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Keeping the head end informed, last eastbound Canadian at rest in Winnipeg. We've recently completed the last passenger run from Calgary to Winnipeg: Calgary is now without intercity rail service heading east: the last westbound has met us here and is on the other track. Tomorrow it will be the last passenger train to call at Calgary. Bizarre for a major city in a G20 country.
On other matters...Head-End (electrical) Power to warm trains is more efficient, more reliable, and makes more sense in the age of electric and diesel-electric locomotives, but still in my mind passenger cars should steam in the winter...! Since this shot VIA's strealiner fleet has been rebuilt to use HEP instead of steam: more reliable as the power lines can't freeze in winter, unlike steam lines.
Original image 4x4-inch print from a 120 negative, shot on a Yashicamat 124. I finally found and scanned the negative: big improvement! More detail both on the car outside in daylight and the conductor in the shade of the train shed. Agfa APX 100 was the film used (A film in retrospect was quite nice!) and the exposure was augmented with another classic, a Vivitar 283 flash with a LumiQuest Pocket Bounce -- analog HDR, if you will! I use flash more in daylight than in the dark.
Okavango inland delta in northern Botswana is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 40 crew member on the International Space Station. The great Okavango delta in the Kalahari Desert is illuminated in the sun's reflection point in this panorama. Using this sun glint technique, crew members can image fine detail of water bodies. Here the bright line of the Okavango River shows the annual summer flood advancing from the well-watered Angolan Highlands (upper margin) to the delta. Then the flood water slowly seeps across the 150 kilometer-long delta, supplying forests and wetlands, finally reaching the fault-bounded lower margin of the delta in the middle of winter. Most of the water of this large river is used up by the forests, or evaporates in the dry air. Only two percent of the river's water actually exits the delta. The wetland supports high biodiversity in the middle of the otherwise semiarid Kalahari Desert, and is now one of the most famous tourist sites in Africa. This view also shows the small quantity of water in the Boteti River. Okavango water only reaches the dry lake floors (lower right) in the wettest years. Part of one of the station's solar arrays is visible at right.
Image credit: NASA
Original image:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/14579798639/in/set-721...
More about space station research:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html
Crew Earth Observations on Flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/sets/72157621443555137/
________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
ISS042E006751 (11/08/2014) --- Earth observation taken from the International Space Station of the coastline of the United Arab Emirates. The large wheel along the coast center left is "Jumeirah" Palm Island, with a conference center, hotels, recreation areas and a large marine zoo.
This view taken by an Expedition 26 crewmember onboard the International Space Station shows a night view of the area around Bangkok-Rayong, Thailand.
Image and caption credit: NASA
More Expedition 26 images:
spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-26/ndxpa...
More about space station research:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html
Crew Earth Observations on Flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/sets/72157621443555137/
________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Last night's sunset sky entertainment - My Backyard, Phoenix, Arizona
{ L } Lightbox view is best
© All Rights Reserved
Observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have provided the first X-ray evidence of a supernova shock wave breaking through a cocoon of gas surrounding the star that exploded. This discovery may help astronomers understand why some supernovas are much more powerful than others.
On Nov. 3, 2010, a supernova was discovered in the galaxy UGC 5189A, located about 160 million light years away. Using data from the All Sky Automated Survey telescope in Hawaii taken earlier, astronomers determined this supernova exploded in early October 2010 (in Earth's time-frame).
This composite image of UGC 5189A shows X-ray data from Chandra in purple and optical data from Hubble Space Telescope in red, green and blue. SN 2010jl is the very bright X-ray source near the top of the galaxy.
A team of researchers used Chandra to observe this supernova in December 2010 and again in October 2011. The supernova was one of the most luminous that has ever been detected in X-rays.
In optical light, SN 2010jl was about ten times more luminous than a typical supernova resulting from the collapse of a massive star, adding to the class of very luminous supernovas that have been discovered recently with optical surveys. Different explanations have been proposed to explain these energetic supernovas including (1) the interaction of the supernova's blast wave with a dense shell of matter around the pre-supernova star, (2) radioactivity resulting from a pair-instability supernova (triggered by the conversion of gamma rays into particle and anti-particle pairs), and (3) emission powered by a neutron star with an unusually powerful magnetic field.
In the first Chandra observation of SN 2010jl, the X-rays from the explosion's blast wave were strongly absorbed by a cocoon of dense gas around the supernova. This cocoon was formed by gas blown away from the massive star before it exploded.
In the second observation taken almost a year later, there is much less absorption of X-ray emission, indicating that the blast wave from the explosion has broken out of the surrounding cocoon. The Chandra data show that the gas emitting the X-rays has a very high temperature -- greater than 100 million degrees Kelvin – strong evidence that it has been heated by the supernova blast wave.
