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Soviet aviation memories from a collection of some 80 slides of Soviet-built aircraft that I've had scanned from my archives. Hope they will provide some enjoyment and nostalgia from a bygone age.
Interflug Tupolev Tu-134A DM-SCU is seen here on push-back from the stand at London Gatwick on the weekly charter that operated at the time 😎 :)
My trusty log book gives the return flight number as IF7201. Fortunately for me and my camera, the aircraft taxied to a stand right under the viewing terrace :)
Interflug at Gatwick Back in the early 1980s, I remember well waiting each Saturday afternoon (and often into the evening!) for the Interflug Tu-134A charter flight to arrive. Eventually we worked out there was an old computer terminal (green screen :) down on one of the airline desks that had the registrations appear around an hour before arrival was due - and often traipsed down there to see if the reg was up to save waiting around if not a 'cop'!
Checking the calendar, this was in fact a Wednesday
Interflug I only bagged a handful registered as country prefix DM in the summer of 1980, and when the 1981 season started they had all been re-registered as DDR-
This was a bit of a surprise, as nearly all airlines at the time either had single or double letter prefixes.
DDR of course stood for Deutsche Demokratische Republik )(otherwise known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)
DM-SCU c/n 09070 - delivered new to Interflug in May 1974 and flew with them until the demise of the airline in 1990 - became DDR-SCU in 7/81, then D-AOBI in 10/90. The aircraft was then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as CCCP-65605 in 12/90, then became EW-65605 with Belair (Belarus) in 9/93, back to Russia as RA-65605 with Chernomorsk Avia in 8/95, then with Krasnoyarsk Airlines by 2002. Transferred to Zapolyarye, then finally flew with SIAT Sibaviatrans - wfu 2005, presume scrapped.
Interflug Tu-134(A)s - the airline operated one of the largest fleets of Tupolev Tu-134s and the larger Tu-134As in Europe, around 30 aircraft between 1968 and German unification in 1990. Here is a list of the fleet:
Tu-134
DM-SCA 1968-1972 - damaged on landing at Dresden 30/5/72 and sold to Aeroflot - since scrapped.
DM-SCB 1968-1986 - wfu and used as a restaurant cafe at Oschersleben, Germany until 2004 - since preserved at Flughafen Magdeburg.
DM-SCD 1969-1975 - w/o on landing at Leipzig - Halle 1/9/75
DM-SCE 1969-1985 - 175 East German Air Force, then Interflug 3/74, DDR-SCE in 4/81, wfu 5/85, presume scrapped
DM-SCF 1969-1986 - 178 East German Air Force, then Interflug 6/74, DDR-SCF in 7/81, wfu 6/86, and used as fire fighting trainer at at Leipzig, scrapped 5/13
DM-SCG 1969-1985 - 179 East German Air Force, then Interflug 2/74, DDR-SCG in 7/81, wfu 8/85, and used as fire fighting trainer at at Erfurt , since scrapped
DM-SCH 1969-1984 - DDR-SCH in 7/81, wfu 1/84, preserved on display Latuftfahrthistorische Sammlung, Finow
DM-SCZ 1969-1986 - 177 East German Air Force, then Interflug 12/75, DDR-SCZ in 7/81, wfu 6/86, preserved since 6/01 at Luftfahrt und Technik Museum, Merseburg
Tu-134A
DM-SCI 1973-1990 - DDR-SCI in 4/81, became D-AOBA 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65611 2/92, then RA-65611 - wfu by 2012, presume scrapped
DM-SCK 1971-1990 - East German Air Force, then Interflug 11/79, DDR-SCK in 7/81 - wfu 9/90, moved by 6/94 to Hermeskeil Museum and preserved
DM-SCL 1971-1990 - 182 East German Air Force, then Interflug 5/77, DDR-SCL in 5/81 - wfu 3/90, purchased and preserved by HYDRO Gerätebau GmbH at Biberach, Germany
DM-SCM 1973-1977 - damaged on landing at Berlin Schönefeld 22/11/77 - broken up for parts
DM-SCN 1973-1990 - 170 East German Air Force, then Interflug 7/77, DDR-SCN in 4/81, became D-AOBC 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65612 9/91, then RA-65612 - wfu 9/04 at Berlin Schönefeld, used for firefighting practice, broken up 8/10
DM-SCO 1973-1990 - 171 East German Air Force, then Interflug 5/79, DDR-SCO in 4/81, became D-AOBD 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65613 10/91, then RA-65613 - wfu 2006, presume scrapped
DM-SCP 1974-1990 - East German Air Force, then Interflug 10/78, DDR-SCP in 7/81, became D-AOBE 10/90, then sold to Komiinteravia as CCCP-65615 10/91, then RA-65615 - wfu 2008, presume scrapped
DM-SCR 1974-1990 - 176 East German Air Force, then Interflug 5/77, DDR-SCR in 4/81, became D-AOBF 10/90, then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as RA-65616 10/91 - wfu 2008, presume scrapped
DM-SCS 1974-1990 - East German Air Force, then Interflug 5/79, DDR-SCS in 4/81, became D-AOBG 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65614 10/91, then RA-65614 - wfu 2008, presume scrapped
DM-SCT 1974-1990 - DDR-SCT in 5/81, became D-AOBH 10/90, then sold to Komiaviatrans 8/91 as RA-65617 10/91, damaged 24/6/95 landing at Kaduna, Nigeria and broken up
DM-SCU 1974-1990 - DDR-SCU in 7/81, became D-AOBI 10/90, then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as CCCP-65605 12/90, then EW-65605 Belair (Belarus), then RA-65605 - wfu 2005, presume scrapped
DM-SCV 1974-1990 - DDR-SCV in 4/81, became D-AOBJ 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65618 10/91, then RA-65618 - wfu 2005, presume scrapped
DM-SCW 1975-1990 - East German Air Force, DDR-SCW in 10/81, then Interflug 5/82, became D-AOBK 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65619 10/91, then RA-65619, then UN-65619 with Atyrau Airways, Kazakhstan, then UP-T3406 with Kazakhstan Air Force - seen stored in 2018
DM-SCX 1976-1990 - DDR-SCX in 5/81, became D-AOBL 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65621 10/91, then RA-65621 - wfu by 2012 and broken up 2014
DM-SCY 1978-1990 - DDR-SCY in 4/81, became D-AOBM 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65622 10/90, then RA-65622 - wfu by 2012 and broken up 2013
DM-SDC 1974-1990 - 181 East German Air Force, then Interflug 3/82 as DDR-SDC, became D-AOBN 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65620 10/91, then RA-65620 - wfu by 2014 and broken up at Syktyvkar, Russia 11/14
DM-SDE 1975-1990 - 183 East German Air Force, then Interflug 3/85 as DDR-SDE, became D-AOBO 10/90, then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as CCCP-65608 9/91, then RA-65608 - wfu by 2014 and broken up at Syktyvkar, Russia 1/15
DM-SDF 1975-1990 - 185 East German Air Force, then Interflug 7/84 as DDR-SDF, became D-AOBP 10/90, then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as CCCP-65610 9/91, then RA-65610, then UN-65610 with Atyrau Airways, Kazakhstan, then UP-T3406 with Kazakhstan Air Force - seen stored in 2018
DM-SDG 1976-1990 - 186 East German Air Force, then Interflug 2/88 as DDR-SDG, became D-AOBQ 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65609 9/91, then RA-65609, then UN-65610 with UTAir Express, wfu 2014 and broken up
DM-SDH 1976-1990 - DDR-SDH in 6/81, became D-AOBR 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65606 10/90, then RA-65606 - wfu by 2004 and transferred to Tupolev Design Bureau - converted to Tu-134A-3 - still current!
