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For those hard to reach places, technicians and engineers use various styles of lifts and platforms to ensure they have the best angle of approach to work on the James Webb Space Telescope observatory.
Here's a recent video about the recent successful assembly of Webb into its final form: youtu.be/Trh9ohPo-cE
Image credit: Northrop Grumman
Nikon D750 (Stock)
Nikkor 300mm f/2.8 AI-S ED lens
f/2.8
ISO 1600
AstroTrac TT320X-AG - no guiding
Induro CLT404L Tripod
Acquisition:
20 x 180" exposures (60 mins. total integration time)
Processing:
RawTherapee, Deep Sky Stacker, RNC-Color-Stretch, & Photoshop.
Copyright © Gio's Gallery Photography.
This photo may not be used in any form without prior permission. All rights reserved.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the model, the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Sweden required a strong air defense, utilizing the newly developed jet propulsion technology. This led to a pair of proposals being issued by the Saab design team, led by Lars Brising. The first of these, codenamed R101, was a cigar-shaped aircraft, which bore a resemblance to the American Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star. The second design, which would later be picked as the winner, was a barrel-shaped design, codenamed R 1001, which proved to be both faster and more agile upon closer study.
The original R 1001 concept had been designed around a mostly straight wing, but after Swedish engineers had obtained German research data on swept-wing designs, the prototype was altered to incorporate a 25° sweep. In order to make the wing as thin as possible, Saab elected to locate the retractable undercarriage in the aircraft's fuselage rather than into the wings.
Extensive wind tunnel testing performed at the Swedish Royal University of Technology and by the National Aeronautical Research Institute had also influenced aspects of the aircraft's aerodynamics, such as stability and trim across the aircraft's speed range. In order to test the design of the swept wing further and avoid any surprises, it was decided to modify a single Saab Safir. It received the designation Saab 201 and a full-scale R 1001 wing for a series of flight tests. The first 'final' sketches of the aircraft, incorporating the new information, was drawn in January 1946.
The originally envisioned powerplant for the new fighter type was the de Havilland Goblin turbojet engine. However, in December 1945, information on the newer and more powerful de Havilland Ghost engine became available. The new engine was deemed to be ideal for Saab's in-development aircraft, as not only did the Ghost engine had provisions for the use of a central circular air intake, the overall diameter of the engine was favorable for the planned fuselage dimensions, too. Thus, following negotiations between de Havilland and Saab, the Ghost engine was selected to power the type instead and built in license as the RM 2.
By February 1946 the main outline of the proposed aircraft had been clearly defined. In Autumn 1946, following the resolution of all major questions of principal and the completion of the project specification, the Swedish Air Force formally ordered the completion of the design and that three prototype aircraft be produced, giving the proposed type the designation J 29.
On 1 September 1948, the first of the Saab 29 prototypes conducted its maiden flight, which lasted for half an hour. Because of the shape of its fuselage, the Saab J 29 quickly received the nickname "Flygande Tunnan" ("The Flying Barrel"), or "Tunnan" ("The Barrel") for short. While the demeaning nickname was not appreciated by Saab, its short form was eventually officially adopted.
A total of four prototypes were built for the aircraft's test program. The first two lacked armament, carrying heavy test equipment instead, while the third prototype was armed with four 20mm automatic guns. Various different aerodynamic arrangements were tested, such as air brakes being installed either upon the fuselage or on the wings aft of the rear spar, along with both combined and conventional aileron/flap arrangements.
The flight test program revealed that the J 29 prototypes were capable of reaching and exceeding the maximum permissible Mach number for which they had been designed, and the flight performance figures gathered were found to be typically in excess of the predicted values.
In 1948 production of the type commenced and in May 1951 the first deliveries of operational production aircraft were received by F 13 Norrköping. The J 29 proved to be very successful and several variants and updates of the Tunnan were produced, including a dedicated reconnaissance variant and an all-weather fighter with an on-board radar.
A trainer variant was deemed to be useful, too, since the transition of young pilots from relatively slow, piston-engine basic trainers to jet-powered aircraft was considered to be a major step in the education program. At that time, the only jet-powered two-seater in Swedish inventory was the DH 115 Vampire. 57 of these, designated J 28C by the Swedish Air Force, had been procured from Great Britain in the late Forties, but an indigenous alternative (and a more capable successor) was politically favored.
