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The Racetrack is a playa--a dry lakebed--best known for its strange moving rocks. Located in a remote area of California's Death Valley National Park, the heavy stones appear to move across the dried lake bed known as Racetrack Playa, leaving a trail behind them in the cracked mud.
In years past, the apparent movement was blamed on everything from space aliens and magnetic fields to pranksters. But until recently no one had actually seen the rocks move, which only added to the mystery.
As noted on the National Park Service website, the mystery was finally solved in 2014 when in a paper published in the August 27, PLOS ONE, a team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, paleobiologist Richard Norris reported on first-hand observations of the phenomenon. Because the stones can sit for a decade or more without moving, the researchers did not originally expect to see motion in person. Instead, they decided to monitor the rocks remotely by installing a high-resolution weather station capable of measuring gusts to 1 second intervals and fitting 15 rocks with custom-built, motion-activated GPS units. The experiment was set up in Winter 2011 with permission of the National Park Service. Then –in what Ralph Lorenz of the Applied Physics Laboratory at the Johns Hopkins University, one of the paper's authors, suspected would be "the most boring experiment ever" –they waited for something to happen.
But in December 2013, Norris and co-author James Norris (of Interwoof and Richard's cousin) arrived in Death Valley to discover that the playa was covered with a shallow pond no more than seven centimeters (three inches) deep. Shortly after, the rocks began moving.
Their observations show that moving the rocks requires a rare combination of events. First, the playa fills with water, which must be deep enough to allow formation of floating ice during cold winter nights but shallow enough to expose the rocks. As nighttime temperatures plummet, the pond freezes to form sheets of "windowpane" ice, which must be thin enough to move freely but thick enough to maintain strength. On sunny days, the ice begins to melt and break up into large floating panels, which light winds drive across the playa pool. The ice sheets shove rocks in front of them and the moving stones leave trails in the soft mud bed below the pool surface.
I don't know...I am still going with the space alien theory!
Not long after the Western Plains Zoo opened on the day we visited, they let the giraffes out of the sleeping accommodation. As the visitors came in to watch them amble across their big paddock, so too did a group of the giraffes wander over towards the edge of their range and stood having a good look at the visitors. It was strange to be under reverse observation but obviously the humans made for an interesting scene as well.
Not the best quality picture of the day as the sun was in the wrong place and he was too far away but it was good to get a picture of him hovering before his dive. Clearly with those skills it was an adult.
As the sun begins to set it is always a real joy to catch sight of one our beautiful Hares going about its day ❤️
This is Sirkeci, one of the touristic districts of Istanbul. Normally these streets are overcrowded. Today, relatively few people are seen. Restaurants are closed, many businesses work part-time, and many went bankrupt. This is one of the pictures I took randomly, and the number of people who misuse their masks in this way, unfortunately, is very high. Everyone is responsible for the health of others as well as for themselves. How much do you think we can fight the virus this way?
Thanks to Wesley-Souza for Cat stock
These six infrared images of Saturn's moon Titan represent some of the clearest, most seamless-looking global views of the icy moon's surface produced so far. The views were created using 13 years of data acquired by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The images are the result of a focused effort to smoothly combine data from the multitude of different observations VIMS made under a wide variety of lighting and viewing conditions over the course of Cassini's mission.
Previous VIMS maps of Titan display great variation in imaging resolution and lighting conditions, resulting in obvious seams between different areas of the surface. With the seams now gone, this new collection of images is by far the best representation of how the globe of Titan might appear to the casual observer if it weren’t for the moon's hazy atmosphere, and it likely will not be superseded for some time to come.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Stéphane Le Mouélic, University of Nantes, Virginia Pasek, University of Arizona
deeper I go...closer I get...
the bottomless pit of discoveries
infinite shapes of nature's daily gifts
OBSERVE Collective
All images are © Copyrighted and All Rights Reserved
germanstreetphotography.com/michael-monty-may/
Camera: Minolta X-300
Lens: Vivitar 28mm F2
Filter: Hoya Yellow(K2)
Film: Ilford HP5+
Processing and Scanning: Gulabi Photo Lab, Glasgow
Post Processing: Photoscape X
More from an afternoon walk around Mugdock Park can be found here youtu.be/HRWCEASfu5g.
