These experiences were incorporated into the design of the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF), which began construction in 1991. The Space Station Directorate formed in 1996. KSC personnel were embedded at station module factories for insight into their processes.

 

From 1997 to 2007, KSC planned and performed on the ground integration tests and checkouts of station modules: three Multi-Element Integration Testing (MEIT) sessions and the Integration Systems Test (IST). Numerous issues were found and corrected that would have been difficult to nearly impossible to do on-orbit.

 

Today KSC continues to process ISS payloads from across the world before launch along with developing its experiments for on orbit. The proposed Lunar Gateway would be manufactured and processed at the Space Station Processing Facility.

 

The following are current programs and initiatives at Kennedy Space Center:

Commercial Crew Program

Exploration Ground Systems Program

NASA is currently designing the next heavy launch vehicle known as the Space Launch System (SLS) for continuation of human spaceflight.

On December 5, 2014, NASA launched the first uncrewed flight test of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), currently under development to facilitate human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

Launch Services Program

Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa)

Research and Technology

Artemis program

Lunar Gateway

International Space Station Payloads

Camp KSC: educational camps for schoolchildren in spring and summer, with a focus on space, aviation and robotics.

 

The KSC Industrial Area, where many of the center's support facilities are located, is 5 miles (8 km) south of LC-39. It includes the Headquarters Building, the Operations and Checkout Building and the Central Instrumentation Facility. The astronaut crew quarters are in the O&C; before it was completed, the astronaut crew quarters were located in Hangar S at the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex (now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station). Located at KSC was the Merritt Island Spaceflight Tracking and Data Network station (MILA), a key radio communications and spacecraft tracking complex.

 

Facilities at the Kennedy Space Center are directly related to its mission to launch and recover missions. Facilities are available to prepare and maintain spacecraft and payloads for flight. The Headquarters (HQ) Building houses offices for the Center Director, library, film and photo archives, a print shop and security. When the KSC Library first opened, it was part of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. However, in 1965, the library moved into three separate sections in the newly opened NASA headquarters before eventually becoming a single unit in 1970. The library contains over four million items related to the history and the work at Kennedy. As one of ten NASA center libraries in the country, their collection focuses on engineering, science, and technology. The archives contain planning documents, film reels, and original photographs covering the history of KSC. The library is not open to the public but is available for KSC, Space Force, and Navy employees who work on site. Many of the media items from the collection are digitized and available through NASA's KSC Media Gallery Archived December 6, 2020, at the Wayback Machine or through their more up-to-date Flickr gallery.

 

A new Headquarters Building was completed in 2019 as part of the Central Campus consolidation. Groundbreaking began in 2014.

 

The center operated its own 17-mile (27 km) short-line railroad. This operation was discontinued in 2015, with the sale of its final two locomotives. A third had already been donated to a museum. The line was costing $1.3 million annually to maintain.

 

The Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building (O&C) (previously known as the Manned Spacecraft Operations Building) is a historic site on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places dating back to the 1960s and was used to receive, process, and integrate payloads for the Gemini and Apollo programs, the Skylab program in the 1970s, and for initial segments of the International Space Station through the 1990s. The Apollo and Space Shuttle astronauts would board the astronaut transfer van to launch complex 39 from the O&C building.

The three-story, 457,000-square-foot (42,500 m2) Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF) consists of two enormous processing bays, an airlock, operational control rooms, laboratories, logistics areas and office space for support of non-hazardous Space Station and Shuttle payloads to ISO 14644-1 class 5 standards. Opened in 1994, it is the largest factory building in the KSC industrial area.

The Vertical Processing Facility (VPF) features a 71-by-38-foot (22 by 12 m) door where payloads that are processed in the vertical position are brought in and manipulated with two overhead cranes and a hoist capable of lifting up to 35 short tons (32 t).

The Hypergolic Maintenance and Checkout Area (HMCA) comprises three buildings that are isolated from the rest of the industrial area because of the hazardous materials handled there. Hypergolic-fueled modules that made up the Space Shuttle Orbiter's reaction control system, orbital maneuvering system and auxiliary power units were stored and serviced in the HMCF.

The Multi-Payload Processing Facility is a 19,647 square feet (1,825.3 m2) building used for Orion spacecraft and payload processing.

The Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) contains a 70-by-110-foot (21 by 34 m) service bay, with a 100,000-pound (45,000 kg), 85-foot (26 m) hook height. It also contains a 58-by-80-foot (18 by 24 m) payload airlock. Its temperature is maintained at 70 °F (21 °C).[55]

The Blue Origin rocket manufacturing facility is located immediately south of the KSC visitor complex. Completed in 2019, it serves as the company's factory for the manufacture of New Glenn orbital rockets.

 

Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) was originally built for the Saturn V, the largest and most powerful operational launch vehicle until the Space Launch System, for the Apollo crewed Moon landing program. Since the end of the Apollo program in 1972, LC-39 has been used to launch every NASA human space flight, including Skylab (1973), the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (1975), and the Space Shuttle program (1981–2011).

 

Since December 1968, all launch operations have been conducted from launch pads A and B at LC-39. Both pads are on the ocean, 3 miles (4.8 km) east of the VAB. From 1969 to 1972, LC-39 was the "Moonport" for all six Apollo crewed Moon landing missions using the Saturn V, and was used from 1981 to 2011 for all Space Shuttle launches.

 

Human missions to the Moon required the large three-stage Saturn V rocket, which was 363 feet (111 meters) tall and 33 feet (10 meters) in diameter. At KSC, Launch Complex 39 was built on Merritt Island to accommodate the new rocket. Construction of the $800 million project began in November 1962. LC-39 pads A and B were completed by October 1965 (planned Pads C, D and E were canceled), the VAB was completed in June 1965, and the infrastructure by late 1966.

 

The complex includes: the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), a 130,000,000 cubic feet (3,700,000 m3) hangar capable of holding four Saturn Vs. The VAB was the largest structure in the world by volume when completed in 1965.

a transporter capable of carrying 5,440 tons along a crawlerway to either of two launch pads;

a 446-foot (136 m) mobile service structure, with three Mobile Launcher Platforms, each containing a fixed launch umbilical tower;

the Launch Control Center; and

a news media facility.

 

Launch Complex 48 (LC-48) is a multi-user launch site under construction for small launchers and spacecraft. It will be located between Launch Complex 39A and Space Launch Complex 41, with LC-39A to the north and SLC-41 to the south. LC-48 will be constructed as a "clean pad" to support multiple launch systems with differing propellant needs. While initially only planned to have a single pad, the complex is capable of being expanded to two at a later date.

 

As a part of promoting commercial space industry growth in the area and the overall center as a multi-user spaceport, KSC leases some of its properties. Here are some major examples:

 

Exploration Park to multiple users (partnership with Space Florida)

Shuttle Landing Facility to Space Florida (who contracts use to private companies)

Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF)-3 to Boeing (for CST-100 Starliner)

Launch Complex 39A, Launch Control Center Firing Room 4 and land for SpaceX's Roberts Road facility (Hanger X) to SpaceX

O&C High Bay to Lockheed Martin (for Orion processing)

Land for FPL's Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center to Florida Power and Light (FPL)

Hypergolic Maintenance Facility (HMF) to United Paradyne Corporation (UPC)

 

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, operated by Delaware North since 1995, has a variety of exhibits, artifacts, displays and attractions on the history and future of human and robotic spaceflight. Bus tours of KSC originate from here. The complex also includes the separate Apollo/Saturn V Center, north of the VAB and the United States Astronaut Hall of Fame, six miles west near Titusville. There were 1.5 million visitors in 2009. It had some 700 employees.

 

It was announced on May 29, 2015, that the Astronaut Hall of Fame exhibit would be moved from its current location to another location within the Visitor Complex to make room for an upcoming high-tech attraction entitled "Heroes and Legends". The attraction, designed by Orlando-based design firm Falcon's Treehouse, opened November 11, 2016.

 

In March 2016, the visitor center unveiled the new location of the iconic countdown clock at the complex's entrance; previously, the clock was located with a flagpole at the press site. The clock was originally built and installed in 1969 and listed with the flagpole in the National Register of Historic Places in January 2000. In 2019, NASA celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo program, and the launch of Apollo 10 on May 18. In summer of 2019, Lunar Module 9 (LM-9) was relocated to the Apollo/Saturn V Center as part of an initiative to rededicate the center and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Program.

 

Historic locations

NASA lists the following Historic Districts at KSC; each district has multiple associated facilities:

 

Launch Complex 39: Pad A Historic District

Launch Complex 39: Pad B Historic District

Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) Area Historic District

Orbiter Processing Historic District

Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Disassembly and Refurbishment Complex Historic District

NASA KSC Railroad System Historic District

NASA-owned Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Industrial Area Historic District

There are 24 historic properties outside of these historic districts, including the Space Shuttle Atlantis, Vehicle Assembly Building, Crawlerway, and Operations and Checkout Building.[71] KSC has one National Historic Landmark, 78 National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) listed or eligible sites, and 100 Archaeological Sites.

 

Further information: John F. Kennedy Space Center MPS

Other facilities

The Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility (RPSF) is responsible for the preparation of solid rocket booster segments for transportation to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The RPSF was built in 1984 to perform SRB operations that had previously been conducted in high bays 2 and 4 of the VAB at the beginning of the Space Shuttle program. It was used until the Space Shuttle's retirement, and will be used in the future by the Space Launch System[75] (SLS) and OmegA rockets.

Handpainted porcelain plate, inglaze, fired at 1200°C, 7.5 inch/19 cm, made by Tulip Art Projects.

 

Available at the New Museum Store at the new New Museum building in Soho.

All proceeds from the New Museum Store go directly to support the artistic programs of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, a non-profit organization.

 

Founded in 1977, the New Museum of Contemporary Art is the premier contemporary art museum in New York City and among the most important internationally. The Museum's program of dynamic solo exhibitions and landmark group shows defines key moments in the development of contemporary art, reflects the global nature of art today, and spans a vast array of cultural activities and media. Their magnificent new building, at 235 Bowery, designed by Sejima & Nishizawa (SANAA) opened on December 1, 2007.

The Ajanta Caves (Ajiṇṭhā leni; Marathi: अजिंठा लेणी) in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra, India are about 30 rock-cut Buddhist cave monuments which date from the 2nd century BCE to about 480 or 650 CE. The caves include paintings and sculptures described by the government Archaeological Survey of India as "the finest surviving examples of Indian art, particularly painting", which are masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, with figures of the Buddha and depictions of the Jataka tales. The caves were built in two phases starting around the 2nd century BCE, with the second group of caves built around 400–650 CE according to older accounts, or all in a brief period of 460 to 480 according to the recent proposals of Walter M. Spink. The site is a protected monument in the care of the Archaeological Survey of India, and since 1983, the Ajanta Caves have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

The caves are located in the Indian state of Maharashtra, near Jalgaon and just outside the village of Ajinṭhā 20°31′56″N 75°44′44″E), about 59 kilometres from Jalgaon railway station on the Delhi – Mumbai line and Howrah-Nagpur-Mumbai line of the Central Railway zone, and 104 kilometres from the city of Aurangabad. They are 100 kilometres from the Ellora Caves, which contain Hindu and Jain temples as well as Buddhist caves, the last dating from a period similar to Ajanta. The Ajanta caves are cut into the side of a cliff that is on the south side of a U-shaped gorge on the small river Waghur, and although they are now along and above a modern pathway running across the cliff they were originally reached by individual stairs or ladders from the side of the river 35 to 110 feet below.