In 1952 initial wind tunnel tests with scaled-down models were conducted, since it was not clear which layout would be the best from an aerodynamic, structural and educational point of view. After a thorough inspection of wooden 1:1 mock-ups of alternative tandem and a side-by-side cockpit layouts, as well as much political debate between Saab, the Swedish Air Force and the Swedish government concerning the costs and budget for a dedicated Saab 29 trainer fleet’s development and production, a compromise was settled upon in early 1953: No new trainer airframes would be produced. Instead, only existing airframes would be converted into two seaters, in an attempt to keep as much of the existing structure and internal fuel capacity as possible.
The side-by-side arrangement was adopted, not only because it was considered to be the more effective layout for a trainer aircraft. It also had the benefit that its integration would only mean a limited redesign of the aircraft’s cockpit section above the air intake duct and the front landing gear well, allowing to retain the single-seater’s pressurized cabin’s length and internal structure. A tandem cockpit would have been aerodynamically more efficient, but it would have either considerably reduced the J 29’s internal fuel capacity, or the whole aircraft had had to be lengthened with a fuselage plug, with uncertain outcome concerning airframe and flight stability. It would also have been the more costly option,
However, it would take until 1955 that the first trainer conversions were conducted by Saab, in the wake of the major wing and engine updates for the J 29 A/B fleet that lasted until 1956. The trainer, designated Sk 29 B, was exclusively based on the J 29 B variant and benefited from this version’s extra fuel tanks in the wings and fully wired underwing weapon hardpoints, which included two wet pylons for drop tanks and made the Sk 29 B suitable for weapon training with the J 29’s full ordnance range.
The trainer conversions only covered the new cockpit section, though. The Sk 29 B did not receive the new dogtooth wing which was only introduced to the converted J 29 D, E and F fighters. The upper pair of 20mm cannon in the lower front fuselage was deleted, too, in order to compensate for the two-seater’s additional cockpit equipment weight and drag. Performance suffered only marginally under the enlarged canopy, though, and the Sk 29 B turned out to be a very sound and useful design for the advanced jet trainer role.
However, budgetary restraints and the quick development of aircraft technology in the Fifties limited the number of fighter conversions to only 22 airframes. The aging Vampire two-seaters still turned out to be adequate for the advanced trainer role, and the Sk 29 B did not offer a significant advantage over the older, British aircraft. Another factor that spoke against more Sk 29 Bs was the simple fact that more trainer conversions would have reduced the number of airframes eligible for the running fighter aircraft updates.
All Sk 29 Bs were concentrated at the F 5 Ljungbyhed Kungliga Krigsflygskolan training wing in southern Sweden, where two flights were equipped with it. Unofficially dubbed “Skola Tunnan” (literally “School Barrel”), the Sk 29B performed a solid career, even though the machines were gradually retired from 1966 onwards. A dozen Sk 29 B remained active until 1972 in various supportive roles, including target tugging, air sampling and liaison duties, while the final Vampire trainer was already retired in 1968. But by the early Seventies, the trainer role had been taken over by the brand new Saab 105/Sk 60 trainer, the long-awaited domestic development, and Sk 35 Draken trainers.
General characteristics:
Crew: 2
Length: 10.23 m (33 ft 7 in)
Wingspan: 11.0 m (36 ft 1 in)
Height: 3.75 m (12 ft 4 in)
Wing area: 24.15 m² (260.0 ft²)
Empty weight: 5,120 kg (11,277 lb)
Max. takeoff weight: 8,375 kg (18,465 lb)
Powerplant:
1× Svenska Flygmotor RM2 turbojet, rated at 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN)
Performance:
Maximum speed: 1,010 km/h (627 mph)
Range: 1,060 km (658 mi)
Service ceiling: 15,500 m (50,850 ft)
Rate of climb: 30.5 m/s (6,000 ft/min)
Armament:
2x 20mm Hispano Mark V autocannon in the lower front fuselage
Underwing hardpoints for various unguided missiles and iron bombs, or a pair drop tanks
The kit and its assembly:
Another Saab 29 conversion of a variant that was thought about but never materialized, much like the radar-equipped all-weather fighter. The impulse to tackle this stunt was a leftover D. H. Vampire trainer fuselage pod in my stash (from the ‘Mystery Jet’ conversion a couple of months ago, from an Airfix kit). The canopy’s shape and dimensions appeared like a sound match for the tubby J 29, and so I decided to try this stunt.