DM-SDI 1976-1990 - DDR-SDI in 4/81, became D-AOBS 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65607 10/90, then RA-65607 - wfu by 2014 and broken up 2016
DM-SDO 1979-1990 118 East German Air Force, DDR-SDO in 8/81, then Interflug 8/81, then sold to Vietnam Airlines as VN-A130 6/90 - wfu 1997 and broken up at Hanoi, Noibai International airport around 2004
Taken with a Soviet made Zenith E camera and 300mm lens. From an original slide, scanned with minimal restoration.
You can see a random selection of my aviation memories here: www.flickriver.com/photos/heathrowjunkie/random/
Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.
~Ted Hughes~
Ah, spring provides the most gorgeous backdrops...
"Komainu (狛犬), often called lion-dogs in English, are statue pairs of lion-like creatures either guarding the entrance or the inner shrine of many Japanese Shinto shrines or kept inside the inner shrine itself, where they are not visible to the public. The first type, born during the Edo period, is called sandō komainu (参道狛犬 visiting road Komainu), the second and much older type jinnai komainu (陣内狛犬 shrine inside komainu). They can sometimes be found also at Buddhist temples, nobility residences or even private homes." (Wikipedia)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thetford_Forest
History
Thetford Forest was created after the First World War to provide a strategic reserve of timber, since the country had lost so many oaks and other slow-growing trees as a consequence of the war's demands. It is managed by the Forestry Commission. The creation of the forest destroyed much of the typical Breckland environment of gorse and sandy ridges, ending the frequent sand blows (where the wind picked up sand and blew it across the road reducing visibility). However, this environment was itself man-made, since the area had been denuded by flint-mining, the construction of rabbit warrens and other activities. Grimes Graves is located within the forest
Biodiversity
The forest is largely surrounded by farmland, as well as the villages of West Stow, Ingham, Elveden, and the towns of Mundford and Thetford in Norfolk, and Brandon in Suffolk, however it has a high level of biodiversity. It is home to a large population of hares, rabbits and gamebirds. Several species of deer also reside there, Muntjac, Roe Deer and a small population of Red Deer, the last hunted by the Thetford Forest Staghounds before deer hunting was outlawed.
The forest is well known for its scarce breeding birds, such as Woodlark, Nightjar, Goshawk, Crossbill, Siskin as well as an introduced population of Golden Pheasant. All of these can be found at the Mayday[1] recreation site. Stone Curlew breed on the edges of the forest and there is often a wintering Great Grey Shrike.
High Lodge Visitors Centre
Deep in the heart of the forest lies High Lodge Visitors Centre. High Lodge has a 100 seater restaurant, gift shop, cycle hire, adventure play area, walking trails and cycling trails. It is also the home to the Go Ape high wire adventure course.
There is an hourly parking charge from which the money raised is injected back into the forest and is much needed for the survival of such facilities. Year long season tickets are also available .
The centre is open all year round, except Christmas Day.
Mountain biking
The forest is a popular destination for mountain biking, and has several marked trails ranging from those suitable for families, to the Black Trail for experienced riders. The forest also has hundreds of miles of singletrack, several bomb holes and a steeply undulating section called The Beast.
National cross-country cycling races are held in the forest. There is also a recently formed organisation called TIMBER (Thetford Improved Mountain Biking EnviRonment) which aims to work with the Forestry Commission to improve the mountain bike trails in the forest.
Bikes can be hired from the High Lodge Forest Centre and mountain bike instruction is also offered.
Music in the forest
It also hosts annual concerts from such luminaries as Pulp and Jools Holland.
2007 saw The Feeling, Blondie, M People, Travis, James Morrison and Van Morrison take to the stage at High Lodge.
Other activities
The Roman road, known as Peddars Way leads from the north Norfolk coast and reaches its end in Thetford Forest, near Knettishall. Other walking routes in the Forest connect to it.[2] There is also a walk way through the trees called 'Go Ape'. There is a Center Parcs holiday resort at Elveden which also brings many visitors.
A sizeable proportion of Thetford Forest and the surrounding woodlands is reserved for military activities in an area known as Stanford Battle Area. Public access is forbidden; this land is used for farming, so one can often hear small-arms fire from the far side of an idyllic meadow covered in grazing sheep.
Thetford Forest has been mentioned on the Caravan channel as a good place to go with your caravan.
The British Siberian Husky Racing Association holds several husky racing events in the forest each winter.
Paintballing activities also take place on the Thetford Forest site.
www.explorethetford.co.uk/thetfordforest.aspx
If you go down to the woods today you’ll be in for a big surprise … !
Thetford Forest is Britain’s largest lowland pine forest and makes a great day out for all the family. You’ll be amazed at just how much there is to do – or of course you can opt to do nothing and simply enjoy a lazy picnic in one of the most beautiful and tranquil settings in England.
If you want to be active there’s plenty to choose from at High Lodge Forest Centre. You could follow miles of waymarked walking trails through the forest and keep an eye out for the wildlife, hire a bike and do some cycling (including our infamous ‘black route’ for the more experienced), try out the squirrel’s maze (one of the largest in Europe), visit the adventure playground for younger children or if you’re really feeling brave, try your hand on the high ropes course … not for the faint-hearted!
And don’t forget to visit the Giant Play Sculpture trail – aimed at children but great for everyone to see. And there’s always a full programme of events, from guided walks to activity days, arts and crafts, wildlife workshops, themed meals and outdoor concerts with names like Jools Holland, Bryan Ferry and the Sugarbabes!
When you’re feeling tired and hungry, call in at High Lodge Forest Centre for home-made refreshments, a small gift shop and toilets.
For information on bike hire call Bike Art on 01842 810 090.
For information on the high ropes course call Go Ape - 0870 444 5562
For information on High Lodge Forest Centre and events and activities call 01842 810271
Enter the forest drive from the B1107 Thetford to Brandon Road. Travelling towards Brandon, the entrance can be found on the left, approximately ½ mile before Brandon. Follow the forest road for about 1½ miles and you will come across the car parking area. A forest toll applies.
The Forest Drive is open all year, the gates being unlocked for 9am and closing at 4.00pm during autumn/winter and 7.00pm spring/summer. A small toll is levied at the entrance.