 

The area was previously heavily forested, and after the site ceased to be used the caves were covered by jungle until accidentally rediscovered in 1819 by a British officer on a hunting party. They are Buddhist monastic buildings, apparently representing a number of distinct "monasteries" or colleges. The caves are numbered 1 to 28 according to their place along the path, beginning at the entrance. Several are unfinished and some barely begun and others are small shrines, included in the traditional numbering as e.g. "9A"; "Cave 15A" was still hidden under rubble when the numbering was done. Further round the gorge are a number of waterfalls, which when the river is high are audible from outside the caves.

 

The caves form the largest corpus of early Indian wall-painting; other survivals from the area of modern India are very few, though they are related to 5th-century paintings at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka. The elaborate architectural carving in many caves is also very rare, and the style of the many figure sculptures is highly local, found only at a few nearby contemporary sites, although the Ajanta tradition can be related to the later Hindu Ellora Caves and other sites.

 

HISTORY

Like the other ancient Buddhist monasteries, Ajanta had a large emphasis on teaching, and was divided into several different caves for living, education and worship, under a central direction. Monks were probably assigned to specific caves for living. The layout reflects this organizational structure, with most of the caves only connected through the exterior. The 7th-century travelling Chinese scholar Xuanzang informs us that Dignaga, a celebrated Buddhist philosopher and controversialist, author of well-known books on logic, lived at Ajanta in the 5th century. In its prime the settlement would have accommodated several hundred teachers and pupils. Many monks who had finished their first training may have returned to Ajanta during the monsoon season from an itinerant lifestyle.

 

The caves are generally agreed to have been made in two distinct periods, separated by several centuries.

 

CAVES OF THE FIRST (SATAVAHANA) PERIOD

The earliest group of caves consists of caves 9, 10, 12, 13 and 15A. According to Walter Spink, they were made during the period 100 BCE to 100 CE, probably under the patronage of the Satavahana dynasty (230 BCE – c. 220 CE) who ruled the region. Other datings prefer the period 300 BCE to 100 BCE, though the grouping of the earlier caves is generally agreed. More early caves may have vanished through later excavations. Of these, caves 9 and 10 are stupa halls of chaitya-griha form, and caves 12, 13, and 15A are vihāras (see the architecture section below for descriptions of these types). The first phase is still often called the Hinayāna phase, as it originated when, using traditional terminology, the Hinayāna or Lesser Vehicle tradition of Buddhism was dominant, when the Buddha was revered symbolically. However the use of the term Hinayana for this period of Buddhism is now deprecated by historians; equally the caves of the second period are now mostly dated too early to be properly called Mahayana, and do not yet show the full expanded cast of supernatural beings characteristic of that phase of Buddhist art. The first Satavahana period caves lacked figurative sculpture, emphasizing the stupa instead, and in the caves of the second period the overwhelming majority of images represent the Buddha alone, or narrative scenes of his lives.

 

Spink believes that some time after the Satavahana period caves were made the site was abandoned for a considerable period until the mid-5th century, probably because the region had turned mainly Hindu

 

CAVES OF THE LATER OR VAKATAKA PERIOD

The second phase began in the 5th century. For a long time it was thought that the later caves were made over a long period from the 4th to the 7th centuries CE, but in recent decades a series of studies by the leading expert on the caves, Walter M. Spink, have argued that most of the work took place over the very brief period from 460 to 480 CE, during the reign of Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka dynasty. This view has been criticized by some scholars, but is now broadly accepted by most authors of general books on Indian art, for example Huntington and Harle.

 

The second phase is still often called the Mahāyāna or Greater Vehicle phase, but scholars now tend to avoid this nomenclature because of the problems that have surfaced regarding our understanding of Mahāyāna.

 

Some 20 cave temples were simultaneously created, for the most part viharas with a sanctuary at the back. The most elaborate caves were produced in this period, which included some "modernization" of earlier caves. Spink claims that it is possible to establish dating for this period with a very high level of precision; a fuller account of his chronology is given below. Although debate continues, Spink's ideas are increasingly widely accepted, at least in their broad conclusions. The Archaeological Survey of India website still presents the traditional dating: "The second phase of paintings started around 5th – 6th centuries A.D. and continued for the next two centuries". Caves of the second period are 1–8, 11, 14–29, some possibly extensions of earlier caves. Caves 19, 26, and 29 are chaitya-grihas, the rest viharas.

 

According to Spink, the Ajanta Caves appear to have been abandoned by wealthy patrons shortly after the fall of Harishena, in about 480 CE. They were then gradually abandoned and forgotten. During the intervening centuries, the jungle grew back and the caves were hidden, unvisited and undisturbed, although the local population were aware of at least some of them.

 

REDISCOVERY

On 28 April 1819, a British officer for the Madras Presidency, John Smith, of the 28th Cavalry, while hunting tiger, accidentally discovered the entrance to Cave No. 10 deep within the tangled undergrowth. There were local people already using the caves for prayers with a small fire, when he arrived. Exploring that first cave, long since a home to nothing more than birds and bats and a lair for other larger animals, Captain Smith vandalized the wall by scratching his name and the date, April 1819. Since he stood on a five-foot high pile of rubble collected over the years, the inscription is well above the eye-level gaze of an adult today. A paper on the caves by William Erskine was read to the Bombay Literary Society in 1822. Within a few decades, the caves became famous for their exotic setting, impressive architecture, and above all their exceptional, all but unique paintings. A number of large projects to copy the paintings were made in the century after rediscovery, covered below. In 1848 the Royal Asiatic Society established the "Bombay Cave Temple Commission" to clear, tidy and record the most important rock-cut sites in the Bombay Presidency, with John Wilson, as president. In 1861 this became the nucleus of the new Archaeological Survey of India. Until the Nizam of Hyderabad built the modern path between the caves, among other efforts to make the site easy to visit, a trip to Ajanta was a considerable adventure, and contemporary accounts dwell with relish on the dangers from falls off narrow ledges, animals and the Bhil people, who were armed with bows and arrows and had a fearsome reputation.

 

Today, fairly easily combined with Ellora in a single trip, the caves are the most popular tourist destination in Mahrashtra, and are often crowded at holiday times, increasing the threat to the caves, especially the paintings. In 2012, the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation announced plans to add to the ASI visitor centre at the entrance complete replicas of caves 1, 2, 16 & 17 to reduce crowding in the originals, and enable visitors to receive a better visual idea of the paintings, which are dimly-lit and hard to read in the caves. Figures for the year to March 2010 showed a total of 390,000 visitors to the site, divided into 362,000 domestic and 27,000 foreign. The trends over the previous few years show a considerable growth in domestic visitors, but a decline in foreign ones; the year to 2010 was the first in which foreign visitors to Ellora exceeded those to Ajanta.

 

PAINTINGS

Mural paintings survive from both the earlier and later groups of caves. Several fragments of murals preserved from the earlier caves (Caves 9 and 11) are effectively unique survivals of court-led painting in India from this period, and "show that by Sātavāhana times, if not earlier, the Indian painter had mastered an easy and fluent naturalistic style, dealing with large groups of people in a manner comparable to the reliefs of the Sāñcī toraņa crossbars".

 

Four of the later caves have large and relatively well-preserved mural paintings which "have come to represent Indian mural painting to the non-specialist", and fall into two stylistic groups, with the most famous in Caves 16 and 17, and apparently later paintings in Caves 1 and 2. The latter group were thought to be a century or more later than the others, but the revised chronology proposed by Spink would place them much closer to the earlier group, perhaps contemporary with it in a more progressive style, or one reflecting a team from a different region. The paintings are in "dry fresco", painted on top of a dry plaster surface rather than into wet plaster.

 

All the paintings appear to be the work of painters at least as used to decorating palaces as temples, and show a familiarity with and interest in details of the life of a wealthy court. We know from literary sources that painting was widely practised and appreciated in the courts of the Gupta period. Unlike much Indian painting, compositions are not laid out in horizontal compartments like a frieze, but show large scenes spreading in all directions from a single figure or group at the centre. The ceilings are also painted with sophisticated and elaborate decorative motifs, many derived from sculpture. The paintings in cave 1, which according to Spink was commissioned by Harisena himself, concentrate on those Jataka tales which show previous lives of the Buddha as a king, rather than as an animal or human commoner, and so show settings from contemporary palace life.

 

In general the later caves seem to have been painted on finished areas as excavating work continued elsewhere in the cave, as shown in caves 2 and 16 in particular. According to Spink's account of the chronology of the caves, the abandonment of work in 478 after a brief busy period accounts for the absence of painting in caves such as 4 and 17, the later being plastered in preparation for paintings that were never done.

 

COPIES

The paintings have deteriorated significantly since they were rediscovered, and a number of 19th-century copies and drawings are important for a complete understanding of the works. However, the earliest projects to copy the paintings were plagued by bad fortune. In 1846, Major Robert Gill, an Army officer from Madras presidency and a painter, was appointed by the Royal Asiatic Society to replicate the frescoes on the cave walls to exhibit these paintings in England. Gill worked on his painting at the site from 1844 to 1863 (though he continued to be based there until his death in 1875, writing books and photographing) and made 27 copies of large sections of murals, but all but four were destroyed in a fire at the Crystal Palace in London in 1866, where they were on display.

 

Another attempt was made in 1872 when the Bombay Presidency commissioned John Griffiths, then principal of the Bombay School of Art, to work with his students to make new copies, again for shipping to England. They worked on this for thirteen years and some 300 canvases were produced, many of which were displayed at the Imperial Institute on Exhibition Road in London, one of the forerunners of the Victoria and Albert Museum. But in 1885 another fire destroyed over a hundred paintings that were in storage. The V&A still has 166 paintings surviving from both sets, though none have been on permanent display since 1955. The largest are some 3 × 6 metres. A conservation project was undertaken on about half of them in 2006, also involving the University of Northumbria. Griffith and his students had unfortunately painted many of the paintings with "cheap varnish" in order to make them easier to see, which has added to the deterioration of the originals, as has, according to Spink and others, recent cleaning by the ASI.

 

A further set of copies were made between 1909 and 1911 by Christiana Herringham (Lady Herringham) and a group of students from the Calcutta School of Art that included the future Indian Modernist painter Nandalal Bose. The copies were published in full colour as the first publication of London's fledgling India Society. More than the earlier copies, these aimed to fill in holes and damage to recreate the original condition rather than record the state of the paintings as she was seeing them. According to one writer, unlike the paintings created by her predecessors Griffiths and Gill, whose copies were influenced by British Victorian styles of painting, those of the Herringham expedition preferred an 'Indian Renascence' aesthetic of the type pioneered by Abanindranath Tagore.

 

Early photographic surveys were made by Robert Gill, who learnt to use a camera from about 1856, and whose photos, including some using stereoscopy, were used in books by him and Fergusson (many are available online from the British Library), then Victor Goloubew in 1911 and E.L. Vassey, who took the photos in the four volume study of the caves by Ghulam Yazdani (published 1930–1955).