The basis is the Heller J 29 kit, which is, despite raised surface details, IMHO the better kit than the rather simple Matchbox offering. However, what makes things more hazardous, though, is the kit’s option to build the S 29 C reconnaissance variant – the lower front fuselage is a separate part, and any surgery around the cockpit weakens the kit’s overall stability considerably. Unlike the J 29D all-weather fighter built recently, I had no visual reference material. The only valid information I was able to dig up was that a side-by-side cockpit had been the preferred layout for this paper project.
Implanting a new cockpit is always hazardous, and I have never tried to integrate a side-by-side arrangement into a single seater. The Vampire cockpit was finished first, and also mounted into the Vampire’s original cockpit pod halves, because I was able to use its side walls and also had the original canopy parts left over – and using the Vampire’s cockpit opening would ensure a good fit and limit PSR work around the clear parts. Once the Vampire cockpit tub was complete, the “implant” was trimmed down as far as possible.
Next step was to prepare the Tunnan to accept the donor cockpit. In order to avoid structural trouble I finished the two fuselage halves first, mounted the air intake with the duct to the front end, but left the fighter version’s gun tray away (while preparing it with a load of lead). The idea was to put the Vampire cockpit into position from below into the Tunnan’s fuselage, until all outer surfaces would more or less match in order to minimize PSR work.
With the Vampire cockpit as benchmark, I carefully tried to draw its outlines onto the upper front fuselage. The following cutting and trimming sessions too several turns. To my surprise, the side-by-side cockpit’s width was the least problem – it fits very well inside of the J 29 fuselage’s confines, even though the front end turned out to be troublesome. Space in length became an issue, too, because the Airfix Vampire cockpit is pretty complete: it comes with all pedals, a front and a rear bulkhead, and its bulged canopy extends pretty far backwards into an aerodynamic fairing. As a result, it’s unfortunately very long… Furthermore, air intake duct reaches deep into the Tunnan’s nose, too, so that width was not the (expected) problem, but rather length!
Eventually, the cockpit lost the front bulkhead and had to trimmed and slimmed down further, because, despite its bulky fuselage, the Tunnan’s nose is rather narrow. As a consequence the Vampire cockpit had to be moved back by about 3mm, relative to the single-seater’s canopy, and the area in front of the cockpit/above the air intake duct had to be completely re-sculpted, which took several PSR stages. Since the Vampire’s canopy shape is very different and its windscreen less steep (and actually a flat glass panel), I think this change is not too obvious, tough, and looks like a natural part of the fictional real-life conversion. However, a fiddly operation, and it took some serious effort to blend the new parts into the Tunnan fuselage, especially the windscreen.
Once the cockpit was in place, the lower front fuselage with the guns (the upper pair had disappeared in the meantime) was mounted, and the wings followed suit. In this case, I modified the flaps into a lowered position, and, as a subtle detail, the Tunnan kit lost its retrofitted dogtooth wings, so that they resemble the initial, simple wing of the J 29 A and B variants. Thanks to the massive construction of the kit’s wings (they consist of two halves, but these are very thin and almost massive), this was a relatively easy task.
The rest of the Tunnan was built mostly OOB; it is a typical Heller kit of the Seventies: simple, with raised surface detail, relatively good fit (despite the need to use putty) and anything you could ask for a J 29 in 1:72 scale. I just replaced the drop tanks with shorter, thicker alternatives – early J 29 frequently carried Vampire drop tanks without fins, and the more stout replacements appeared very suitable for a trainer.
The pitots on the wing tips had to be scratched, since they got lost with the wing modifications - but OOB they are relatively thick and short, anyway. Further additions include a tail bumper and extra dorsal and ventral antennae, plus a fairing for a rotating warning light, inspired by a similar installation on the late J 29 target tugs.
Painting and markings:
As usual, I wanted a relatively plausible livery and kept things simple. Early J 29 fighters were almost exclusively left in bare metal finish, and the Swedish Vampire trainers were either operated in NMF with orange markings (very similar to the RAF trainers), or they carried the Swedish standard dark green/blue grey livery.