Thetford Forest is great for outdoor recreation but it’s also a huge working forest, managed by the Forestry Commission, and an important timber supplier for a wide range of everyday wood products.
The patchwork of pines, heathland and broadleaves also provides a welcome refuge for a rich variety of animal and plant life including red squirrels, deer, pheasants, woodlarks and nightjars. Nature conservation is another important part of the Forestry Commission’s work.
[AF] LONDON Apartment
Trompe Loeil - Flying Bird Display - Spiral with wires
Abiss Piano White
Dutchie sculpted curtains
KOSH- CHAAN RUG
Abiss Interior - La Scala Black Love Seat
(Surge) Square Column mesh
Trompe Loeil - Canopy Bed Poplar Black Satin {Adult}
MudHoney Fleur Runner
KOSH- IVY AMPHORA
UrbanizeD - Wall Tattoo A1 - Mono II 4
UrbanizeD - Deco "Wall Flower"
Abiss Vanity dresser Black transfer
MudHoney Scroll Lamp
Decorum - Ashe and Dust Chair
collect-H [black] 11prim
collect-C [black] 14prim
HD VINTAGE BATHTUB -Adult ver- L size
HD VINTAGE BATHTUB -Adult ver- L size
The Loft - Leighton Bench
The Loft - Leighton Sink Rod Iron
Trompe Loeil - Wicker Bathroom Basket Black
[AF] RUFFLE Rug
Provides extra potent fuel for pola-shooting when consumed with Anniebee. (Sadly, I drank this one alone.)
Polaroid SX-70 Sonar with Impossible PX70 V4B test film - L/D wheel 2/3 dark, which was probably a bit too much for indoors ...
The Military Collection - Fighters
From a collection of some 430 Military slides that I've had scanned from my archives. Hope they will provide some enjoyment and nostalgia from a bygone age.
In 1982, I made a visit to RAF Cottesmore to check out the (then new) Panavia Tornados that were based there for pilot training.
Here is one of the RAF aircraft, ZA327 coded B-51 which I captured earlier in the day on a training flight [see Comments section below]
The trainee pilot looks cheerful / relieved :)
Or perhaps he's ground crew?
ZA327 Tornado GR.1 - one of the first production batch of 23 Panavia Tornados, twelve of which were dual-controlled conversion trainers.
The Tri-National Tornado Training Establishment (TTTE) was a multinational air unit based at RAF Cottesmore in Rutland, England, from 1981 to 1999. It performed training on the Panavia Tornado for the Royal Air Force, Luftwaffe and Italian Air Force. Initially, pilots received four weeks of training on the ground, followed by nine weeks in the air. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-National_Tornado_Training_Estab...
RAF Panavia Tornado - nicknamed the "Tonka" by the British, their first prototype (XX946) made its maiden flight on 30 October 1974 from BAC Warton. The first full production Tornado GR1 (ZA319) flew on 10 July 1979 from Warton. The first RAF Tornados (ZA320 and ZA322) were delivered to the TTTE at RAF Cottesmore on 1 July 1980. Crew that qualified from the TTTE went onto the Tornado Weapons Conversion Unit (TWCU), which formed on 1 August 1981 at RAF Honington, before being posted to a front-line squadron. No. IX (B) Squadron became the first front-line squadron in the world to operate the Tornado when it reformed on 1 June 1982, having received its first Tornado GR1 ZA586 on 6 January 1982. No. IX (B) Squadron was declared strike combat ready to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) in January 1983. Two more squadrons were formed at RAF Marham in 1983 - No. 617 Squadron on 1 January and No. 27 Squadron on 12 August.
To celebrate 40 years of service and to mark the type's retirement, several flypasts were carried out on 19, 20 and 21 February 2019 over locations such as BAE Warton, RAF Honington and RAF Lossiemouth. On 28 February, nine Tornados flew out of RAF Marham for a diamond nine formation flypast over a graduation parade at RAF Cranwell before returning and carrying out a series of passes over RAF Marham. On 14 March 2019 the final flight of an RAF Tornado was carried out by Tornado GR4 ZA463, the oldest remaining Tornado, over RAF Marham during the disbandment parade of No. IX (B) Squadron and No. 31 Squadron. The Tornado GR4 was officially retired from RAF service on 1 April 2019, the 101st anniversary of the force. Post-retirement, five Tornados returned to RAF Honington via road for the Complex Air Ground Environment (CAGE), which simulates a Tornado flight line for training purposes. More on the Panavia Tornado here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panavia_Tornado
Taken with a Soviet made Zenith TTL camera and 300mm lens.
You can see a random selection of my aviation memories here: www.flickriver.com/photos/heathrowjunkie/random/
Soviet aviation memories from a collection of some 80 slides of Soviet-built aircraft that I've had scanned from my archives. Hope they will provide some enjoyment and nostalgia from a bygone age.
Interflug Tupolev Tu-134A DM-SCU makes a fine sight arriving at the stand at London Gatwick on the weekly charter that operated at the time 😎 :)
My trusty log book gives the flight number as IF7200. Fortunately for me and my camera, the aircraft taxied to a stand right under the viewing terrace :)
Interflug at Gatwick Back in the early 1980s, I remember well waiting each Saturday afternoon (and often into the evening!) for the Interflug Tu-134A charter flight to arrive. Eventually we worked out there was an old computer terminal (green screen :) down on one of the airline desks that had the registrations appear around an hour before arrival was due - and often traipsed down there to see if the reg was up to save waiting around if not a 'cop'!
Checking the calendar, this was in fact a Wednesday
Interflug I only bagged a handful registered as country prefix DM in the summer of 1980, and when the 1981 season started they had all been re-registered as DDR-
This was a bit of a surprise, as nearly all airlines at the time either had single or double letter prefixes.
DDR of course stood for Deutsche Demokratische Republik )(otherwise known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)
DM-SCU c/n 09070 - delivered new to Interflug in May 1974 and flew with them until the demise of the airline in 1990 - became DDR-SCU in 7/81, then D-AOBI in 10/90. The aircraft was then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as CCCP-65605 in 12/90, then became EW-65605 with Belair (Belarus) in 9/93, back to Russia as RA-65605 with Chernomorsk Avia in 8/95, then with Krasnoyarsk Airlines by 2002. Transferred to Zapolyarye, then finally flew with SIAT Sibaviatrans - wfu 2005, presume scrapped.
Interflug Tu-134(A)s - the airline operated one of the largest fleets of Tupolev Tu-134s and the larger Tu-134As in Europe, around 30 aircraft between 1968 and German unification in 1990. Here is a list of the fleet:
Tu-134
DM-SCA 1968-1972 - damaged on landing at Dresden 30/5/72 and sold to Aeroflot - since scrapped.
DM-SCB 1968-1986 - wfu and used as a restaurant cafe at Oschersleben, Germany until 2004 - since preserved at Flughafen Magdeburg.