 

ARCHITECTURE

The monasteries mostly consist of vihara halls for prayer and living, which are typically rectangular with small square dormitory cells cut into the walls, and by the second period a shrine or sanctuary at the rear centred on a large statue of the Buddha, also carved from the living rock. This change reflects the movement from Hinayana to Mahāyāna Buddhism. The other type of main hall is the narrower and higher chaitya hall with a stupa as the focus at the far end, and a narrow aisle around the walls, behind a range of pillars placed close together. Other plainer rooms were for sleeping and other activities. Some of the caves have elaborate carved entrances, some with large windows over the door to admit light. There is often a colonnaded porch or verandah, with another space inside the doors running the width of the cave.

 

The central square space of the interior of the viharas is defined by square columns forming a more or less square open area. Outside this are long rectangular aisles on each side, forming a kind of cloister. Along the side and rear walls are a number of small cells entered by a narrow doorway; these are roughly square, and have small niches on their back walls. Originally they had wooden doors. The centre of the rear wall has a larger shrine-room behind, containing a large Buddha statue. The viharas of the earlier period are much simpler, and lack shrines. Spink in fact places the change to a design with a shrine to the middle of the second period, with many caves being adapted to add a shrine in mid-excavation, or after the original phase.

 

The plan of Cave 1 shows one of the largest viharas, but is fairly typical of the later group. Many others, such as Cave 16, lack the vestibule to the shrine, which leads straight off the main hall. Cave 6 is two viharas, one above the other, connected by internal stairs, with sanctuaries on both levels.

 

The four completed chaitya halls are caves 9 and 10 from the early period, and caves 19 and 26 from the later period of construction. All follow the typical form found elsewhere, with high ceilings and a central "nave" leading to the stupa, which is near the back, but allows walking behind it, as walking around stupas was (and remains) a common element of Buddhist worship (pradakshina). The later two have high ribbed roofs, which reflect timber forms, and the earlier two are thought to have used actual timber ribs, which have now perished. The two later halls have a rather unusual arrangement (also found in Cave 10 at Ellora) where the stupa is fronted by a large relief sculpture of the Buddha, standing in Cave 19 and seated in Cave 26. Cave 29 is a late and very incomplete chaitya hall.

 

The form of columns in the work of the first period is very plain and un-embellished, with both chaitya halls using simple octagonal columns, which were painted with figures. In the second period columns were far more varied and inventive, often changing profile over their height, and with elaborate carved capitals, often spreading wide. Many columns are carved over all their surface, some fluted and others carved with decoration all over, as in cave 1.

 

The flood basalt rock of the cliff, part of the Deccan Traps formed by successive volcanic eruptions at the end of the Cretaceous, is layered horizontally, and somewhat variable in quality, so the excavators had to amend their plans in places, and in places there have been collapses in the intervening centuries, as with the lost portico to cave 1. Excavation began by cutting a narrow tunnel at roof level, which was expanded downwards and outwards; the half-built vihara cave 24 shows the method. Spink believes that for the first caves of the second period the excavators had to relearn skills and techniques that had been lost in the centuries since the first period, which were then transmitted to be used at later rock-cut sites in the region, such as Ellora, and the Elephanta, Bagh, Badami and Aurangabad Caves.

 

The caves from the first period seem to have been paid for by a number of different patrons, with several inscriptions recording the donation of particular portions of a single cave, but according to Spink the later caves were each commissioned as a complete unit by a single patron from the local rulers or their court elites. After the death of Harisena smaller donors got their chance to add small "shrinelets" between the caves or add statues to existing caves, and some two hundred of these "intrusive" additions were made in sculpture, with a further number of intrusive paintings, up to three hundred in cave 10 alone.

 

A grand gateway to the site, at the apex of the gorge's horsehoe between caves 15 and 16, was approached from the river, and is decorated with elephants on either side and a nāga, or protective snake deity.

 

ICONOGRAPHY OF THE CAVES

In the pre-Christian era, the Buddha was represented symbolically, in the form of the stupa. Thus, halls were made with stupas to venerate the Buddha. In later periods the images of the Buddha started to be made in coins, relic caskets, relief or loose sculptural forms, etc. However, it took a while for the human representation of the Buddha to appear in Buddhist art. One of the earliest evidences of the Buddha's human representations are found at Buddhist archaeological sites, such as Goli, Nagarjunakonda, and Amaravati. The monasteries of those sites were built in less durable media, such as wood, brick, and stone. As far as the genre of rock-cut architecture is concerned it took many centuries for the Buddha image to be depicted. Nobody knows for sure at which rock-cut cave site the first image of the Buddha was depicted. Current research indicates that Buddha images in a portable form, made of wood or stone, were introduced, for the first time, at Kanheri, to be followed soon at Ajanta Cave 8 (Dhavalikar, Jadhav, Spink, Singh). While the Kanheri example dates to 4th or 5th century CE, the Ajanta example has been dated to c. 462–478 CE (Spink). None of the rock-cut monasteries prior to these dates, and other than these examples, show any Buddha image although hundreds of rock-cut caves were made throughout India during the first few centuries CE. And, in those caves, it is the stupa that is the object of veneration, not the image. Images of the Buddha are not found in Buddhist sailagrhas (rock-cut complexes) until the times of the Kanheri (4th–5th century CE) and Ajanta examples (c. 462–478 CE).

 

The caves of the second period, now all dated to the 5th century, were typically described as "Mahayana", but do not show the features associated with later Mahayana Buddhism. Although the beginnings of Mahāyāna teachings go back to the 1st century there is little art and archaeological evidence to suggest that it became a mainstream cult for several centuries. In Mahayana it is not Gautama Buddha but the Bodhisattva who is important, including "deity" Bodhisattva like Manjushri and Tara, as well as aspects of the Buddha such as Aksobhya, and Amitabha. Except for a few Bodhisattva, these are not depicted at Ajanta, where the Buddha remains the dominant figure. Even the Bodhisattva images of Ajanta are never central objects of worship, but are always shown as attendants of the Buddha in the shrine. If a Bodhisattva is shown in isolation, as in the Astabhaya scenes, these were done in the very last years of activities at Ajanta, and are mostly 'intrusive' in nature, meaning that they were not planned by the original patrons, and were added by new donors after the original patrons had suddenly abandoned the region in the wake of Emperor Harisena's death.

 

The contrast between iconic and aniconic representations, that is, the stupa on one hand and the image of the Buddha on the other, is now being seen as a construct of the modern scholar rather than a reality of the past. The second phase of Ajanta shows that the stupa and image coincided together. If the entire corpus of the art of Ajanta including sculpture, iconography, architecture, epigraphy, and painting are analysed afresh it will become clear that there was no duality between the symbolic and human forms of the Buddha, as far as the 5th-century phase of Ajanta is concerned. That is why most current scholars tend to avoid the terms 'Hinayana' and 'Mahayana' in the context of Ajanta. They now prefer to call the second phase by the ruling dynasty, as the Vākāţaka phase.

 

CAVES

CAVE 1

Cave 1 was built on the eastern end of the horse-shoe shaped scarp, and is now the first cave the visitor encounters. This would when first made have been a less prominent position, right at the end of the row. According to Spink, it is one of the latest caves to have been excavated, when the best sites had been taken, and was never fully inaugurated for worship by the dedication of the Buddha image in the central shrine. This is shown by the absence of sooty deposits from butter lamps on the base of the shrine image, and the lack of damage to the paintings that would have been happened if the garland-hooks around the shrine had been in use for any period of time. Although there is no epigraphic evidence, Spink believes that the Vākāţaka Emperor Harishena was the benefactor of the work, and this is reflected in the emphasis on imagery of royalty in the cave, with those Jakata tales being selected that tell of those previous lives of the Buddha in which he was royal.

 

The cliff has a more steep slope here than at other caves, so to achieve a tall grand facade it was necessary to cut far back into the slope, giving a large courtyard in front of the facade. There was originally a columned portico in front of the present facade, which can be seen "half-intact in the 1880s" in pictures of the site, but this fell down completely and the remains, despite containing fine carving, were carelessly thrown down the slope into the river, from where they have been lost, presumably carried away in monsoon torrents.

 

This cave has one of the most elaborate carved façades, with relief sculptures on entablature and ridges, and most surfaces embellished with decorative carving. There are scenes carved from the life of the Buddha as well as a number of decorative motifs. A two pillared portico, visible in the 19th-century photographs, has since perished. The cave has a front-court with cells fronted by pillared vestibules on either side. These have a high plinth level. The cave has a porch with simple cells on both ends. The absence of pillared vestibules on the ends suggest that the porch was not excavated in the latest phase of Ajanta when pillared vestibules had become a necessity and norm. Most areas of the porch were once covered with murals, of which many fragments remain, especially on the ceiling. There are three doorways: a central doorway and two side doorways. Two square windows were carved between the doorways to brighten the interiors.

 

Each wall of the hall inside is nearly 12 m long and 6.1 m high. Twelve pillars make a square colonnade inside supporting the ceiling, and creating spacious aisles along the walls. There is a shrine carved on the rear wall to house an impressive seated image of the Buddha, his hands being in the dharmachakrapravartana mudra. There are four cells on each of the left, rear, and the right walls, though due to rock fault there are none at the ends of the rear aisle. The walls are covered with paintings in a fair state of preservation, though the full scheme was never completed. The scenes depicted are mostly didactic, devotional, and ornamental, with scenes from the Jataka stories of the Buddha's former existences as a bodhisattva), the life of the Gautama Buddha, and those of his veneration. The two most famous individual painted images at Ajanta are the two over-life size figures of the protective bodhisattvas Padmapani and Vajrapani on either side of the entrance to the Buddha shrine on the wall of the rear aisle (see illustrations above). According to Spink, the original dating of the paintings to about 625 arose largely or entirely because James Fegusson, a 19th-century architectural historian, had decided that a scene showing an ambassador being received, with figures in Persian dress, represented a recorded embassy to Persia (from a Hindu monarch at that) around that date.

 

CAVE 2

Cave 2, adjacent to Cave 1, is known for the paintings that have been preserved on its walls, ceilings, and pillars. It looks similar to Cave 1 and is in a better state of preservation.

 

Cave 2 has a porch quite different from Cave one. Even the façade carvings seem to be different. The cave is supported by robust pillars, ornamented with designs. The front porch consists of cells supported by pillared vestibules on both ends. The cells on the previously "wasted areas" were needed to meet the greater housing requirements in later years. Porch-end cells became a trend in all later Vakataka excavations. The simple single cells on porch-ends were converted into CPVs or were planned to provide more room, symmetry, and beauty.

 

The paintings on the ceilings and walls of this porch have been widely published. They depict the Jataka tales that are stories of the Buddha's life in former existences as Bodhisattva. Just as the stories illustrated in cave 1 emphasize kingship, those in cave 2 show many "noble and powerful" women in prominent roles, leading to suggestions that the patron was an unknown woman. The porch's rear wall has a doorway in the center, which allows entrance to the hall. On either side of the door is a square-shaped window to brighten the interior.