I stuck to the Tunnan’s standard NMF livery, but added dark green on wing tips and fin, which were widely added in order to make formation flight and general identification easier. However, some dayglow markings were added on the fuselage and wings, too, so that – together with the tactical markings – a colorful and distinct look was created, yet in line with typical Swedish Air Force markings in the late Fifties/early Sixties.
The NMF livery was created with an overall coat of Revell 99 acrylic paint (Aluminum), on top of which various shades of Metallizer were dry-brushed, panel by panel. Around the exhaust, a darker base tone (Revell 91, Iron Metallic and Steel Metallizer) was used. Around the cockpit, in order to simulate the retrofitted parts, some panels received a lighter base with Humbrol 191.
The raised panel lines were emphasized through a light black in wash and careful rubbing with grinded graphite on a soft cotton cloth – with the benefit that the graphite adds a further, metallic shine to the surface and destroys the uniform, clean NMF look. On the front fuselage, where many details got lost through the PSR work, panel lines were painted with a thin, soft pencil.
The cockpit interior became dark green-grey (Revell 67 comes pretty close to the original color), the landing gear wells medium grey (Revell 57). The dark green markings on fin and wing tips were painted with Humbrol 163 (RAF Dark Green), which comes IMHO close to the Swedish “Mörkgrön”. The orange bands were painted, too, with a base of Humbrol 82 (Orange Lining) on top of which a thin coat of fluorescent orange (Humbrol 209) was later added. Even though the NMF Tunnan did not carry anti-dazzle paint in front of the windscreen, I added a black panel because of the relatively flat area there on the modified kit.
Decals come from different sources: roundels and stencils come from the Heller kit’s sheet, the squadron code number from a Flying Colors sheet with Swedish ciphers in various colors and sizes for the late Fifties time frame, while the tactical code on the fin was taken from a Saab 32 sheet.
Finally the kit was sealed with a “¾ matt”, acrylic varnish, mixed from glossy and matt varnishes.
An effective and subtle conversion, and a bigger stunt than one might think at first sight. The Tunnan two-seater does, hoewever, not look as disturbing as, for instance, the BAC Lightning or Hawker Hunter trainer variants? The rhinoplasty was massive and took some serious PSR, though, and the livery was also more demanding than it might seem. But: this is what IMHO a real Saab 29 trainer could have looked like, if it had left the drawing boards in the early Fifties. And it even looks good! :D
even different lives lived by a countless individuals...is unified in one spirit...for peace in Humanity...
Das ist Integration:
Mustafa, neben mir: "Ich ess ja auch schon mal Schweinefleisch."
Nachbar: "Mustafa - du bist doch Moslem?"
Mustafa: "Ich bin Deutscher."
Two U.S. Air Force Rockwell B-1B "Lancers" assigned to 37th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, deployed from Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, fly alongside two Koku Jieitai (Japan Air Self-Defense Force) F-15s over the vicinity of the East China Sea, Sept. 9, 2017. Following the end of the operation, one B-1B flew to Misawa Air Base, Japan, to be a static display for the Misawa Air Festival, while the other B-1B returned to Andersen AFB, Guam. The integration of our aerial platforms with our allied nations advance and strengthen the long-standing military-to-military relationships in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.
Virginia City's booming gold mines provided economic opportunities for a small number of African Americans after the Civil War. By 1866, at least thirty African Americans men & women resided in Virginia City. Aside from working in the mines, they worked as barbers, cooks, teamsters, or general laborers. Most marries women kept house but along with single women often worked as servants, cooks, & laundresses. By 1870, following the decline of the mining industry, only about twenty African Americans remained in the Virginia City. A few of those who remained owned successful businesses.
Born in the 1840s in Kentucky, Jack or "Jarrett" Taylor resided in Virginia City from 1866 until his death in 1926. After serving as a Union Army stable hand, Taylor made his way to Virginia City by working for a freighting company. He continues freighting on the vital Virginia City-Fort Benton Road for the F. R. Merk Company, formerly located in what is now the Pioneer Bar on Wallace Street. Taylor eventually became successful real estate entrepreneur & by 1875, he owned 160 acres in the Madison Valley.