Unsettling Observations.
Целые боли слепые секунды судебное преследование затраты материальные секреты законные дилеммы зрелые композиции бессвязные знаки нелепые суровые излияния,
punir les vieux lecteurs tambourinant les vers insinuants de l'impunité thème sublime aveux jaloux excellent appétit éblouissements déposés,
trefniadau afradlon straeon doniol syrpréis tal wallgof syrpréis gwastadol cicio ciniawau afradlon barnau wedi'u trosi barn ymgynnull,
általános részletek túlértékelt rendszerek gyenge modor torzulások veszélyeket hordoztak hátrányokat fordítva düh leíró borzalmak,
υποσυνδεδεμένες ομάδες απογοητευμένοι απόκοσμοι, έντονα περιφρονητικά φωνήεντα περιφρόνησης που εμπιστεύτηκαν μπολ με λαχταριστούς θριάμβους πρωινές αποφάσεις,
colonne disgustose numerose furie latta respira conseguenze eccessive estrarre dilettazioni casuali cervelli errati mangiati affari deliziosi,
通りの心は泥の深刻な困難を理解する不合理な建築家を規制する頭を叩きました満足度をクイズしました便宜的なお金の職業スナップ分.
Steve.D.Hammond.
This is a composite image of Uranus by Voyager 2 and two different observations made by Hubble — one for the ring and one for the auroras.
Ever since Voyager 2 beamed home spectacular images of the planets in the 1980s, planet-lovers have been hooked on auroras on other planets. Auroras are caused by streams of charged particles like electrons that come from various origins such as solar winds, the planetary ionosphere, and moon volcanism. They become caught in powerful magnetic fields and are channeled into the upper atmosphere, where their interactions with gas particles, such as oxygen or nitrogen, set off spectacular bursts of light.
The auroras on Jupiter and Saturn are well-studied, but not much is known about the auroras of the giant ice planet Uranus. In 2011, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope became the first Earth-based telescope to snap an image of the auroras on Uranus. In 2012 and 2014 a team led by an astronomer from Paris Observatory took a second look at the auroras using the ultraviolet capabilities of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) installed on Hubble.
They tracked the interplanetary shocks caused by two powerful bursts of solar wind traveling from the sun to Uranus, then used Hubble to capture their effect on Uranus’ auroras — and found themselves observing the most intense auroras ever seen on the planet. By watching the auroras over time, they collected the first direct evidence that these powerful shimmering regions rotate with the planet. They also re-discovered Uranus’ long-lost magnetic poles, which were lost shortly after their discovery by Voyager 2 in 1986 due to uncertainties in measurements and the featureless planet surface.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Lamy / Observatoire de Paris
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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One last addition to my Mars exercises for the calendar year. After recent lunar observations, I slewed to Mars to snag 4,000 frames before taking all of my gear down. Interesting to see the increase in phase percentage since the Earth has traveled 1/4 of the way around the Sun between the last two images. (retograde and relative position between Earth, Mars and the Sun). Distance increase of 0.948AU, or 88,122,105 miles between the first and final image.
All images captured from my home observatory using a Celestron CPC800XLT telescope, ASI120MC-S camera and Orion Shorty 2X Barlow.
Zygaena filipendulae, Six-spot burnet, Livadna ivanjska ptičica, 7140 Fa, 25.VI.2019 Stara sušica
www.inaturalist.org/observations/27692138
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fotozine.org/index.php?knjiga=galerije&poglavlje=3279&list=43994&element=732422
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biologer.hr/hr/contributor/field-observations/57642
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