 

The hall has four colonnades which are supporting the ceiling and surrounding a square in the center of the hall. Each arm or colonnade of the square is parallel to the respective walls of the hall, making an aisle in between. The colonnades have rock-beams above and below them. The capitals are carved and painted with various decorative themes that include ornamental, human, animal, vegetative, and semi-divine forms.

 

Paintings appear on almost every surface of the cave except for the floor. At various places the art work has become eroded due to decay and human interference. Therefore, many areas of the painted walls, ceilings, and pillars are fragmentary. The painted narratives of the Jataka tales are depicted only on the walls, which demanded the special attention of the devotee. They are didactic in nature, meant to inform the community about the Buddha's teachings and life through successive rebirths. Their placement on the walls required the devotee to walk through the aisles and 'read' the narratives depicted in various episodes. The narrative episodes are depicted one after another although not in a linear order. Their identification has been a core area of research since the site's rediscovery in 1819. Dieter Schlingloff's identifications have updated our knowledge on the subject.

 

CAVE 4

The Archeological Survey of India board outside the caves gives the following detail about cave 4: "This is the largest monastery planned on a grandiose scale but was never finished. An inscription on the pedestal of the buddha's image mentions that it was a gift from a person named Mathura and paleographically belongs to 6th century A.D. It consists of a verandah, a hypostylar hall, sanctum with an antechamber and a series of unfinished cells. The rear wall of the verandah contains the panel of Litany of Avalokiteśvara".

 

The sanctuary houses a colossal image of the Buddha in preaching pose flanked by bodhisattvas and celestial nymphs hovering above.

 

CAVES 9-10

Caves 9 and 10 are the two chaitya halls from the first period of construction, though both were also undergoing an uncompleted reworking at the end of the second period. Cave 10 was perhaps originally of the 1st century BCE, and cave 9 about a hundred years later. The small "shrinelets" called caves 9A to 9D and 10A also date from the second period, and were commissioned by individuals.

 

The paintings in cave 10 include some surviving from the early period, many from an incomplete programme of modernization in the second period, and a very large number of smaller late intrusive images, nearly all Buddhas and many with donor inscriptions from individuals. These mostly avoided over-painting the "official" programme and after the best positions were used up are tucked away in less prominent positions not yet painted; the total of these (including those now lost) was probably over 300, and the hands of many different artists are visible.

 

OTHER CAVES

Cave 3 is merely a start of an excavation; according to Spink it was begun right at the end of the final period of work and soon abandoned. Caves 5 and 6 are viharas, the latter on two floors, that were late works of which only the lower floor of cave 6 was ever finished. The upper floor of cave 6 has many private votive sculptures, and a shrine Buddha, but is otherwise unfinished. Cave 7 has a grand facade with two porticos but, perhaps because of faults in the rock, which posed problems in many caves, was never taken very deep into the cliff, and consists only of the two porticos and a shrine room with antechamber, with no central hall. Some cells were fitted in.

 

Cave 8 was long thought to date to the first period of construction, but Spink sees it as perhaps the earliest cave from the second period, its shrine an "afterthought". The statue may have been loose rather than carved from the living rock, as it has now vanished. The cave was painted, but only traces remain.

 

SPINK´S DETAILED CHRONOLOGY

Walter M. Spink has over recent decades developed a very precise and circumstantial chronology for the second period of work on the site, which unlike earlier scholars, he places entirely in the 5th century. This is based on evidence such as the inscriptions and artistic style, combined with the many uncompleted elements of the caves. He believes the earlier group of caves, which like other scholars he dates only approximately, to the period "between 100 BCE – 100 CE", were at some later point completely abandoned and remained so "for over three centuries", as the local population had turned mainly Hindu. This changed with the accession of the Emperor Harishena of the Vakataka Dynasty, who reigned from 460 to his death in 477. Harisena extended the Central Indian Vakataka Empire to include a stretch of the east coast of India; the Gupta Empire ruled northern India at the same period, and the Pallava dynasty much of the south.

 

According to Spink, Harisena encouraged a group of associates, including his prime minister Varahadeva and Upendragupta, the sub-king in whose territory Ajanta was, to dig out new caves, which were individually commissioned, some containing inscriptions recording the donation. This activity began in 462 but was mostly suspended in 468 because of threats from the neighbouring Asmaka kings. Work continued on only caves 1, Harisena's own commission, and 17–20, commissioned by Upendragupta. In 472 the situation was such that work was suspended completely, in a period that Spink calls "the Hiatus", which lasted until about 475, by which time the Asmakas had replaced Upendragupta as the local rulers.

 

Work was then resumed, but again disrupted by Harisena's death in 477, soon after which major excavation ceased, except at cave 26, which the Asmakas were sponsoring themselves. The Asmakas launched a revolt against Harisena's son, which brought about the end of the Vakataka Dynasty. In the years 478–480 major excavation by important patrons was replaced by a rash of "intrusions" – statues added to existing caves, and small shrines dotted about where there was space between them. These were commissioned by less powerful individuals, some monks, who had not previously been able to make additions to the large excavations of the rulers and courtiers. They were added to the facades, the return sides of the entrances, and to walls inside the caves. According to Spink, "After 480, not a single image was ever made again at the site", and as Hinduism again dominated the region, the site was again abandoned, this time for over a millennium.

 

Spink does not use "circa" in his dates, but says that "one should allow a margin of error of one year or perhaps even two in all cases".

 

IMPACT ON MODERN INDIAN PAINTINGS

The Ajanta paintings, or more likely the general style they come from, influenced painting in Tibet and Sri Lanka.

 

The rediscovery of ancient Indian paintings at Ajanta provided Indian artists examples from ancient India to follow. Nandlal Bose experimented with techniques to follow the ancient style which allowed him to develop his unique style. Abanindranath Tagore also used the Ajanta paintings for inspiration.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Spent ages trying to get a shot of these iconic birds in Noarlunga Adelaide South Australia. On a clam day also wanted to include the reflection on the water. Included the water textures in the composition and framed for rule of thirds.

Includes teams from Deuel, Hot Springs, Madison, Parkston/Ethan/Hanson/Mt. Vernon. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

Birdlife from Bushy Park, London.

The Bluebells are out - from an enjoyable wander around the woods at Patching with the South East Gang

A hard fought battle between Shoreham and Pulborough in mixed conditions. The match ended 15-15.

See this train in the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCvzEiGVulQ

 

Departing West Hampstead Thameslink with a service for Luton is Thameslink & Great Northern Class 319, 319456.

 

To coincide with the opening of Thameslink in 1988, Network SouthEast, the British Rail operator of the London commuter network, placed an order for 86 100mph dual-voltage electric multiple units to work services along the route from Bedford to Brighton. The task to build these trains fell upon BREL of York, with two batches built in 1987/88 and 1990. As mentioned, the intention of the Class 319 was its ability to operate both on 25kV AC Overhead Electrics on the Midland Mainline and on 750v DC 3rd Rail on the Southern Region.

 

In the 1980s, there were plans for a rail service that would link Bedford and Brighton. These services would cross London in a north-south direction, and thus became the first route for many years to cross London from north to south. These services were branded Thameslink by Network SouthEast, which operated the services.

 

Before the Thameslink service became operational in 1988, stations along the Midland Main Line north of London were served by Class 317 electric multiple units, introduced in 1981. This required the electrification using 25kV AC overhead wires of the line between Bedford and London St. Pancras and the branch to Moorgate. This service was therefore known colloquially as the "Bed-Pan" service. Key destinations included Bedford, Luton, St Albans, Moorgate, and London St. Pancras.

 

Their body shape is slightly different from contemporary electric units due to restrictions in the loading gauge in Kings Cross tunnel, which meant that other dual-voltage units were not suitable. They were also required to have Emergency end doors in the cabs, due to the twin single bore layout of Smithfield tunnel preventing normal train evacuation.

 

The first batch of 60 units, built in 1987/88, were classified as Class 319/0. Units were numbered in the range 319001 to 060 and had a maximum speed of 100mph. Each unit consisted of four carriages; two outer driving trailers, an intermediate motor with a roof-mounted Stone Faiveley AMBR pantograph and four DC GEC G315BZ traction motors (two per bogie), and an intermediate trailer housing a compressor, motor alternator and two toilets.

These units were built for long-distance cross-London services between Bedford and Brighton, using the Midland Main Line between Bedford and London, and the Brighton Main Line between London and Brighton. This service crosses London by means of the Snow Hill tunnel between Farringdon and London Blackfriars.

 

The second batch of 26 units, built in 1990, were classified Class 319/1. Units were numbered in the range 319161–186. The formation of the second batch of sets was similar to that of the earlier units, except there was provision for first-class seating in and the MSO vehicle was fitted with the roof-mounted, more modern Brecknell Willis High Speed pantograph design.

 

The Class 319's, apart from being humble electric multiple units, do have a celebrity distinction as being the first units to carry passengers through the Channel Tunnel on the 10th December, 1993, working to Calais-Fréthun yard. The units were chosen due to their dual-voltage capabilities, and units numbers 319008 and 319009 had their pantographs modified at Selhurst Depot beforehand to account for the higher OHL height at Cheriton and in the tunnel. For the subsequent "Folkestone 1994" event on 7th May, 1994, which saw the first paying members of the public taken into the tunnel by train. On 26th March, 1994, units 319008 and 319009 were named "Cheriton" and "Coquelles" respectively at Victoria and plaques adorned with the Union Flag and Tricolore were installed on their motor carriages.

 

Upon privatisation in 1994, the units were split between several operators. A majority of the fleet remained in the hands of new operator Thameslink, a subsidy of Govia, whilst 13 sets (319001 to 319013) fell into the hands of operator Connex South Central, which began using them on services between Gatwick Airport and Rugby on the West Coast Mainline via the West London Line. This service however was short lived, and upon the cessation of these trains, some of the units were deprived of their 25kV AC overhead equipment, although it has since has been refitted. Seven of the Class 319/0 sets (319014 to 319020) were converted into Class 319/2 units (319214 to 319220) and dedicated to Brighton Express services from London Victoria to Brighton. These units were refurbished by Railcare Wolverton to give them low-density interiors, a disabled toilet, and a special 'lounge' seating area in the saloon space below the pantograph in the MSO, where a buffet counter was provided.

 

When Class 377/3 units replaced them on Brighton Express services, the seven Class 319/2 units were allocated to peak-only London-Guildford via West Croydon and London-Horsham via Three Bridges services. Southern subleased its Class 319/0 units to First Capital Connect, as well as the Class 319/2 units which followed when Class 377 trains replaced them. The entire fleet has since been turned over to First Capital Connect and are now in the employ of Great Northern, Thameslink, the successor to FCC.

 

With the delivery of the Class 387's and the use of Class 377's by First Capital Connect and Thameslink & Great Northern, provision was made for spare sets to be transferred to the North of England as part of the electrification of the Manchester area, specifically the newly electrified route between Manchester and Liverpool via Newton-le-Willows. Currently, Northern possesses 12 units which began electric operations on the 5th March, 2015, with an intention of 20 units to be delivered overall. Future operations in the north will also include working services between Manchester/Liverpool and Preston/Blackpool once these routes have been electrified.

Dear friends, you are more than welcome to visit my flickr.

 

These are some pictures regarding my second Lego MOC set named Military series.