In 1880 Taylor was boarding with African American sisters Minerva Coggswell & Parthenia Sneed. Shortly after Minerva's death in 1894, Taylor purchased this house from her estate. By 1905, he owned a number of cattle & horses that carried his brands. That same year, Thomas Thexton sued Taylor for horse theft. The court ruled in Taylor's favor largely due to testimony from white citizens. The integration of Taylor & other African Americans in the community suggests better race relations in Virginia City than other parts of the country. Sarah Bickford, a prominent local African American businesswoman, cared for Taylor in his final years & served as the executor of his estate. Taylor dies on September 16, 1926 & is buries in Hillside cemetery next to Bickford.
In 2009, with funding from the ford Foundation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded Montana Heritage Commission (MHC) a Partnership in Scholarship Grant to conduct research into the lives of Virginia City's African American residents. This research conducted by MHC staff, public history faculty & students from Washington State University & the University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire added great depth to the knowledge of Virginia City's African American Community.
Taken on the western side of the park's Middle Falls.
What happens when you're an Arbor Vitae (Thuja occidentalis) and you sprout on bare bedrock instead of real soil? Your roots get aggressive and go on a water- and nutrient-seeking expedition.
The rock here is basalt of the late-Mesoproterozoic North Shore Volcanic Group. It erupted about 1.1 Ga ago as part of the cataclysmic Midcontinent Rift event that almost tore North America apart.
The basalt is highly jointed. Joints are fractures in bedrock where there has been no appreciable shift in position on either side of the fissure. They often form when a section of the Earth's crust long confined by overlying rock units is finally exposed at the surface through the process of erosion. Relieved of all that former topweight and confining pressure, it stretches vertically, shrinks horizontally, and cracks.
Plant roots often exploit joints by growing down into them. And as they slowly expand they can exert so much pressure on the stone that it fractures even more.
To see the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit
my Integrative Natural History of Minnesota's North Shore album.
Leica MP
Leica Summilux 35mm f/1.4 II
Fuji Neopan 400
Tetenal Ultrafin Plus 1+4
7 min 30 sec 20°C
Scan from negative film
This archival image from December 2018, shows the flight James Webb Space Telescope "telescope element" (the mirrors and instruments) at Northrop Grumman, where it is being prepped for integration with the "spacecraft element" (sunshield and bus).
Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
At the Integration Facility at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the upper stage of a Soyuz booster rocket is rotated back to its vertical position Dec. 8 following the encapsulation of the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft. The Soyuz spacecraft will launch Dec. 15 to send Expedition 46-47 crewmembers Tim Kopra of NASA, Tim Peake of the European Space Agency and Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) for a six-month mission on the International Space Station.
NASA/Victor Zelentsov
Located at the corner of Bayswater and Somerset W. How is it possible to walk by a building and never really notice it? Very easy,
Location - Langley Research Center - Aircraft Landing Dynamics Facility
Date of Photos – 02/15/2012
Photographer – Joe Bibby
Building Resilience, Integrating Gender Women, Natural Resources and Climate Change in Afghanistan
2017 © Noorullah Azizi UN Environment
Special philosophic-briar-patch alert: If you're here for the geology or natural history only, stop reading after the first unitalicized paragraph to avoid a toxic dose of authorial introspection.
Taken in the same place as Part 7 of this set, but from a slightly different angle. And still looking southwestward at a small canyon of a Tornillo Creek tributary. Here at Carlota Tinaja we're about 6.9 road mi / 11.1 road km north of the intersection of Old Ore Road and Park Road 12.
To briefly review what I mentioned in the previous post, the artfully stratified stone belongs to the Upper Cretaceous Boquillas Formation. It's composed of alternating beds of limestone and various kinds of mudstone, each representing a separate pulse of sedimentation near a margin of the Western Interior Seaway. In those days, that great body of saltwater bisected North America from the Arctic all the way to what will always be known to the non-idiotic as the Gulf of Mexico.
And now I'm going to do something unforgiveable by speaking primarily to myself about my own reaction to this photo: it has always triggered in me particularly intense associations with the blessed day I stood in this spot and took it.