The energy distribution, or spectrum, of SN 2010jl in optical light reveals features that the researchers think are explained by the following scenario: matter around the supernova has been heated and ionized (electrons stripped from atoms) by X-rays generated when the blast wave plows through this material. While this type of interaction has been proposed before, the new observations directly show, for the first time, that this is happening.
This discovery therefore supports the idea that some of the unusually luminous supernovas are caused by the blast wave from their explosion ramming into the material around it.
In a rare example of a cosmic coincidence, analysis of the X-rays from the supernova shows that there is a second unrelated source at almost the same location as the supernova. These two sources strongly overlap one another as seen on the sky. This second source is likely to be an ultraluminous X-ray source, possibly containing an unusually heavy stellar-mass black hole, or an intermediate mass black hole.
These results were published in a paper appearing in the May 1st, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The authors were Poonam Chandra (Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Canada), Roger Chevalier and Christopher Irwin (University of Virginia, Charlottsville, VA), Nikolai Chugai (Institute of Astronomy of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia), Claes Fransson (Stockholm University, Sweden), and Alicia Soderberg (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA).
Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2012/sn2010/
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Royal Military College of Canada/P.Chandra et al); Optical: NASA/STScI
Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Read more about Chandra:
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!
_____________________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
Thanks for checking it out:
Website: www.observecollective.com/Magazine
ISSUU: issuu.com/observecollective/docs/observations_v1n1_finalr...
NASA image release March 20, 2012
Studies using X-ray and ultraviolet observations from NASA's Swift satellite provide new insights into the elusive origins of an important class of exploding star called Type Ia supernovae.
Three types of systems, illustrated here, may host Type Ia supernovae. The first two panels depict a white dwarf in a binary system accumulating matter transferred from a red supergiant companion many times the sun's mass (left) or similar to the sun (middle). The transferred matter is thought to accumulate on the white dwarf and ultimately cause it to explode. Swift data on dozens of supernovae essentially eliminate the first model. Mounting evidence suggests that some Type Ia supernovae occur when binary white dwarfs (right) merge and collide.
Credit: NASA/Swift/ Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State Univ.
To read more go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/supernova-narrowi...
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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"Drink deep, or taste not the plasma spring"
Random observations in this upload.
This little metal swimmer has been diving on the post for well over a year
This image is released as part of the Early Release Observations from ESA’s Euclid space mission. All data from these initial observations are made public on 23 May 2024 – including a handful of unprecedented new views of the nearby Universe, this being one.
This breathtaking image features Messier 78 (the central and brightest region), a vibrant nursery of star formation enveloped in a shroud of interstellar dust. This image is unprecedented – it is the first shot of this young star-forming region at this width and depth.
Euclid peered deep into this enshrouded nursery using its infrared camera, exposing hidden regions of star formation for the first time, mapping its complex filaments of gas and dust in unprecedented detail, and uncovering newly formed stars and planets. This is the first time we’ve been able to see these smaller, sub-stellar sized objects in Messier 78; the dark clouds of gas and dust usually hide them from view, but Euclid’s infrared ‘eyes’ can see through these obscuring clouds to explore within.
Euclid’s sensitive instruments can detect objects just a few times the mass of Jupiter, and its visible and infrared instruments – the VIS and NISP cameras – reveal over 300 000 new objects in this field of view alone. Scientists are using this data to study the amount and ratio of stars and sub-stellar objects here, which is key to understanding the dynamics of how star populations form and change over time. Sub-stellar objects like brown dwarfs and free-floating or ‘rogue’ planets are also one possible candidate for dark matter. While our current knowledge suggests that there aren’t enough of these objects to solve the mystery of dark matter in the Milky Way, it remains an open question, and one that Euclid will definitively answer by probing a significant fraction of our galaxy.
Also visible to the top of the frame is the bright nebula NGC 2071, and a third filament of star formation towards the bottom of the image (with a ‘traffic light’-like appearance). This lower region is a dark nebula producing lower-mass stars, all arranged along elongated filaments in space.
Messier 78 lies 1300 light-years away in the constellation of Orion.