 

This set includes:

(1) Chibi Batquad (The original moccer: sok117). A very stylish compact ATV made by sok117. After observavtion of several pictures, I made a replica first and then modified many parts of it. Thanks to you- sok117.

 

(2) Batmobile (The original moccer: lost_scotsman): I have used flickr to share pictures for long, and have always acquired some great concept as well as ideas from many fantastic moccer from all over the world. This result of this batmobile is one of them. Again, many modifications have made to it, and I quite love what it is right now.

 

(3) Bat Sand Buggy: This is a MOC that built from scratch by myself. I then put joints to the front wheel to make them able to turn. As a matter of fact, the part I like most about is its protective net on the cockpit. If possible, please take a close look at some little touches that I made on this vehicles. I believe you will enjoy them.

 

(4) Bat Tank: Actually, most of the components and parts on this tank is from the official set 76055, so you may as well say this is an alternative build. However, I also used quite a few extra/ additional bricks to complete it. I am pretty glad how it finally turned out, especially the shape and style of it.

 

(5) Batsub: The idea is from the official set 76027. The thickness of the original set doesn't make it look strong/ bulky enough; Hence, making it has a chucky appearance became my priority. This batsub is absolutely one of my favorites among all my mocs.

 

(6) Batcopter: Obviously, i didn't made a big difference on this batcopter, and you probably know already this batcopter's prototype is the official set-76054. Yes, it is shorter and bulkier. I hope I successfully gave it a menacing look.

 

Thank you so much for viewing my Lego works. More photos of other sets are coming in soon. My only intention is to share. Hope you like these cute toys. peace. :)

 

My Youtube:

www.youtube.com/user/thedarkknight0527

Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Cove Farm is a national historic district that includes a living farm museum operated by the National Park Service, and located at Oxon Hill, Prince George's County, Maryland. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

 

The park provides an excellent resource for environmental studies, wildlife observing, fishing, and other recreational activities made possible by easy access to the Potomac River. Fourteen buildings and two structures are located in the historic district and associated with the property's sequential development as a plantation, an institutional agricultural complex, and a farm museum.

 

The Oxon Hill Farm includes the Mount Welby home, Farm Museum, barns, a stable, feed building, livestock buildings and a visitor activity barn. Farm animals include cows, horses and chickens. Visitors can view the animals up close daily and learn about the workings of a farm. The Farm Museum building displays historical farm equipment dating from the late 19th century.

 

The district also includes a hexagonal frame outbuilding; ca. 1830 brick root cellar; ca. 1973 frame hog house; ca. 1890 frame horse and pony barn; ca. 1991 frame chicken house; ca. 1970 steel-frame implement shed; ca. 1980 frame visitor barn; ca. 1970 steel-frame windmill; ca. 1940 frame hay barn; ca. 1890 frame feed building; ca. 1830 brick stable; ca. 1970 frame tool shed; ca. 1980 frame "sorghum sirip" shed; and a ca. 1980 frame dairy barn, and ca. 1940 tile silo. From the 1890s to 1950s, under the ownership of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, the site was used as a therapeutic treatment center for the mentally ill known as Godding Croft. The Oxon Cove Farm historic district is located on the crest of a ridge overlooking the Potomac River, north of I-95.

 

The principal dwelling, known as "Mount Welby," is a ca. 1807-1811 two-story three-bay brick structure laid in Flemish bond with Italianate detailing and sheltered by a shed roof, and visible to motorists crossing the interstate Woodrow Wilson Bridge. The house was built by Irish immigrant Dr. Samuel DeButts. It was entrusted to the National Park Service in 1959 in order to protect its resources from increased development. From 1891 to 1950, the property was used as a therapeutic farm by St. Elizabeths Hospital, and was known as Godding Croft.

 

The house is operated as a historic house museum, with exhibits about period life in the early 19th century for the owners and slaves on the plantation. Other exhibits focus on the home's role at Godding Croft.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxon_Cove_Park_and_Oxon_Hill_Farm

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...

Includes teams from O'Gorman, Yankton, Pierre T.F. Riggs, Huron. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

Includes:

Unisex

4 options for the tattoo (Fade / Fresh / Fade red / Fresh red)

Like every major life change, divorce can be a stressful experience. It affects finances, living arrangements, household jobs, schedules and more. If the family includes children, they may be deeply affected, parents must not forget that they created these lives... when they had feelings for each other? That it was never 'all bad'? Children often feel they have to make a choice, what was once ONE 'safe-haven' suddenly becomes two alien places? Statistics show that many regret separation and say if the could, they would go back... No matter what, IT CAUSES A LOT OF PAIN for ALL parties, the wider families included.

These beautiful Double Tulips 'told' me all this...

I went for the ' Flemish School' light again.

Giving my flowers SOUL? My Soul Flowers on youtube

 

I wish you all a very good day and thanx for all your kind words, time, comments and likes. Very much appreciated.

Magda, (*_*)

For more of my other work or if you want to PURCHASE (ONLY PLACE TO BUY MY IMAGES!), VIEW THE NEW PORTFOLIOS AND LATEST NEWS HERE on our website: www.indigo2photography.co.uk

IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN (BY LAW!!!) TO USE ANY OF MY image or TEXT on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved

Includes teams from Brookings, SF Roosevelt, SF Lincoln, RC Central. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

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North Pier is the most northerly of the three coastal piers in Blackpool, England. Built in the 1860s, it is also the oldest and longest of the three. Although originally intended only

as a promenade, competition forced the pier to widen its attractions to include theatres and bars. Unlike Blackpool's other piers, which attracted the working classes with open air

dancing and amusements, North Pier catered for the "better-class" market, with orchestra concerts and respectable comedians. Until 2011, it was the only Blackpool pier that

consistently charged admission.

The pier is designated by English Heritage as a Grade II listed building, due to its status as the oldest surviving pier created by Eugenius Birch. As of 2012 it is still in regular use,

despite having suffered damage from fires, storms and collisions with boats. Its attractions include bars, a theatre, a carousel and an arcade. One of the oldest remaining Sooty

glove puppets is on display commemorating Harry Corbett buying the original puppet there.

North Pier was built at the seaward end of Talbot Road, where the town's first railway station, Blackpool North, was built. Its name reflects its location as the most northerly of

Blackpool's three piers. It is about 450 yards (410 m) north of Blackpool Tower, which is roughly the midpoint of Blackpool's promenade. The sea front is particularly straight and

flat on this stretch of coastline, and the 1,650 feet (500 m) pier extends at right angles into the Irish Sea, more or less level with the promenade.

History: The construction of Blackpool Pier (eventually North Pier) started in May 1862, in Layton-cum-Warbreck, part of the parish of Bispham. In October 1862 severe storms

suggested that the planned height of the pier was insufficient, and it was increased by 3 feet (0.91 m) North Pier was the second of fourteen piers designed by Eugenius Birch,

and since Margate Pier was destroyed by a storm in 1978, it is the oldest of the remaining examples of his work still in use. It was the first of Birch's piers to be built by Glasgow

engineering firm Richard Laidlaw and Son.

The pier, which cost £11,740 to build, originally consisted of a promenade 1,405 feet (428 m) long and 28 feet (8.5 m) wide, extending to 55 feet (17 m) wide at the pier-head. The

bulk of the pier was constructed from cast iron, with a wooden deck laid on top. The cast iron piles on which the structure rests were inserted using Birch's screw pile process; the

screw-tipped piles were twisted into the sand until they hit bedrock. This made construction much quicker and easier, and guaranteed that the pier had a solid foundation. The

cast iron columns, 12 inches (300 mm) in diameter, were filled with concrete for stability at intervals of 60 feet (18 m), and supported by struts that were on average were slightly

more than 1 inch (25 mm) thick.The pier's promenade deck is lined with wooden benches with ornamental cast iron backs. At intervals along the pier are hexagonal kiosks built

around 1900 in wood and glass with minaret roofs topped with decorative finials. On opening two of the kiosks were occupied by a bookstall and confectionery stall and the

kiosks near the ends of the pier were seated shelters. The pier-head is a combination of 420 tons of cast iron and 340 tons of wrought iron columns; standing 50 feet (15 m)

above the low water line, it sees a regular 35 feet (11 m) change in sea level due to the tide.

The pier was officially opened in a grand ceremony on 21 May 1863, even though the final 50 yards (46 m) had not yet been completed. All the shops in the area were closed

and decorated with flags and streamers for the ceremony, which included a procession and a cannon salute, and was attended by more than 20,000 visitors. Although the town

only had a population of approximately 4,000, more than 200,000 holiday makers regularly stayed there during the summer months; this included 275,000 admissions in 1863,

400,000 in 1864 and 465,000 the following year. The pier was officially opened by Major Preston, and he and 150 officials then travelled to the Clifton Hotel for a celebratory

meal.

The pier was intended primarily for leisure rather than seafaring; for the price of 2d (worth approximately £4.90 in 2012) the pier provided the opportunity for visitors to walk close

to the sea without distractions.This fee was insufficient to deter "trippers'", which led to Major Preston campaigning for a new pier to cater for the 'trippers'. In 1866, the

government agreed that a second pier could be built, despite objections from the Blackpool Pier Company that it was close to their pier and therefore unnecessary

As permitted by the original parliamentary order, a landing jetty was built at the end of North Pier in incremental stages between 1864 and 1867. The full length of the jetty was

474 feet (144 m), and the extensions increased the pier's total length to its current 1,650 feet (500 m). The Blackpool Pier Company used the jetty to operate pleasure steamers

that made trips to the surrounding areas. In 1871 swimming and diving lessons were added to the pier.

In 1874, the pier-head was extended to allow Richard Knill Freeman to incorporate a pavilion, which opened in 1877. The interior decoration led it to be known as the "Indian

Pavilion", and it was Blackpool's primary venue for indoor entertainment until the Winter Gardens opened in 1879.

To differentiate itself from the new pier, North Pier focused on catering for the "better classes", charging for entry and including attractions such as an orchestra and band

concerts, in contrast to the Central Pier (or the "People's pier"), which regularly had music playing and open-air dancing. The pier owners highlighted the difference, charging at

least a shilling (worth approximately £19.90 in 2012) for concerts and ensuring that advertisements for comedians focused on their lack of vulgarity. Sundays were given over to a

church parade.

On 8 October 1892, a storm-damaged vessel, Sirene, hit the southern side of the pier, causing four shops and part of the deck to collapse onto the beach below. Several columns

were also dislodged, and the ship's bowsprit hit the pier entrance. All eleven crew members were rescued when they were hauled onto the pier. Damage to the pier was

estimated to be £5,000 and was promptly repaired.

Nelson's former flagship, HMS Foudroyant, was moored alongside North Pier for an exhibition, but slipped anchor and was wrecked on the shore in a violent storm on 16 June

1897, damaging part of the jetty. The wreck of the ship broke up during December storms.

The pier was closed for the winter during 1895–6 as it unsafe; as a result, the pier was widened as electric lighting was added.

An Arcade Pavilion was added in 1903 at the entrance to the pier and contained a wide range of amusements to suit all tastes. Further alterations were made to the pier in 1932-

3 when the open air stand was replaced with a stage and sun lounge.

In 1936, a pleasure steamer returning from Llandudno crashed into the pier. The collision left a 10 feet (3.0 m) gap, and stranded a number of people at the far end.