I remember feeling a flood of awe and curiosity and calmness that cannot possibly be related, in word or image, to any other person. I was standing in the midst of so much sheer geologic beauty, so much monumental stillness, so much rock carefully arranged by unconscious processes. No human-derived landscape has ever been half so uncontrived or perfect.
There is that experience of four-dimensional immersion in the real that only deserts offer. In that stark and arid world there is the overwhelming impression that the only way to avoid delusion is to sense the legendary nature of everything.
At least that's what this kind of place, and this kind of picture, do for me. But as noted before, it's a lesson that can't be imprinted on others. Still, in the heart of this old agnostic Gnostic the memory of having been there, at Carlota Tinaja, says something like this:
Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
Quench not the Spirit.
Lest I get slapped with a plagiarism suit from the Heavenly Choir, let me note that this is 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19, straight up. I was raised on the King James Version, so there you have it, in good Jacobean prose.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my my Integrative Natural History of Old Ore Road album.
This photo from Northrop Grumman's clean room in Redondo Beach, California shows the process if integrating the sunshield and the telescope part of the James Webb Space Telescope Observatory. The telescope is seen hanging from a crane, in the process of being moved over the sunshield.
Here's a recent video about the recent successful assembly of Webb into its final form: youtu.be/Trh9ohPo-cE
Image credit: Northrop Grumman
A United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy common booster core arrives at the Horizontal Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for preflight processing. The Delta IV Heavy will launch NASA's upcoming Parker Solar Probe mission. The mission will perform the closest-ever observations of a star when it travels through the Sun's atmosphere, called the corona. The probe will rely on measurements and imaging to revolutionize our understanding of the corona and the Sun-Earth connection. Liftoff atop the Delta IV Heavy rocket is scheduled to take place from Cape Canaveral's Space Launch Complex 37 in summer 2018.
Photo credit: NASA/Cory Huston
(Updated April 16, 2025)
Looking east-southeastward at the eastern cliff cut by the middle branch of the Amnicon River. The Upper Falls, the focal point of Part 2 of this set, is just out of view to the right.
It's always a treat when concepts of structural geology are glaringly visible at the Earth's surface. Here an absolutely lovely fault, the Douglas, runs up that cliff from lower right to upper left in the center of the frame. If you stand on the little enclosed observation platform, you're right next to it.
The crustal section on the right, massive, dark-brown basalt of the late-Mesoproterozoic Chengwatana Volcanic Group, constitutes the hanging wall. The steps and the platform, and everything below and to their left, are the somewhat younger (probably very-late-Mesoproterozoic) Orienta Sandstone. It's the lowest formation of Wisconsin's Bayfield Group. Here it's the footwall.
When a portion of the Earth's crust is pulled apart—when it's under tension—normal faults, with down-dropped hanging walls, are produced. But when you see the opposite condition, where the hanging wall has been pushed up the fault plane at a high angle, it's a reverse fault instead. This indicates crustal compression.
As it so happens, the Douglas and some other major faults associated with the Midcontinent Rift (MCR) have been both types. When the MCR first developed during a phase of regional stretching, they came into being as the normal variety. But then, at some point afterward, the MCR structure was subjected to crustal scrunching, and they were converted into the reverse kind. Their headwalls were displaced upward. So in this spot the older Chengwatana basalt sits atop the Orienta Sandstone.
As a photo in a future posting will show, the contact between the two rock types contains broken-up, ground-up, and generally messed-up rock that suffered the worst of the frictional effects when the fault moved. Geologists of my ancient generation refer to this by the informal name of fubarite, but the official terms are fault gouge (finer-grained material) and fault breccia (with larger clasts).
At this distance you can see how the usually flat-lying beds of the Orienta have been seriously deformed and are dipping at crazy angles. If you walk downstream from here, however, you'll see that the strata are still in their original, more-or-less horizontal orientation.
You'll find the other photos and descriptions of this series in my Integrative Natural History of Amnicon Falls State Park album.
Facing more or less northward. Taken along the trail leading to the summit of Vesuvius.
Everyone knows that it was Mount Vesuvius that buried Pompeii, Herculaneum, and other ancient communities in AD 79. And everyone happens to be wrong, at least if one adheres to modern geologic and geographic jargon. In current terminology, it wasn't Vesuvius that wreaked that havoc, but the famous volcano's long-lived predecessor, Mount Somma.