DM-SCD 1969-1975 - w/o on landing at Leipzig - Halle 1/9/75
DM-SCE 1969-1985 - 175 East German Air Force, then Interflug 3/74, DDR-SCE in 4/81, wfu 5/85, presume scrapped
DM-SCF 1969-1986 - 178 East German Air Force, then Interflug 6/74, DDR-SCF in 7/81, wfu 6/86, and used as fire fighting trainer at at Leipzig, scrapped 5/13
DM-SCG 1969-1985 - 179 East German Air Force, then Interflug 2/74, DDR-SCG in 7/81, wfu 8/85, and used as fire fighting trainer at at Erfurt , since scrapped
DM-SCH 1969-1984 - DDR-SCH in 7/81, wfu 1/84, preserved on display Latuftfahrthistorische Sammlung, Finow
DM-SCZ 1969-1986 - 177 East German Air Force, then Interflug 12/75, DDR-SCZ in 7/81, wfu 6/86, preserved since 6/01 at Luftfahrt und Technik Museum, Merseburg
Tu-134A
DM-SCI 1973-1990 - DDR-SCI in 4/81, became D-AOBA 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65611 2/92, then RA-65611 - wfu by 2012, presume scrapped
DM-SCK 1971-1990 - East German Air Force, then Interflug 11/79, DDR-SCK in 7/81 - wfu 9/90, moved by 6/94 to Hermeskeil Museum and preserved
DM-SCL 1971-1990 - 182 East German Air Force, then Interflug 5/77, DDR-SCL in 5/81 - wfu 3/90, purchased and preserved by HYDRO Gerätebau GmbH at Biberach, Germany
DM-SCM 1973-1977 - damaged on landing at Berlin Schönefeld 22/11/77 - broken up for parts
DM-SCN 1973-1990 - 170 East German Air Force, then Interflug 7/77, DDR-SCN in 4/81, became D-AOBC 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65612 9/91, then RA-65612 - wfu 9/04 at Berlin Schönefeld, used for firefighting practice, broken up 8/10
DM-SCO 1973-1990 - 171 East German Air Force, then Interflug 5/79, DDR-SCO in 4/81, became D-AOBD 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65613 10/91, then RA-65613 - wfu 2006, presume scrapped
DM-SCP 1974-1990 - East German Air Force, then Interflug 10/78, DDR-SCP in 7/81, became D-AOBE 10/90, then sold to Komiinteravia as CCCP-65615 10/91, then RA-65615 - wfu 2008, presume scrapped
DM-SCR 1974-1990 - 176 East German Air Force, then Interflug 5/77, DDR-SCR in 4/81, became D-AOBF 10/90, then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as RA-65616 10/91 - wfu 2008, presume scrapped
DM-SCS 1974-1990 - East German Air Force, then Interflug 5/79, DDR-SCS in 4/81, became D-AOBG 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65614 10/91, then RA-65614 - wfu 2008, presume scrapped
DM-SCT 1974-1990 - DDR-SCT in 5/81, became D-AOBH 10/90, then sold to Komiaviatrans 8/91 as RA-65617 10/91, damaged 24/6/95 landing at Kaduna, Nigeria and broken up
DM-SCU 1974-1990 - DDR-SCU in 7/81, became D-AOBI 10/90, then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as CCCP-65605 12/90, then EW-65605 Belair (Belarus), then RA-65605 - wfu 2005, presume scrapped
DM-SCV 1974-1990 - DDR-SCV in 4/81, became D-AOBJ 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65618 10/91, then RA-65618 - wfu 2005, presume scrapped
DM-SCW 1975-1990 - East German Air Force, DDR-SCW in 10/81, then Interflug 5/82, became D-AOBK 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65619 10/91, then RA-65619, then UN-65619 with Atyrau Airways, Kazakhstan, then UP-T3406 with Kazakhstan Air Force - seen stored in 2018
DM-SCX 1976-1990 - DDR-SCX in 5/81, became D-AOBL 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65621 10/91, then RA-65621 - wfu by 2012 and broken up 2014
DM-SCY 1978-1990 - DDR-SCY in 4/81, became D-AOBM 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65622 10/90, then RA-65622 - wfu by 2012 and broken up 2013
DM-SDC 1974-1990 - 181 East German Air Force, then Interflug 3/82 as DDR-SDC, became D-AOBN 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65620 10/91, then RA-65620 - wfu by 2014 and broken up at Syktyvkar, Russia 11/14
DM-SDE 1975-1990 - 183 East German Air Force, then Interflug 3/85 as DDR-SDE, became D-AOBO 10/90, then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as CCCP-65608 9/91, then RA-65608 - wfu by 2014 and broken up at Syktyvkar, Russia 1/15
DM-SDF 1975-1990 - 185 East German Air Force, then Interflug 7/84 as DDR-SDF, became D-AOBP 10/90, then sold to Syktyvkar Avia as CCCP-65610 9/91, then RA-65610, then UN-65610 with Atyrau Airways, Kazakhstan, then UP-T3406 with Kazakhstan Air Force - seen stored in 2018
DM-SDG 1976-1990 - 186 East German Air Force, then Interflug 2/88 as DDR-SDG, became D-AOBQ 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65609 9/91, then RA-65609, then UN-65610 with UTAir Express, wfu 2014 and broken up
DM-SDH 1976-1990 - DDR-SDH in 6/81, became D-AOBR 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65606 10/90, then RA-65606 - wfu by 2004 and transferred to Tupolev Design Bureau - converted to Tu-134A-3 - still current!
DM-SDI 1976-1990 - DDR-SDI in 4/81, became D-AOBS 10/90, then sold to Aeroflot as CCCP-65607 10/90, then RA-65607 - wfu by 2014 and broken up 2016
DM-SDO 1979-1990 118 East German Air Force, DDR-SDO in 8/81, then Interflug 8/81, then sold to Vietnam Airlines as VN-A130 6/90 - wfu 1997 and broken up at Hanoi, Noibai International airport around 2004
Taken with a Soviet made Zenith E camera and 300mm lens. From an original slide, scanned with minimal restoration.
You can see a random selection of my aviation memories here: www.flickriver.com/photos/heathrowjunkie/random/
Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand.
The Mae Ping River flows through the city of Chiangmai and provides the surrounding rural countryside with its much needed water for irrigation of rice paddies, gardens and crops. The Mae Ping is known to locals as the "Lifeline of the Province". The river is 569 Km long, and has its source in the mountains near Chiang Dao, in the northernmost part of Chiangmai Province. It flows southward, creating the agriculturally rich Maesa Valley that leads to the northern edges of Chiangmai. As it flows through Chiangmai, you can readily see how the city was carefully built up along the river, in the Thai tradition, and how it has developed over the past 700 years.
From Chiangmai, the Mae Ping flows further southward and gradually widens as it passes through the ancient northern town of Lamphun (pronounced "Lumpoon"), a Mon center established in the ninth century. Beyond Lamphun, it flows southwestward to the town of Hord, from where it takes a more direct southerly route to Tak and Khamphaengphet, and ultimately to Nakon Sawan where it empties into Thailand's largest river, the Chao Phraya.