The 1874 Indian Pavilion was severely damaged by fire in 1921. It was refurbished, but was then destroyed by a second fire in 1938. In 1939 it was replaced by a theatre, built in

an Art Deco style. At around the same time, the bandstand was removed and replaced with a sun lounge.

In the 1960s, the Merrie England bar and an amusement arcade were constructed at the end of the pier nearest to the shore. The 1939 theatre, which is still in use, narrowly

escaped damage in 1985 when the early stages of a fire were noticed by performer Vince Hill. In the 1980s, a Victorian-styled entrance was built. In 1991 the pier gained the

Carousel bar as an additional attraction, and a small tramway to ease access to the pier-head. By this point, the pier had ceased to have any nautical use, but the jetty section

was adapted for use as a helicopter pad in the late 1980s. Storms on 24 December 1997 destroyed the landing jetty, including the helipad.

The North Pier is one of the few remaining examples of Birch's classic pier architecture and is a Grade II Listed building, the only Blackpool pier to hold that status. It was

recognised as "Pier of the Year" in 2004 by the National Piers Society.

North Pier's attractions include a Gypsy palm reader and an ice cream parlour, the North Pier Theatre, a Victorian tea room, and the Carousel and Merrie England bars. The

arcade, built in the 1960s, has approximately eleven million coins pass through its machines each year.

One of the earliest Sooty bear puppets used by Harry Corbett is on display on the pier. Corbett bought the original Sooty puppet on North Pier for his son, Matthew. When Corbett

took the puppet on BBC's Talent Night programme, he marked the nose and ears with soot so that they would show up on the black and white television, giving the puppet its

name.

The Carousel bar on the pier-head has a Victorian wrought iron canopy, and its outdoor sun-lounge is classified as the largest beer garden in Blackpool. Next to the bar is a two

tier carousel, the "Venetian Carousel", which is protected from sand and spray by a glass wall.

After the fire in 1938, the pavilion was replaced with a 1,564 seat theatre which has since hosted a number of acts including; Frankie Vaughan, Frank Randle, Tessie O'Shea,

Dave Morris, Bernard Delfont, Morecambe and Wise, Paul Daniels, Freddie Starr, Russ Abbott, Bruce Forsyth, Des O'Connor, Joe Longthorne, Lily Savage, Brian Conley and

Hale and Pace.

In 2002 a heritage room with photographs was opened up, the foyer entrance was refurbished and a disabled lift added. By 2005, there was no longer a live organist playing in

the sun lounge although other live entertainment continues. In 2013, the live organist was brought back into the sun lounge.

The pier was built and owned by the Blackpool Pier Company, created with three thousand £5-shares in 1861 (worth approximately £2,990 in 2012). The same firm operated the

pier in 1953, and the company was incorporated in 1965. The Resorts Division of First Leisure, including the pier, was sold to Leisure Parks for £74 million in 1998. In 2009, the

pier was sold to the Six Piers group, which owns Blackpool's other two piers, and hoped to use it as a more tranquil alternative to them. The new owners opened the Victorianthemed

tea room, and built an eight-seat shuttle running the length of the pier.

In April 2011, the pier was sold to a Blackpool family firm, Sedgwick's, the owners of amusement arcades and the big wheel on Blackpool's Central Pier. Peter Sedgwick

explained that he proposed to his wife on North Pier forty years ago, and promised to buy it for her one day. He said that he wants to restore the Victorian heritage of the pier and

re-instate the pier's tram. An admission charge of fifty pence to access the board-walk section of the pier was abolished by the Sedgewicks.

A petition to wind up the Northern Victorian Pier Limited (the company used by the Sedgwick family to manage Blackpool North Pier) was presented on 17 September 2012 by

Carlsberg UK Limited, a creditor of the Company, and this was to be heard at Blackpool County Court on 15 November 2012.

At the 11th hour, an agreement to pay the outstanding balance owed to Carlsberg was made and Peter Sedgwick's company escaped liquidation.

[Wikipedia]

The Fisher-Chapman Farmstead is a historic farm located at 24818 Homeridge Drive north of Jerseyville. Cornelius B. Fisher, a New Jerseyan who began farming in Jersey County in 1838, established the farm and built its Italianate farmhouse in 1867. The farmhouse's characteristic Italianate features include its central belvedere, its hipped roof's wide eaves with paired brackets, and its tall, narrow windows with arched lintels. State senator Theodore S. Chapman purchased the farm in 1891 and renamed it Homeridge; the Chapman family ran the farm until 1960. The farm is a well-preserved representative of a working farm, and two of its contributing buildings once housed hired farm workers. In addition, the farm's production in the 20th century reflected statewide agricultural trends towards grain farming rather than livestock farming.

 

The farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

 

Information from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%E2%80%93Chapman_Farmstead

INCLUDES:

 

SOUTH PARK: THE COMPLETE THIRTEENTH SEASON:

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Kew Gardens is the world's largest collection of living plants. Founded in 1840 from the exotic garden at Kew Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, UK, its living collections include more than 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over seven million preserved plant specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London's top tourist attractions. In 2003, the gardens were put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

 

Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst Place in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (brand name Kew), an internationally important botanical research and education institution that employs 750 staff, and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

 

The Kew site, which has been dated as formally starting in 1759, though can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, consists of 121 hectares (300 acres) of gardens and botanical glasshouses, four Grade I listed buildings and 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape.

 

Kew Gardens has its own police force, Kew Constabulary, which has been in operation since 1847.

 

History

Kew, the area in which Kew Gardens are situated, consists mainly of the gardens themselves and a small surrounding community. Royal residences in the area which would later influence the layout and construction of the gardens began in 1299 when Edward I moved his court to a manor house in neighbouring Richmond (then called Sheen). That manor house was later abandoned; however, Henry V built Sheen Palace in 1501, which, under the name Richmond Palace, became a permanent royal residence for Henry VII. Around the start of the 16th century courtiers attending Richmond Palace settled in Kew and built large houses. Early royal residences at Kew included Mary Tudor's house, which was in existence by 1522 when a driveway was built to connect it to the palace at Richmond. Around 1600, the land that would become the gardens was known as Kew Field, a large field strip farmed by one of the new private estates.

 

The exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, was enlarged and extended by Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The origins of Kew Gardens can be traced to the merging of the royal estates of Richmond and Kew in 1772. William Chambers built several garden structures, including the lofty Chinese pagoda built in 1761 which still remains. George III enriched the gardens, aided by William Aiton and Sir Joseph Banks. The old Kew Park (by then renamed the White House), was demolished in 1802. The "Dutch House" adjoining was purchased by George III in 1781 as a nursery for the royal children. It is a plain brick structure now known as Kew Palace.

 

Some early plants came from the walled garden established by William Coys at Stubbers in North Ockendon. The collections grew somewhat haphazardly until the appointment of the first collector, Francis Masson, in 1771. Capability Brown, who became England's most renowned landscape architect, applied for the position of master gardener at Kew, and was rejected.

 

In 1840 the gardens were adopted as a national botanical garden, in large part due to the efforts of the Royal Horticultural Society and its president William Cavendish. Under Kew's director, William Hooker, the gardens were increased to 30 hectares (75 acres) and the pleasure grounds, or arboretum, extended to 109 hectares (270 acres), and later to its present size of 121 hectares (300 acres). The first curator was John Smith.

 

The Palm House was built by architect Decimus Burton and iron-maker Richard Turner between 1844 and 1848, and was the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron. It is considered " the world's most important surviving Victorian glass and iron structure." The structure's panes of glass are all hand-blown. The Temperate House, which is twice as large as the Palm House, followed later in the 19th century. It is now the largest Victorian glasshouse in existence. Kew was the location of the successful effort in the 19th century to propagate rubber trees for cultivation outside South America.

 

In February 1913, the Tea House was burned down by suffragettes Olive Wharry and Lilian Lenton during a series of arson attacks in London.[19] Kew Gardens lost hundreds of trees in the Great Storm of 1987. From 1959 to 2007 Kew Gardens had the tallest flagpole in Britain. Made from a single Douglas-fir from Canada, it was given to mark both the centenary of the Canadian Province of British Columbia and the bicentenary of Kew Gardens. The flagpole was removed after damage by weather and woodpeckers.

 

In July 2003, the gardens were put on the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

 

Features

Treetop walkway

A new treetop walkway opened in 2008. This walkway is 18 metres (59 ft) high and 200 metres (660 ft) long and takes visitors into the tree canopy of a woodland glade. Visitors can ascend and descend by stairs or by a lift. The floor of the walkway is made from perforated metal and flexes as it is walked upon. The entire structure sways in the wind.

  

Sackler Crossing

The Sackler Crossing bridge, made of granite and bronze, opened in May 2006. Designed by Buro Happold and John Pawson, it crosses the lake and is named in honour of philanthropists Dr Mortimer and Theresa Sackler.

 

The minimalist-styled bridge is designed as a sweeping double curve of black granite. The sides of the bridge are formed of bronze posts that give the impression, from certain angles, of forming a solid wall whereas from others, and to those on the bridge, they are clearly individual entities that allow a view of the water beyond.

 

The bridge forms part of a path designed to encourage visitors to visit more of the gardens than had hitherto been popular and connects the two art galleries, via the Temperate and Evolution Houses and the woodland glade, to the Minka House and the Bamboo Garden.

 

The crossing won a special award from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2008.

 

Vehicular tour

Kew Explorer is a service that takes a circular route around the gardens, provided by two 72-seater road trains that are fuelled by Calor Gas to minimise pollution. A commentary is provided by the driver and there are several stops.

   

Compost heap

Kew has one of the largest compost heaps in Europe, made from green and woody waste from the gardens and the manure from the stables of the Household Cavalry. The compost is mainly used in the gardens, but on occasion has been auctioned as part of a fundraising event for the gardens.

 

The compost heap is in an area of the gardens not accessible to the public, but a viewing platform, made of wood which had been illegally traded but seized by Customs officers in HMRC, has been erected to allow visitors to observe the heap as it goes through its cycle.

 

Guided walks

Free tours of the gardens are conducted daily by trained volunteers.

 

Plant houses

 

Alpine House

A narrow semicircular building of glass and steel latticework stands at the right, set amid an area of worked rock with a line of deciduous trees in the rear left, under a blue sky filled with large puffy white clouds. In front of it, curving slightly away to the left, is a wooden platform with benches on it and a thin metal guardrail in front of a low wet area with bright red flowers

 

In March 2006, the Davies Alpine House opened, the third version of an alpine house since 1887. Although only 16 metres (52 ft) long the apex of the roof arch extends to a height of 10 metres (33 ft) in order to allow the natural airflow of a building of this shape to aid in the all-important ventilation required for the type of plants to be housed.

 

The new house features a set of automatically operated blinds that prevent it overheating when the sun is too hot for the plants together with a system that blows a continuous stream of cool air over the plants. The main design aim of the house is to allow maximum light transmission. To this end the glass is of a special low iron type that allows 90 per cent of the ultraviolet light in sunlight to pass. It is attached by high tension steel cables so that no light is obstructed by traditional glazing bars.