According to an excellent paper and accompanying geologic map, "Volcanic Evolution of the Somma-Vesuvius Complex (Italy)" (Sbrana et al., Journal of Maps, January 2020), Mount Somma assembled itself as a major stratovolcano from about 44 ky to 22 ky ago. And then, from 22 ky to AD 79, it suffered a number of Plinian eruptions, each of which resulted in the collapse of its central cone and the formation of a caldera.
Whenever italicized terms begin to proliferate, it's time to stop and provide some definitions. Let's do this in tabular form:
Plinian eruption: named for that prolific letter-writer, Pliny the Younger, whose uncle (you guessed it—Pliny the Elder) was ancient Rome's foremost naturalist and seeker after the odd and curious. See the comments section of Part 1 for more on this dynamic duo.
Because Pliny the Younger did a superb job of describing the AD 79 event, that type of highly violent and destructive eruption now bears his name. As a great mass of pyroclastic material is shot high into the atmosphere, it forms a mushroom cloud that eventually suffers gravitational collapse and falls onto and buries surrounding terrain. So much of the underlying magma chamber is emptied in a short time that the volcano caves in under its own weight. The result is a
Caldera. Essentially this is just a very big crater that has formed due to the process of magma-chamber collapse described above.
So what is Vesuvius? It's the newer stratovolcano that has risen atop the Somma caldera since the 1600s AD. The latest alterations and additions to its Gran Cono summit and its downslope lava flows were made during its most recent major eruption, in 1944.
But this is very confusing if you happen to be a Classics scholar and you read the famous letter of Pliny the Younger concerning the AD 79 eruption (Epistulae 6.16) in the original Latin. You'll come upon this passage detailing the aforesaid eruption:
Nubes incertum procul intuentibus ex quo monte; Vesuvium fuisse postea cognitum est
My own crude translation of this is, "A cloud that came from a mountain not identifiable from this far away, but which was later understood to be Vesuvius." Hmm. This shows that what we now call Mount Somma the ancients called Vesuvius. Uffa!
So perhaps it's best to be a little vague, tolerant, and adjustable. Let's just use the term found in the article title cited above, "the Somma-Vesuvius Complex." In fact, I'm going to get even more sciency and abbreviate it to the SVC. How cool is that?
In this shot, the SVC can be categorized as:
- Vesuvius Gran Cono slope (angle of repose of about 30 degrees from horizontal): the dark portion at lower left, foreground;
- Somma caldera floor, with considerable tree growth;
- Somma caldera rim.
The rim is of special interest because it reveals classic stratovolcano composition (alternating layers of tephra and lava) as well as striking examples of dikes. The dikes resemble narrow, vertical walls projecting radially outward from the rim. In fact, they're former fissures or feeder channels for volcanic vents. Some of the magma they contained solidified within them, and created flat-sided bodies of rock considerably more resistant than the pyroclastic material around them.
The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Integrative Natural History of Mount Vesuvius & the Gulf of Naples album.
La comunità ortodossa di Abano Terme e dintorni ha eretto (immagino a sue spese) questa chiesa nello stile di quelle che si vedono nei piccoli villaggi dell'Est-Europa. E' un bell'esempio di integrazione, pur conservando le tradizioni religiose. Ad esempio, la donna che sta uscendo dalla chiesa, per rispetto del luogo, indossa una finta gonna per nascondere i pantaloni che porta sotto.
The modest bus station in Aberystwyth next to the imposing 1925 train station, now used as a Wetherspoons
Informations:
Telescope: AIRY APO 130T f/6.6
Mount: NEQ6-Pro
Camera: QHY9
Software: EzCap - PHD2 - Maxim Dl Pro - Photoshop CS6
Total integration: 3 hours
Location: Noventa di Piave - Italy
Date: 21.10.2016
Camera cooled : -25°C
Filter: UHC
Video of three black and white collages created in 2003...these pieces have never been exhibited and by using iMovie they now have a way of finding an audience
The narration with the video was also written back in 2003 when the pieces were first created...l found by writing a narration to all my pieces back in those days helped me with inner and outer consolidation and this allowed many other awarenesses to slowly become clear...
I have only just realised these videos are also becoming my artistic retrospective...