For over 700 years, the Mae Ping River has been a major source of water for Chiangmai. Historically, the Mae Ping provided the people in and around Chiangmai with water for washing, bathing, and irrigating their gardens and rice paddies; the river was also a source of food and was used for the transport of people and goods. At the turn of the century, it was estimated that more than a thousand boats moved along its course between Chiangmai and Tak. Boats still ply its waters, although the number of boats has diminished greatly over the last century, and the river itself is shallower and less swift than formerly. Though physically less of a river than it was a hundred years ago, it still plays a vital role in the lives of thousands of Thais who live on its banks. [courtesy: chiangmai-chiangrai.com]
March Point. Padilla Bay/Fidalgo Bay.
"One of the largest Great Blue Heron colonies in Western North America, this island of forest sits between Padilla and Fidalgo Bays. Vera and Bud Kinney donated this property to Skagit Land Trust in 1994 to protect the nesting herons. With the cooperation of neighboring landowners, each year, Skagit Land Trust conducts a nest count in the heronry. 546 heron nests were counted in 2016 in this relatively small area, which provides easy access to feeding grounds for the herons. Unfortunately, the Trust does not have access to all neighboring property, and therefore some heron nests are uncounted. The overall trend, however, shows increasing number of heron nests in the colony on Skagit Land Trust property and the property to which we have access -- and there are likely to be hundreds more nests on the adjacent property to which we do not have access." March Point Heronry
This property provides oceanfront living at its best. Hollywood has a reputation of quality, refinement and luxury, and the Ocean Palms is no departure from that. However, the property does offer an amazingly direct way to dive into your South Florida lifestyle.
Ocean Palms offers 240 units, all featuring ocean views or the Intracoastal Waterway. The property was designed to provide you with a pampered experience and the incredible lifestyle that you crave. With state of the art amenities, a full range of services and the best that the world has to offer, the Ocean Palms is the single best place in Hollywood for you to call home.
The property features some of the very best amenities possible. The soaring tower features some of the most innovative design influences in use today. In addition, the property boasts almost 250 feet of beachfront, which allows you to experience the real reason why South Florida is such a hot destination for travelers from around the world. Surrounding the property, you will find lushly landscaped tropical gardens that are ideal for finding solitude or a romantic walk for two. The gardens are designed to flow seamlessly between the beach and the natural landscape of the area and live up to their promise.
The pool and sundeck overlook the ocean, providing a spectacular view for your enjoyment. In addition, the pool complex is nothing short of spectacular, with a spacious pool, an enormous sundeck and all the facilities that you would expect, as well as some that you might not. Poolside towel service, an outdoor whirlpool spa and incredible services make a trip to the pool much more than a quick swim.
The fitness center rises two full stories above the surrounding area, and offers a sauna and a full massage room. Enjoy the relaxing feeling of skilled hands as they massage tense muscles in your neck and back, hit the sauna after a great workout and more. The tennis courts, covered parking, 24-hour concierge services and many other amenities add value and convenience to your life.
Each residence is designed with an incredible amount of space. Rich European wood cabinetry, custom lighting, tile floors and deep whirlpool tubs make your residence a retreat from the everyday. Floor plans range from 1730 square feet all the way up to 3000 square feet and offer you the ultimate evolution of luxury.
Credit for the data above is given to the following websites:
www.sunnyislesmiamirealestate.com/Hollywood/Ocean-Palms/
www.emporis.com/buildings/156435/ocean-palms-phase-i-holl...
Delta Airlines provide eye masks, ear plugs and headphones but sleeping on a plane is difficult with the trolly dollies walking up and down the aisles. I use my own headphones but thought these freebies would come in handy for today's 366 shot. The black packet is ear plugs, honest! :)
After travelling for almost 25 hours I walked in the door at just after 10 pm last night. Zia and Minky so pleased to see me. Zia kept checking on me every half an hour during the night with her dog sniffs and kisses. I think I'll sleep better tonight and have sweet dreams:) Knackered!
Scattered clouds at dawn provide the backdrop for the Space Shuttle Discovery as it moves along the Kennedy Space Center's Crawlerway toward Launch Pad 39A in preparation for the STS-82 mission. The shuttle is on a mobile launch platform, and the entire assemblage is being carried by a large tracked vehicle called the Crawler Transporter. A seven-member crew of astronauts performed the second servicing of the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope during the scheduled ten-day STS-82 flight in February 1997.
Credit: NASA
My wife Carole occasionally provides childcare for our two granddaughters at our home when our daughter is required to go work at the office. I took a candid shot of our granddaughter Margo at lunchtime. Margo is in Grade 1 and doing the online learning gig which, in my opinion, is not the best method of learning for kids her age. She easily gets distracted, finds it boring sitting in front of a computer all day, and she really misses her classmates.
USCGC Kimball is the 7th multi-mission National Security Cutter with a unique advantage for worldwide deployment due to our homeport in Honolulu, Hawaii. With a range of 13,000 nautical miles, the advanced technologies of our cutter are designed to support the national objectives to maintain the security of America’s maritime boundaries, engage in critical Law Enforcement operations, and provide long range search and rescue capabilities.
“Lead, Train, Save”
This cutter's namesake, Sumner Increase Kimball, was born September 2, 1834 in Lebanon, Maine. After his graduation from Bowdoin College in 1855, Kimball was admitted to the bar in 1858 and elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 1859. Kimball was appointed as the chief of the U.S. Treasury Department's Revenue Marine in 1871. He proceeded to completely overhaul the service and the assortment of lifesaving stations along the nation's coast. After the Civil War, the Revenue Marine came under intense congressional scrutiny and funding constraints. In order to address the ongoing scrutiny, Kimball championed efforts to reduce expenses and sought efficiencies by modernizing acquisitions and personnel practices that formed the backbone of the modern day Coast Guard. Kimball also put into effect a merit system to determine promotions. Kimball improved the quality of the Revenue Marine by establishing, in 1877, a school of instruction, to train new officers. It developed into today's Coast Guard Academy, which still trains the majority of the Coast Guard's officers. Since 1848, Congress only funded strictly volunteer lifesaving stations, paying for the station and its equipment but relying on the local community to provide unpaid crews when needed. Kimball convinced Congress to increase the funding of the service to provide for full-time, paid crews. New stations constructed around the coast were equipped with the finest lifesaving equipment available. In 1878, this growing network of stations was organized as a separate agency of the Treasury Department and named the U.S. Life-Saving Service. Kimball was chosen as the general superintendent of the new service. He served in that capacity until it was merged with the former Revenue Marine, now named Revenue Cutter Service, in 1915 to form the new U.S. Coast Guard. After a life of public service, Kimball passed away in Washington, D.C., on June 20, 1923.
www.pacificarea.uscg.mil/Our-Organization/Pacific-Area-Cu...
Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D7200 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.