 

To conserve energy the cooling air is not refrigerated but is cooled by being passed through a labyrinth of pipes buried under the house at a depth where the temperature remains suitable all year round. The house is designed so that the maximum temperature should not exceed 20 °C (68 °F).

 

Kew's collection of Alpine plants (defined as those that grow above the tree-line in their locale – ground level at the poles rising to over 2,000 metres (6,562 feet)), extends to over 7000. As the Alpine House can only house around 200 at a time the ones on show are regularly rotated.

  

The Nash Conservatory

Originally designed for Buckingham Palace, this was moved to Kew in 1836 by King William IV. With an abundance of natural light, the building is used various exhibitions, weddings, and private events. It is also now used to exhibit the winners of the photography competition.

  

Kew Orangery

The Orangery was designed by Sir William Chambers, and was completed in 1761. It measures 28 by 10 metres (92 by 33 ft). It was found to be too dark for its intended purpose of growing citrus plants and they were moved out in 1841. After many changes of use, it is currently used as a restaurant.

  

The Palm House and Parterre

The Palm House (1844–1848) was the result of cooperation between architect Decimus Burton and iron founder Richard Turner,[28] and continues upon the glass house design principles developed by John Claudius Loudon[29][30] and Joseph Paxton. A space frame of wrought iron arches, held together by horizontal tubular structures containing long prestressed cables,[30][31] supports glass panes which were originally[28] tinted green with copper oxide to reduce the significant heating effect. The 19m high central nave is surrounded by a walkway at 9m height, allowing visitors a closer look upon the palm tree crowns. In front of the Palm House on the east side are the Queen's Beasts, ten statues of animals bearing shields. They are Portland stone replicas of originals done by James Woodford and were placed here in 1958.[32]

  

Princess of Wales Conservatory

Kew's third major conservatory, the Princess of Wales Conservatory, designed by architect Gordon Wilson, was opened in 1987 by Diana, Princess of Wales in commemoration of her predecessor Augusta's associations with Kew. In 1989 the conservatory received the Europa Nostra award for conservation.[34] The conservatory houses ten computer-controlled micro-climatic zones, with the bulk of the greenhouse volume composed of Dry Tropics and Wet Tropics plants. Significant numbers of orchids, water lilies, cacti, lithops, carnivorous plants and bromeliads are housed in the various zones. The cactus collection also extends outside the conservatory where some hardier species can be found.

 

The conservatory has an area of 4499 square metres. As it is designed to minimise the amount of energy taken to run it, the cooler zones are grouped around the outside and the more tropical zones are in the central area where heat is conserved. The glass roof extends down to the ground, giving the conservatory a distinctive appearance and helping to maximise the use of the sun's energy.

 

During the construction of the conservatory a time capsule was buried. It contains the seeds of basic crops and endangered plant species and key publications on conservation.

 

Rhizotron

 

The Rhizotron

A rhizotron opened at the same time as the "treetop walkway", giving visitors the opportunity to investigate what happens beneath the ground where trees grow. The rhizotron is essentially a single gallery containing a set of large bronze abstract castings which contain LCD screens that carry repeating loops of information about the life of trees.

 

Temperate House

 

Inside the Temperate House

The Temperate House, currently closed for restoration, is a greenhouse that has twice the floor area of the Palm House and is the world's largest surviving Victorian glass structure. When in use it contained plants and trees from all the temperate regions of the world. It was commissioned in 1859 and designed by architect Decimus Burton and ironfounder Richard Turner. Covering 4880 square metres, it rises to a height of 19 metres. Intended to accommodate Kew's expanding collection of hardy and temperate plants, it took 40 years to construct, during which time costs soared. The building was restored during 2014 - 15 by Donald Insall Associates, based on their conservation management plan.

 

There is a viewing gallery in the central section from which visitors were able to look down on that part of the collection.

 

Waterlily House

The Waterlily House is the hottest and most humid of the houses at Kew and contains a large pond with varieties of water lily, surrounded by a display of economically important heat-loving plants. It closes during the winter months.

 

It was built to house the Victoria amazonica, the largest of the Nymphaeaceae family of water lilies. This plant was originally transported to Kew in phials of clean water and arrived in February 1849, after several prior attempts to transport seeds and roots had failed. Although various other members of the Nymphaeaceae family grew well, the house did not suit the Victoria, purportedly because of a poor ventilation system, and this specimen was moved to another, smaller, house.

 

The ironwork for this project was provided by Richard Turner and the initial construction was completed in 1852. The heat for the house was initially obtained by running a flue from the nearby Palm House but it was later equipped with its own boiler.

 

Ornamental buildings

 

The Pagoda

In the south-east corner of Kew Gardens stands the Great Pagoda (by Sir William Chambers), erected in 1762, from a design in imitation of the Chinese Ta. The lowest of the ten octagonal storeys is 15 m (49 ft) in diameter. From the base to the highest point is 50 m (164 ft).

 

Each storey finishes with a projecting roof, after the Chinese manner, originally covered with ceramic tiles and adorned with large dragons; a story is still propagated that they were made of gold and were reputedly sold by George IV to settle his debts. In fact the dragons were made of wood painted gold, and simply rotted away with the ravages of time. The walls of the building are composed of brick. The staircase, 253 steps, is in the centre of the building. The Pagoda was closed to the public for many years, but was reopened for the summer months of 2006 and is now open permanently. During the Second World War holes were cut in each floor to allow for drop-testing of model bombs.

  

The Japanese Gateway (Chokushi-Mon)

Built for the Japan-British Exhibition (1910) and moved to Kew in 1911, the Chokushi-Mon ("Imperial Envoy's Gateway") is a four-fifths scale replica of the karamon (gateway) of the Nishi Hongan-ji temple in Kyoto. It lies about 140 m west of the Pagoda and is surrounded by a reconstruction of a traditional Japanese garden.

  

The Minka House

Following the Japan 2001 festival, Kew acquired a Japanese wooden house called a minka. It was originally erected in around 1900 in a suburb of Okazaki. Japanese craftsmen reassembled the framework and British builders who had worked on the Globe Theatre added the mud wall panels.

 

Work on the house started on 7 May 2001 and, when the framework was completed on 21 May, a Japanese ceremony was held to mark what was considered an auspicious occasion. Work on the building of the house was completed in November 2001 but the internal artefacts were not all in place until 2006.

 

The Minka house is located within the bamboo collection in the west central part of the gardens.

  

Queen Charlotte's Cottage

Within the conservation area is a cottage that was given to Queen Charlotte as a wedding present on her marriage to George III. It has been restored by Historic Royal Palaces and is separately administered by them.

It is open to the public on weekends and bank holidays during the summer.

 

Kew Palace

Kew Palace is the smallest of the British royal palaces. It was built by Samuel Fortrey, a Dutch merchant in around 1631. It was later purchased by George III. The construction method is known as Flemish bond and involves laying the bricks with long and short sides alternating. This and the gabled front give the construction a Dutch appearance.

To the rear of the building is the "Queen's Garden" which includes a collection of plants believed to have medicinal qualities. Only plants that were extant in England by the 17th century are grown in the garden.

The building underwent significant restoration, with leading conservation architects Donald Insall Associates, before being reopened to the public in 2006.

It is administered separately from Kew Gardens, by Historic Royal Palaces.

In front of the palace is a sundial, which was given to Kew Gardens in 1959 to commemorate a royal visit. It was sculpted by Martin Holden and is based on an earlier sculpture by Thomas Tompion, a celebrated 17th century clockmaker.

 

Galleries and Museums

 

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanic Art

The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanic Art opened in April 2008, and holds paintings from Kew's and Dr Shirley Sherwood's collections, many of which had never been displayed to the public before. It features paintings by artists such as Georg D. Ehret, the Bauer brothers, Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Walter Hood Fitch. The paintings and drawings are cycled on a six-monthly basis. The gallery is linked to the Marianne North Gallery (see above).

 

Near the Palm House is a building known as "Museum No. 1" (even though it is the only museum on the site), which was designed by Decimus Burton and opened in 1857. Housing Kew's economic botany collections including tools, ornaments, clothing, food and medicines, its aim was to illustrate human dependence on plants. The building was refurbished in 1998. The upper two floors are now an education centre and the ground floor houses the "Plants+People" exhibition which highlights the variety of plants and the ways that people use them.

 

Admission to the galleries and museum is free after paying admission to the gardens. The International Garden Photographer of the Year Exhibition is an annual event with an indoor display of entries during the summer months.

 

The Marianne North Gallery of Botanic Art

The Marianne North Gallery was built in the 1880s to house the paintings of Marianne North, an MP's daughter who travelled alone to North and South America, South Africa and many parts of Asia, at a time when women rarely did so, to paint plants. The gallery has 832 of her paintings. The paintings were left to Kew by the artist and a condition of the bequest is that the layout of the paintings in the gallery may not be altered.

 

The gallery had suffered considerable structural degradation since its creation and during a period from 2008 to 2009 major restoration and refurbishment took place, with works lead by with leading conservation architects Donald Insall Associates. During the time the gallery was closed the opportunity was also taken to restore the paintings to their original condition. The gallery reopened in October 2009.

 

The gallery originally opened in 1882 and is the only permanent exhibition in Great Britain dedicated to the work of one woman.

 

Plant collections

 

The plant collections include the Aquatic Garden, which is near the Jodrell laboratory. The Aquatic Garden, which celebrated its centenary in 2009, provides conditions for aquatic and marginal plants. The large central pool holds a selection of summer-flowering water lilies and the corner pools contain plants such as reed mace, bulrushes, phragmites and smaller floating aquatic species.

 

The Arboretum, which covers over half of the total area of the site, contains over 14,000 trees of many thousands of varieties. The Bonsai Collection is housed in a dedicated greenhouse near the Jodrell laboratory. The Cacti Collection is housed in and around the Princess of Wales Conservatory. The Carnivorous Plant collection is housed in the Princess of Wales Conservatory. The Grass Garden was created on its current site in the early 1980s to display ornamental and economic grasses; it was redesigned and replanted between 1994 and 1997. It is currently undergoing a further redesign and planting. Over 580 species of grasses are displayed.

 

The Herbaceous Grounds (Order Beds) were devised in the late 1860s by Sir Joseph Hooker, then director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, so that botany students could learn to recognise plants and experience at first hand the diversity of the plant kingdom. The collection is organised into family groups. Its name arose because plant families were known as natural orders in the 19th century. Over the main path is a rose pergola built in 1959 to mark the bicentennial of the Gardens. It supports climber and rambling roses selected for the length and profusion of flowering.

 

The Orchid Collection is housed in two climate zones within the Princess of Wales Conservatory. To maintain an interesting display the plants are changed regularly so that those on view are generally flowering. The Rock Garden, originally built of limestone in 1882, is now constructed of Sussex sandstone from West Hoathly, Sussex. The rock garden is divided into six geographic regions: Europe, Mediterranean and Africa, Australia and New Zealand, Asia, North America, and South America. There are currently 2,480 different "accessions" growing in the garden.

 

The Rose Garden, based upon original designs by William Nesfield, is behind the Palm House, and was replanted between 2009 and 2010 using the original design from 1848. It is intended as an ornamental display rather than a collection of a particularly large number of varieties. Other collections and specialist areas include the rhododendron dell, the azalea garden, the bamboo garden, the juniper collection, the berberis dell, the lilac garden, the magnolia collection, and the fern collection.