Read more about the new data released as part of Euclid’s Early Release Observations, including a stunning set of five never-before-seen images: here
Explore this image at the highest resolution in ESASky
[Technical details: The data in this image were taken in just about one hour of observation. This colour image was obtained by combining VIS data and NISP photometry in Y and H bands; its size is 8200 x 8200 pixels. VIS and NISP enable observing astronomical sources in four different wavelength ranges. Aesthetics choices led to the selection of three out of these four bands to be cast onto the traditional Red-Green-Blue colour channels used to represent images on our digital screens (RGB). The blue, green, red channels capture the Universe seen by Euclid around the wavelength 0.7, 1.1, and 1.7 micron respectively. This gives Euclid a distinctive colour palette: hot stars have a white-blue hue, excited hydrogen gas appears in the blue channel, and regions rich in dust and molecular gas have a clear red hue. Distant redshifted background galaxies appear very red. In the image, the stars have six prominent spikes due to how light interacts with the optical system of the telescope in the process of diffraction. Another signature of Euclid special optics is the presence of a few, very faint and small round regions of a fuzzy blue colour. These are normal artefacts of complex optical systems, so-called ‘optical ghost’; easily identifiable during data analysis, they do not cause any problem for the science goals.]
[Image description: A filamentary orange veil covers a bright region of star formation. The background is dark, stippled with stars and galaxies ranging from small bright dots to starry shapes. The foreground veil spans from upper left to the bottom right and resembles a seahorse. Bright stars light up the ‘eye’ and ‘chest’ regions of the seahorse with purple light. Within the tail, three bright spots sit in a traffic-light like formation.]
CREDIT
ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi
LICENCE
CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence
One of my favorite activities in SL is slapping on my Mermaid tail and heading out to Blake Sea. Here I have filmed what you may see on Blake Sea, any given day. I did have some conversations with some people I encountered and I have included their names at the end of the machinima as well as in the description. I have captured the busy movement of Blake Sea, the boats, sailboats, aircraft , to name a few, and the people driving them. I can be found in the water in most of these shots, spouting my mermaid bubble.
Mermaid Observations and Interactions
in the Blake Sea of Second Life
Machinima by Penumbra Carter
Filmed in Second Life The Blake Sea
2022-23
Thank you, people of the Blake Sea.
Penumbra Carter as the Mermaid
Sounds used with permissions:
Slow cloud Synth music by szegvari
MENEZ_Corentin_2016_2017_Monster Growling.wav
by univ_lyon3
processed_sounds » water_orchestra.wav
by laura_pacampos
WOMEN FLOATING IN THE DUCKSJҽɳɳყ Eԃʅυɳԃ (jennnah),
Syl Melodie Caproni (sylvia.caproni),
Anashara Dubois (anashara)
MERMAIDS 尺αςんεℓ (wildrachel), Corina Sand (staraly)
GUY ON A BOAT Eisenwald Easterwood (eisenwald)
Poecilesthus geometricus (Perty, 1830). Tentative ID based on www.inaturalist.org images. Found at Ecolodge Itororó reserve, in/near Nova Friburgo municipality in state of Rio de Janeiro in southeastern Brazil.
Single exposure, uncropped, handheld, in situ. Canon MT-24EX flash unit, Ian McConnachie diffuser.
This grand panorama of the Southern Patagonia Icefield (center) was imaged by an Expedition 38 crew member on the International Space Station on one of the rare clear days in the southern Andes Mountains. With an area of 13,000 square kilometers, the icefield is the largest temperate ice sheet in the Southern Hemisphere.
Storms that swirl into the region from the southern Pacific Ocean (top) bring rain and snow (equivalent to a total of 2-11 meters of rainfall per year) resulting in the buildup of the ice sheet shown here (center). During the ice ages the glaciers were far larger. Geologists now know that ice tongues extended far onto the plains in the foreground, completely filling the great Patagonian lakes on repeated occasions.
Similarly, ice tongues extended into the dense network of fjords (arms of the sea) on the Pacific side of the icefield. Ice tongues today appear tiny compared to the view that an "ice age" astronaut would have seen. A study of the surface topography of sixty-three glaciers, based on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data, compared data from 2000 to data from studies going back about 30 years (1968-1975). Many glacier tongues showed significant annual "retreat" of their ice fronts, a familiar signal of climate change. The study also revealed that the almost invisible loss by glacier thinning is far more significant in explaining ice loss.
The researchers concluded that volume loss by frontal collapse is 4-10 times smaller than that caused by thinning. Scaled over the entire icefield, including frontal loss (so-called calving when ice masses collapse into the lakes), it was calculated that 13.5 cubic kilometers of ice was lost each year over the study period. This number becomes more meaningful compared with the rate measured in the last five years of the study (1995-2000), when the rate increased almost threefold, averaging 38.7 cubic kilometers per year.
Extrapolating results from the low altitude glacier tongues implies that the high plateau ice on the spine of the Andes is thinning as well. In the decade since this study the often-imaged Upsala Glacier has retreated a further three kilometers, as shown recently in images taken by crew members aboard the space station. Glacier Pio X, named for Pope Pius X, is the only large glacier that is growing in length.