"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11
The best way to view my photostream is through Flickriver with the following link: www.flickriver.com/photos/photojourney57/
Yeouido’s skyscrapers provide an impressive backdrop for the night.
A dokkaebi, is a type of demon or ogre in Korean folklore, hence the name of the night market which by morning disappears just as its namesake does. The night market is currently being held at Yeouido Hangang Park’s Cascade Plaza every Friday and Saturday from 6pm to 11pm with plans to extend it to the DDP and Cheonggye Plaza in May and Mokdong Stadium in July. At the night market will be a number of performances, both traditional and modern as well as thirty food trucks and seventy general market stalls. With the backdrop of the Han River and the glittering night lights of the city, the night market is well worth visiting.
Accessible from:
Yeouinaru Station (Seoul Subway Line 5), Exit 2, or 3
National Assembly Station (Seoul Subway Line 9), Exit 2.
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Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 miles (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, as well as a variety of unique geological resources and formations. The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the world.
The park consists of 310.31 square kilometres (76,680 acres; 119.81 sq mi; 31,031 ha) of high desert located on the Colorado Plateau. The highest elevation in the park is 5,653 feet (1,723 m) at Elephant Butte, and the lowest elevation is 4,085 feet (1,245 m) at the visitor center. The park receives an average of less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rain annually.
Administered by the National Park Service, the area was originally named a national monument on April 12, 1929, and was re designated as a national park on November 12, 1971. The park received more than 1.6 million visitors in 2018.
As stated in the foundation document in U.S. National Park Service website:
The purpose of Arches National Park is to protect extraordinary examples of geologic features including arches, natural bridges, windows, spires, and balanced rocks, as well as other features of geologic, historic, and scientific interest, and to provide opportunities to experience these resources and their associated values in their majestic natural settings.
The national park lies above an underground evaporite layer or salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area. This salt bed is thousands of feet thick in places and was deposited in the Paradox Basin of the Colorado Plateau some 300 million years ago (Mya) when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over millions of years, the salt bed was covered with debris eroded from the Uncompahgre Uplift to the northeast. During the Early Jurassic (about 200 Mya), desert conditions prevailed in the region and the vast Navajo Sandstone was deposited. An additional sequence of stream laid and windblown sediments, the Entrada Sandstone (about 140 Mya), was deposited on top of the Navajo. Over 5,000 feet (1,500 m) of younger sediments were deposited and have been mostly eroded. Remnants of the cover exist in the area including exposures of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale. The arches of the area are developed mostly within the Entrada formation.
The weight of this cover caused the salt bed below it to liquefy and thrust up layers of rock into salt domes. The evaporites of the area formed more unusual "salt anticlines" or linear regions of uplift. Faulting occurred and whole sections of rock subsided into the areas between the domes. In some places, they turned almost on edge. The result of one such 2,500-foot (760 m) displacement, the Moab Fault, is seen from the visitor center.
As this subsurface movement of salt shaped the landscape, erosion removed the younger rock layers from the surface. Except for isolated remnants, the major formations visible in the park today are the salmon-colored Entrada Sandstone, in which most of the arches form, and the buff-colored Navajo Sandstone. These are visible in layer-cake fashion throughout most of the park. Over time, water seeped into the surface cracks, joints, and folds of these layers. Ice formed in the fissures, expanding and putting pressure on surrounding rock, breaking off bits and pieces. Winds later cleaned out the loose particles. A series of free-standing fins remained. Wind and water attacked these fins until, in some, the cementing material gave way and chunks of rock tumbled out. Many damaged fins collapsed. Others, with the right degree of hardness and balance, survived despite their missing sections. These became the famous arches.
Although the park's terrain may appear rugged and durable, it is extremely fragile. More than 1 million visitors each year threaten the fragile high-desert ecosystem. The problem lies within the soil's crust, which is composed of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, and lichens that grow in the dusty parts of the park. Factors that make Arches National Park sensitive to visitor damage include being a semiarid region, the scarce, unpredictable rainfall, lack of deep freezing, and lack of plant litter, which results in soils that have both a low resistance to and slow recovery from, compressional forces such as foot traffic. Methods of indicating effects on the soil are cytophobic soil crust index, measuring of water infiltration, and t-tests that are used to compare the values from the undisturbed and disturbed areas.
Geological processes that occurred over 300 million years ago caused a salt bed to be deposited, which today lies beneath the landscape of Arches National Park.[ Over time, the salt bed was covered with sediments that eventually compressed into rock layers that have since been named Entrada Standstone. Rock layers surrounding the edge of the salt bed continued to erode and shift into vertical sandstone walls called fins. Sand collected between vertical walls of the fins, then slightly acidic rain combined with carbon dioxide in the air allowed for the chemical formation of carbonic acid within the trapped sand. Over time, the carbonic acid dissolved the calcium carbonate that held the sandstone together. Many of the rock formations have weaker layers of rock on bottom that are holding stronger layers on top. The weaker layers would dissolve first, creating openings in the rock. Gravity caused pieces of the stronger rock layer to fall piece by piece into an arch shape. Arches form within rock fins at points of intense fracturing localization, or weak points in the rock's formation, caused by horizontal and vertical discontinuities. Lastly, water, wind, and time continued this erosion process and ultimately created the arches of Arches National Park. All of the arches in the park are made of Entrada Sandstone, however, there are slight differences in how each arch was developed. This allows the Entrada Sandstone to be categories into 3 groups including Slick rock members, Dewey rock members, and Moab members. Vertical arches can be developed from Slick rock members, a combination of Slick rock members and Moab members, or Slick rock members resting above Dewey rock members. Horizontal arches (also called potholes) are formed when a vertical pothole formation meets a horizontal cave, causing a union into a long arch structure. The erosion process within Arches National Park will continue as time continues to pass. Continued erosion combined with vertical and horizontal stress will eventually cause arches to collapse, but still, new arches will continue to form for thousands of years.
Humans have occupied the region since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Fremont people and Ancestral Puebloans lived in the area until about 700 years ago. Spanish missionaries encountered Ute and Paiute tribes in the area when they first came through in 1775, but the first European-Americans to attempt settlement in the area were the Mormon Elk Mountain Mission in 1855, who soon abandoned the area. Ranchers, farmers, and prospectors later settled Moab in the neighboring Riverine Valley in the late 1870s. Word of the beauty of the surrounding rock formations spread beyond the settlement as a possible tourist destination.
The Arches area was first brought to the attention of the National Park Service by Frank A. Wadleigh, passenger traffic manager of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Wadleigh, accompanied by railroad photographer George L. Beam, visited the area in September 1923 at the invitation of Alexander Ringhoffer, a Hungarian-born prospector living in Salt Valley. Ringhoffer had written to the railroad to interest them in the tourist potential of a scenic area he had discovered the previous year with his two sons and a son-in-law, which he called the Devils Garden (known today as the Klondike Bluffs). Wadleigh was impressed by what Ringhoffer showed him, and suggested to Park Service director Stephen T. Mather that the area be made a national monument.