  

The Palm House and lake to Victoria Gate

The world's smallest water-lily, Nymphaea thermarum, was saved from extinction when it was grown from seed at Kew, in 2009.

 

Herbarium

The Kew herbarium is one of the largest in the world with approximately 7 million specimens used primarily for taxonomic study. The herbarium is rich in types for all regions of the world, especially the tropics.

 

Library and archives

The library and archives at Kew are one of the world's largest botanical collections, with over half a million items, including books, botanical illustrations, photographs, letters and manuscripts, periodicals, and maps. The Jodrell Library has been merged with the Economic Botany and Mycology Libraries and all are now housed in the Jodrell Laboratory.

 

Forensic horticulture

Kew provides advice and guidance to police forces around the world where plant material may provide important clues or evidence in cases. In one famous case the forensic science department at Kew were able to ascertain that the contents of the stomach of a headless corpse found in the river Thames contained a highly toxic African bean.

 

Economic Botany

 

The Sustainable Uses of Plants group (formerly the Centre for Economic Botany), focus on the uses of plants in the United Kingdom and the world's arid and semi-arid zones. The Centre is also responsible for curation of the Economic Botany Collection, which contains more than 90,000 botanical raw materials and ethnographic artefacts, some of which are on display in the Plants + People exhibit in Museum No. 1. The Centre is now located in the Jodrell Laboratory.

 

Jodrell Laboratory

The original Jodrell laboratory, named after Mr T. J. Phillips Jodrell who funded it, was established in 1877 and consisted of four research rooms and an office. Originally research was conducted into plant physiology but this was gradually superseded by botanical research. In 1934 an artists' studio and photographic darkroom were added, highlighting the importance of botanical illustration. In 1965, following increasing overcrowding, a new building was constructed and research expanded into seed collection for plant conservation. The biochemistry section also expanded to facilitate research into secondary compounds that could be derived from plants for medicinal purposes. In 1994 the centre was expanded again, tripling in size, and a decade later it was further expanded by the addition of the Wolfson Wing.

 

Kew Constabulary

Main article: Kew Constabulary

The gardens have their own police force, Kew Constabulary, which has been in operation since 1847. Formerly known as the Royal Botanic Gardens Constabulary, it is a small, specialised constabulary of two sergeants and 12 officers, who patrol the grounds in a green painted electric buggy. The Kew Constables are attested under section 3 of the Parks Regulation Act 1872, which gives them the same powers as the Metropolitan Police within the land belonging to the gardens.

 

Media

A number of films, documentaries and short videos have been made about Kew Gardens.

 

They include:

 

a short colour film World Garden by cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth in 1942

three series of A Year at Kew (2007), filmed for BBC television and released on DVD

Cruickshank on Kew: The Garden That Changed the World, a 2009 BBC documentary, presented by Dan Cruickshank, exploring the history of the relationship between Kew Gardens and the British Empire

David Attenborough's 2012 Kingdom of Plants 3D

a 2003 episode of the Channel 4 TV series Time Team, presented by Tony Robinson, that searched for the remains of George III's palace

a 2004 episode of the BBC Four series Art of the Garden which looked at the building of the Great Palm House in the 1840s.

"Kew on a Plate", a TV programme showing the kinds of produce grown at Kew Gardens and how they can be prepared in a kitchen.

In 1921 Virginia Woolf published her short story "Kew Gardens", which gives brief descriptions of four groups of people as they pass by a flowerbed.

 

Access and transport

 

Elizabeth Gate

Kew Gardens is accessible by a number of gates. Currently, there are four gates into Kew Gardens that are open to the public: the Elizabeth Gate, which is situated at the west end of Kew Green, and was originally called the Main Gate before being renamed in 2012 to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II; the Brentford Gate, which faces the River Thames; the Victoria Gate (named after Queen Victoria), situated in Kew Road, which is also the location of the Visitors' Centre; and the Lion Gate, also situated in Kew Road.

 

Other gates that are not open to the public include Unicorn Gate, Cumberland Gate and Jodrell Gate (all in Kew Road) and Isleworth Gate (facing the Thames).

  

Victoria Gate

Kew Gardens station, a London Underground and National Rail station opened in 1869 and served by both the District line and the London Overground services on the North London Line, is the nearest train station to the gardens – only 400 metres (1,300 ft) along Lichfield Road from the Victoria Gate entrance. Built by the London and South Western Railway, the Historic England listed building is one of the few remaining original 19th-century stations on the North London Line, and the only station on the London Underground with a pub on the platform (though the platform entrance is now closed off). Kew Bridge station, on the other side of the Thames, 800 metres from the Elizabeth Gate entrance via Kew Bridge, is served by South West Trains from Clapham Junction and Waterloo.

 

London Buses route 65, between Ealing Broadway and Kingston, stops near the Lion Gate and Victoria Gate entrances; route 391, between Fulham and Richmond, stops near Kew Gardens station; while routes 237 and 267 stop at Kew Bridge station.

 

London River Services operate from Westminster during the summer, stopping at Kew Pier, 500 metres (1,600 ft) from Elizabeth Gate. Cycle racks are located just inside the Victoria Gate, Elizabeth Gate and Brentford Gate entrances. There is a 300-space car park outside Brentford Gate, reached via Ferry Lane, as well as some free, though restricted, on-street parking on Kew Road.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kew_Gardens

Includes teams from O'Gorman, Yankton, Pierre T.F. Riggs, Huron. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

Includes teams from Brookings, SF Lincoln, SF Roosevelt, RC Central. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

These photos were taken in Iran in 1976 and are included in my Iran Collection.

 

See also my album of photos of the Darab region that includes the Sasanian relief at Darab and the two rock-cut mosques named the Stone Mosque (Masjid-i Sang) at Darab and at Ij.

 

There are six Sasanian rock reliefs in this area, four on the cliff on the north side of the Shapur River seen on the left in this photo, and two on the south side. The designations Bishapur I-VI are taken from Vanden Berghe's list and his descriptions of the reliefs have been used for the photos in this set.

 

According to Roman Ghirshman ("Iran", Pelican Books 1954) "The Sasanian Empire was the finest period in the history of Iran". The following HISTORICAL BACKGROUND is extracted from "Persia: An Archaeological Guide", by Sylvia A. Matheson (second edition, Faber 1976). I have replaced “Sassanian” and “Shahpur” in her text by the more commonly used “Sasanian” and “Shapur”. Text in square brackets are my additions.

 

[Achaemenians]

"The history of Iran....properly begins with the rise of the Medes in the western and northern parts of the Plateau from at least the eighth century B.C. onwards. The royal houses of the Medes and the Persians, both of Indo-European stock, were united when the daughter of the Median King Astyages married Cambyses I, son of Cyrus I, king of Fars. Cyrus II (The Great), the offspring of this marriage, defeated his grandfather, Astyages, in battle c. 550 B.C., reaffirmed the fortunes of the Achaemenian dynasty and established his new empire with capitals in at least Pasargadae (Fars), Babylon and Ecbatana, present-day Hamadan.”

 

[Zoroastrian religion]

“The later Achaemenians combined the worship of Ahura Mazda, 'the wise lord' of the prophet Zoroaster, with the worship of Mithras and that of Anahita, goddess of water and fertility.”

 

“Cyrus, whose conquests ranged from Central Asia to the Mediterranean, treated his vanquished enemies with a generosity and tolerance remarkable for his time. It was he who liberated the Jewish exiles in Babylon and restored Jerusalem to them. His successors, particularly Darius the Great and his son Xerxes (who defeated the Spartans at Thermopylae and incurred the lasting hatred of the Greeks by burning the Acropolis in Athens), continued the expansion of the empire which included many of the Greek islands; it reached north to the banks of the Danube, south to Egypt and Ethiopia, and north and east to Afghanistan and India. The most outstanding monument of the Achaemenians existing today is the magnificent ceremonial city of Persepolis, near Shiraz…”

 

[Alexander the Great]

“It was Alexander of Macedon who defeated the last of the Achaemenians, Darius III Codamanus, in 331-330 B.C., and burned Persepolis, some say in revenge for the destruction of the Acropolis.

 

[Seleucids]

Alexander, who married Darius' daughter, died only a few years later and his empire was divided between his generals, Seleucus I ultimately winning Iran and founding the Hellenistic dynasty of the Seleucids, with a new capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris.”

 

[Parthians]

“....the dynasty was soon challenged by the Arsacid Parthians from the north-east, who first achieved a measure of permanent control of the Iranian Plateau c. 238 B.C..…The last of the Parthians, Artabanus V, fell in battle in A.D. 224 with.....Ardashir I, ruler of Fars and Kirman...”

 

[Sasanians]

“Ardashir founded the great dynasty of the Sasanians during whose 400-year rule the country became wealthier than ever before, with an efficient administration in which heavy taxes supported a social welfare system including state hospitals, schools and colleges.”

“Town planning, irrigation and industrialisation were carried out on a lavish scale; the empire was expanded; Ardashir and his son Shapur I defeated Roman emperors such as Valerian, Philip the Arab and Gordion III, carrying many to captivity with thousands of prisoners….[Valerian was captured in a great victory near Edessa (modern Urfa or Şanlıurfa). 70,000 Roman legionaries were captured and settled in Khuzestan in Iran (Shushtar, Dezful...), where they were employed in building bridges, roads and dams.]

 

[Sasanian Reliefs]

“Many of the Sasanian victories are commemorated in huge bas-reliefs, mostly in the province of Fars. Christian communities were established in Iran, but the official religion was that of Zoroaster. The magnificence and ceremonial of Sasanian court life influenced the later Europeans courts, while the excellence of Sasanian architecture, sculpture, textiles and metal work left an unmistakeable and lasting impression on the culture of the west.”

 

"Most vital of all, perhaps, the Sasanian empire formed a protective barrier between the ruthless nomadic tribes of Central Asia and western civilization."

 

[Arab Conquest]

"The Sasanians succumbed to the invasion of the Umayyad Caliphs, desert Arabs who brought with them a new, austere, religion, that of Islam, when they invaded Iran and defeated [the Sasanian king] Yazdigird III in the years after 637 A.D."

 

Satellite image of this location. At the lower left of this image the site of Bishapur can also be seen on the south bank of the river on the west (left) side of the main road.

 

Includes teams from O'Gorman, Yankton, Pierre T.F. Riggs, Huron. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB

 

In a mono mood on Worthing seafront today - sunny with a bracing wind

A calm evening on the River Adur

Also includes SLNCR trains and the 2 services (1 passenger, 1 goods) each way on the line to Claremorris and Limerick

The scarlet skimmer or crimson darter is a species of dragonfly of the family Libellulidae, native to east and southeast Asia and introduced to Jamaica, Florida, and Hawaii. The naiads are commonly used as food in parts of Yunnan, China.

 

For any form of publication, please include the link to this page:

www.grida.no/resources/1682

 

This photo has been graciously provided to be used in the GRID-Arendal resources library by: Peter Prokosch

Includes teams from Deuel, Hot Springs, Madison, Parkston/Ethan/Hanson/Mt. Vernon. Permission granted for journalism outlets and educational purposes. Not for commercial use. Must be credited. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

©2021 SDPB