About Crew Earth Observations:
In Crew Earth Observations (CEO), crewmembers on the International Space Station (ISS) photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles above the surface. Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions. A major emphasis of CEO is to monitor disaster response events in support of the International Disaster Charter (IDC). CEO imagery provides researchers on Earth with key data to understand the planet from the perspective of the ISS. Crewmembers have been photographing Earth from space since the early Mercury missions beginning in 1961. The continuous images taken from the ISS ensure this record remains unbroken.
Image credit: NASA
Original image:
www.nasa.gov/content/southern-patagonia-icefield/
More about space station research:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html
View more photos like this in the "NASA Earth Images" Flickr photoset:
www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05
________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
I’ve started writing while photographing elements in nature, and I’ve found it slows me down in the best way. I make fewer images, each one more intentional, and this slower pace brings a deeper understanding of what I’m looking at. There’s a quiet importance in taking the time to see - to truly see - and this process allows me to connect with the details I might have otherwise missed.
-Observations of Basalt-
The basalt, dark and ancient, born from fire over a billion years ago, its rugged faces now touched by sunlight that has risen countless times over these stones. Once, this magma surged from a rift so vast it nearly split the North American continent in two, and now the rocks, shaped by that violent birth, rest in a quiet harmony with the light.
Some faces bask in the sun’s steady warmth, while others hold onto the cool, patient shade. Between them, pools of deep blue water lie still, reflecting the endless sky above.
There is a quiet, unspoken longing here - a sense that these stones, forged in a moment of near-catastrophe, now crave the gentle constancy of the sun’s daily appearance, holding each warm touch as a tender reminder of the light they never take for granted.
Our Bebelplatz, Berlin, Germany observations as seen and experienced during our visit in April 2016. A fascinating city, highly recommended incl. architectural highlights and more.
Editor's note: Digging deep into some of the Earth images archives...many incredible gems in there that deserve to be seen. This one is from way back in 2002.
This digital still image from the International Space Station features fire scars and smoke plumes resulting from biomass burning in the savannahs of the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Expedition Four crewmembers aboard the station observed the seasonal increase in savannah burning, which traditionally peaks in the area in June. This image, taken on May 16, 2002, is centered near 8.6 degrees south latitude, 27.4 degrees east longitude. These fires, likely the result of human activities, according to the staff in the Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center, are thought to contribute significant emissions to the atmosphere (Cahoon, et al, 1992). The darker area in the foreground is a more heavily wooded hillside; most burning occurs in the grassier savannahs which appear red-brown.
Image and caption credit: NASA
More Expedition 4 images:
spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-4/ndxpag...
More about space station research:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html
Crew Earth Observations on Flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/sets/72157621443555137/
________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...
For the record, I feel better today.
Had a good day in work as I was out and about doing inspections and observations. Its good to get out from behind my desk.
It also gave me a chance to pop into the shops between visits for a bit of retail therapy.
One pair of leather gloves - tick
Two pairs of thick woollen socks - tick
(It was 'brass monkey' cold this morning)
Juan Muñoz, Untitled artwork, date unknown. Seen at the exhibition Bad Thoughts, The Sanders Collection at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Editor's note: happy Earth Day to all! There will be so many wonderful Earth images around today...I thought I'd visit the archives and see what buried treasure might be found. There are so many that it's hard to choose!
(From 2003) Alexandria, Egypt, is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 7 crewmember on the International Space Station (ISS). Founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, Alexandria became a center of trade and learning in the ancient world. Alexander built the causeway between the Eastern and Western Harbors, joining Pharos Island to the mainland. Alexandria’s cultural status was symbolized by the lighthouse on Pharos, one of the “Seven Wonders of the World.” The causeway is still known as the old part of the modern city. Since the year 2000, underwater archeologists have located the sunken palace, ceremonial buildings and port facilities of ancient Alexandria, located along most of the curved southern shoreline of the Eastern Harbor. This detailed image provides a view of the modern port facilities in the Western Harbor, where wharves and many moored ships can be detected.
About Crew Earth Observations:
In Crew Earth Observations (CEO), crewmembers on the International Space Station (ISS) photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles above the surface. Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions. A major emphasis of CEO is to monitor disaster response events in support of the International Disaster Charter (IDC). CEO imagery provides researchers on Earth with key data to understand the planet from the perspective of the ISS. Crewmembers have been photographing Earth from space since the early Mercury missions beginning in 1961. The continuous images taken from the ISS ensure this record remains unbroken.
Image credit: NASA
Original image:
spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-7/html/i...
More about space station research:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html
View more photos like this in the "NASA Earth Images" Flickr photoset:
www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05
________________________________
These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...