The following year, additional support for the monument idea came from Laurence Gould, a University of Michigan graduate student (and future polar explorer) studying the geology of the nearby La Sal Mountains, who was shown the scenic area by local physician Dr. J. W. "Doc" Williams.
A succession of government investigators examined the area, in part due to confusion as to the precise location. In the process, the name Devils Garden was transposed to an area on the opposite side of Salt Valley that includes Landscape Arch, the longest arch in the park. Ringhoffer's original discovery was omitted, while another area nearby, known locally as the Windows, was included. Designation of the area as a national monument was supported by the Park Service in 1926 but was resisted by President Calvin Coolidge's Interior Secretary, Hubert Work. Finally, in April 1929, shortly after his inauguration, President Herbert Hoover signed a presidential proclamation creating the Arches National Monument, consisting of two comparatively small, disconnected sections. The purpose of the reservation under the 1906 Antiquities Act was to protect the arches, spires, balanced rocks, and other sandstone formations for their scientific and educational value. The name Arches was suggested by Frank Pinkely, superintendent of the Park Service's southwestern national monuments, following a visit to the Windows section in 1925.
In late 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation that enlarged the Arches to protect additional scenic features and permit the development of facilities to promote tourism. A small adjustment was made by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 to accommodate a new road alignment.
In early 1969, just before leaving office, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation substantially enlarging the Arches. Two years later, President Richard Nixon signed legislation enacted by Congress, which significantly reduced the total area enclosed, but changed its status. Arches National Park was formally dedicated in May 1972.
In 1980, vandals attempted to use an abrasive kitchen cleanser to deface ancient petroglyphs in the park, prompting park officials to recruit physicist John F. Asmus, who specialized in using lasers to restore works of art, to use his technology to repair the damage. Asmus "zapped the panel with intense light pulses and succeeded in removing most of the cleanser".
Climbing Balanced Rock or any named or unnamed arch in Arches National Park with an opening larger than 3 ft (0.9 m) is banned by park regulations. Climbing on other features in the park is allowed but regulated; in addition, slacklining and BASE jumping are banned parkwide.
Climbing on named arches within the park had long been banned by park regulations, but following Dean Potter's successful free climb on Delicate Arch in May 2006, the wording of the regulations was deemed unenforceable by the park attorney. In response, the park revised its regulations later that month, eventually imposing the current ban on arch climbing in 2014.
Approved recreational activities include auto touring, hiking, bicycling, camping at the Devils Garden campground, backpacking, canyoneering, and rock climbing, with permits required for the last three activities. Guided commercial tours and ranger programs are also available.
Astronomy is also popular in the park due to its dark skies, despite the increasing light pollution from towns such as Moab.
Delicate Arch is the subject of the third 2014 quarter of the U.S. Mint's America the Beautiful Quarters program commemorating national parks and historic sites. The Arches quarter had the highest production of the five 2014 national park quarters, with more than 465 million minted.
American writer Edward Abbey was a park ranger at Arches National Monument in 1956 and 1957, where he kept journals that became his book Desert Solitaire. The success of Abbey's book, as well as interest in adventure travel, has drawn many hikers, mountain bikers, and off-pavement driving enthusiasts to the area. Permitted activities within the park include camping, hiking along designated trails, backpacking, canyoneering, rock climbing, bicycling, and driving along existing roads, both paved and unpaved. The Hayduke Trail, an 812 mi (1,307 km) backpacking route named after one of Edward Abbey's characters, begins in the park.
An abundance of wildlife occurs in Arches National Park, including spadefoot toads, antelope squirrels, scrub jays, peregrine falcons, many kinds of sparrows, red foxes, desert bighorn sheep, kangaroo rats, mule deers, cougars, midget faded rattlesnakes, yucca moths, western rattlesnakes, and collared lizards.
A number of plant species are common in the park, including prickly pear cactus, Indian ricegrass, bunch grasses, cheatgrass, moss, liverworts, Utah juniper, Mormon tea, blackbrush, cliffrose, four-winged saltbrush, pinyon pine, evening primrose, sand verbena, yucca, and sacred datura.
Biological soil crust consisting of cyanobacteria, lichen, mosses, green algae, and microfungi is found throughout southeastern Utah. The fibrous growths help keep soil particles together, creating a layer that is more resistant to erosion. The living soil layer readily absorbs and stores water, allowing more complex forms of plant life to grow in places with low precipitation levels.
Among the notable features of the park are the following:
Balanced Rock – a large balancing rock, the size of three school buses
Courthouse Towers – a collection of tall stone columns
Dark Angel – a free-standing 150 ft-tall (46 m) sandstone pillar at the end of the Devils Garden Trail
Delicate Arch – a lone-standing arch that has become a symbol of Utah and the most recognized arch in the park
Devils Garden – many arches and columns scattered along a ridge
Double Arch – two arches that share a common end
Fiery Furnace – an area of maze-like narrow passages and tall rock columns (see biblical reference, Book of Daniel, chapter 3)
Landscape Arch – a very thin and long arch in the Devils Garden with a span of 290 ft (88 m) (the longest arch in the park)
Petrified Dunes – petrified remnants of dunes blown from the ancient lakes that covered the area
The Phallus – a rock spire that resembles a phallus
Wall Arch – located along the popular Devils Garden Trail; collapsed sometime on August 4/5, 2008
The Three Gossips –a mid-sized sandstone tower located in the Courthouse Towers area.
Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.
People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.
Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.
The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.
Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.
The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:
use of the bow and arrow while hunting,
building pithouse shelters,
growing maize and probably beans and squash,
building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,
creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,
producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.
The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.
These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.
In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.
In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.
Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.
At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.
The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.
A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.
Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.
Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.
Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.
Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.
Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.
The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.
Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.
Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.
In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.
The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.
Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.
After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.
As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.
Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.
Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.
Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.
Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.
On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.
Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century
During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.
The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.
Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:
William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859
Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866
3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868
A Black man in Uintah, 1869
Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873
Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874
Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880
William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883
John Murphy in Park City, 1883
George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884
Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886
Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925
Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).
Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.
Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.
During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.
In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.
Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.
Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.
As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.
One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.
It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.
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From questions on the website: Pork4Kids.com
www.pork4kids.com/AskAFarmer.aspx
Q: In cold climates, does the hair on pigs thicken to provide warmth?
A: Pigs will grow more hair when it's cold outside; it may not be thicker, but there is more of it.
Q: Where does the ham come from on the pig?
A: Ham is a cured product from the hind leg of the pig.
Q: How long have people been curing bacon?
A: People have been curing meat as far back as the Roman times.
Q: What part of the hog is bacon from?
A: Bacon comes from the side of a hog. It is often cured and then smoked.
Q: How much do baby pigs weigh when they are first born?
A: The average weight of a piglet is 3 pounds.
Q: What is the scientific name for a pig?
A: The scientific name for a domestic pig is Sus scrofa domesticus, though scientists often just use the term S. domesticus.
Q: What are the four main primal cuts of pork?
A: The primal/retail cuts are Loin, Side, Leg (which is the hind leg), and Shoulder (which is the front leg).
Q: Can pigs swim?
A: Yes, pigs can swim quite well by dog paddling!
Q: Are Chiterlins safe for a person to eat?
A: Chiterlins, also known as Chitterlings or Chitlings, are popular in Southern cooking. Chiterlings must be soaked and cleaned very well, and then they must simmer for several hours until tender. They can be served with sauce, fried, added to soups, or used for sausage casting. As long as the chiterlins are cleaned properly and cooked until tender, they are safe to eat.
Q: What do farmers feed their pigs?
A: It is important for pigs to have a healthy diet, just like it is important for kids to eat healthy foods. Most farmers feed their pigs grains like ground up corn, soybeans, wheat, and/or grain sorghum. These plants are grown by farmers in their fields. The grains are harvested, dried and ground up, so that they provide crunchy food for pigs. It would be similar to granola that humans eat. This helps the farmer give the pigs a healthy diet every day.
Q: How long do pigs usually live?
A: Sows and boars usually live about 4 to 5 years, and some may live longer than that. In fact, some pigs have lived as long as 15 years!
Q: Why do pigs like mud?
A: Pigs don't have sweat glands, so they will wallow in mud to keep cool. In hot weather, pigs that are raised outdoors will try to stay cool in the mud. Today, most pigs are raised in barns, and farmers use modern technology like water sprinklers in the barns to keep the pigs cool. The pigs are also cleaner in barns because they are protected from bad weather, like rain and snow.
Q: How many piglets are usually in one litter?
A: A female pig will have her first litter of piglets when she is about one year old. The sow is pregnant for about 4 months, and usually a sow will give birth to around 8 to 12 pigs at a time. A sow can have 2 litters each year. That means that a mother pig can give birth to over 20 piglets each year!
Q: What are the 8 major swine breeds?
A: * Yorkshire (also called Large White) * Duroc * Hampshire * Landrace * Berkshire * Spotted * Chester White * Poland China. Most market hogs are crossbreeds of two or more of these main purebred stock to take advantage of different characteristics.
Q: Do you have a chart that shows the parts of a pig and where the different cuts of pork come from?
A: A cut chart can be found on at www.otherwhitemeat.com/aspx/all_about_pork/chops.aspx
Q: Where does the name "Boston Butt" come from, especially considering that the cut comes from the shoulder of the animal?
A: In pre-revolutionary New England and into the Revolutionary War, some pork cuts (not those of high value, like the loin and ham) were packed into casks or barrels for storage and shipment. These barrels were known as "butts." In the Boston area, the cut from the hog's shoulder became known in other regions as the Boston Butt. The name stuck, and today it is still referred to as the Boston Butt almost everywhere in the U.S., except in Boston!
Q: Why don't we drink pig milk?
A: That is a very good question. Sow milk is very nutritious and high in fat content. Sows produce a large amount of milk, providing a volume that is very similar to the production from cows. The reason that we do not milk pigs is because they are more difficult to restrain and they have several more teats than cows, making it difficult to milk them.
Q: Where do the different breed names of pigs come from?
A: Most of our pig breeds were originated in England, so they were named after a particular region of the country, such as Yorkshire, Bershire and Hampshire.
Q: Is it normal to have a litter of piglets all with different hair color (pink, black, and spotted) while coming from a same mother?
A: Yes, it is normal to have multi-colored pigs from the same mother. Most sows (mother pigs) are crossbreds so they do not have a true breed color. Therefore, their pigs may be red, black, white, spotted, belted or any combination of these color patterns.
Q: About how much pork is produced in a day?
A: Roughly 60 million pounds of retail pork is produced every day.
Q: About how many pigs are there in the world? 4th grade
A: At any time, there are probably about 850 million pigs in the world.
Q: Is the hair on pigs all the same color, or do they have different color hair like humans? Mrs. Freyenhagen's 2nd grade class
A: Pigs have different color hair, but it is mostly related to the breed of the pig. There are several white breeds with completely white hair. There are some dark breeds with hair that is either bright or dark red, black, black with a white belt, or spotted. The Berkshire breed is black but appears to be wearing white stockings. And, the pig's hair is sometimes very coarse, while other pigs have somewhat finer hair, just like humans.
Q: How do pigs survive in the wild?
A: Wild pigs, also known as feral swine, face many challenges in the wild, including finding something to eat. Feral swine eat anything they can find, including nuts, plants and other animals. Pigs living in the wild also have to protect themselves from predator animals and extreme temperatures. Because of these obstacles, modern day pork production provides an environment where pigs are well cared for with proper nutrition, protection from other wild animals and comfort from extreme temperatures.
Q: I know that bacon comes from a pig, but where did bacon originate?
A: Up until the 16th century, bacon (bacoun) was a Middle English term used to refer to all pork in general. Bacon is the smoked and cured product that comes from the side of the pig (or the belly primal cut). Before refrigeration was available, the ham and the belly were cured and smoked to preserve them for a longer period of time. Historically, bacon was primarily a breakfast item, but people now use bacon as an ingredient in all types of meals, such as pizzas, tacos, hamburgers, and salads.
Q: How do pigs stay cool and comfortable in hot weather?
A: Most pigs are raised in barns, and the barns protect the pigs from bad weather, such as rain or snow. The barns also protect the pigs from extreme temperatures with heaters for cold weather and fans for hot weather. Many farmers also have sprinkler systems in the barns to keep the pigs cool.
Q: How much food does a pig eat in a day, and how much does the food cost?
A: Pigs usually consume about eight pounds of feed in a day. Farmers usually spend around $55 - $60 on feed for one pig. The total cost to raise a pig is about $100. That means that the cost to feed the pig is about 55% - 60% of the total cost to raise it!
Q: Can pigs jump?
A: Yes, pigs can jump, but not very high. Pigs might try to jump over something if they are either scared or guided by someone.
Q: Where is a pig's heart located?
A: A pig’s heart is located in the pig’s chest cavity. If a pig were to stand up tall on its hind two legs, its heart would be in the same place that your heart is when you stand up tall. Did you know that a pig’s heart is very similar to a human’s heart? The heart valves in a pig’s heart can be used to replace damaged or diseased heart valves in humans.
Q: When are the baby pigs weaned?
A: Like other mammals, baby pigs drink their mother’s milk for the first few weeks after they are born. Just like puppies and other animals are weaned (which means they stop drinking their mother’s milk), piglets are weaned from the sow. Pigs are generally weaned at 3 – 4 weeks of age when they weigh 10 – 15 pounds. They are moved to the nursery where they begin a grain diet. As pigs get older, they eat more food. When pigs are 8 – 10 weeks of age and 40 – 60 pounds, they will move to a finishing barn where they live with other pigs their size.
Lighthouse on Lake Michigan in Chicago. This is the first photo from a short weekend trip to Chicago.
Low tide provides lots of details of the beach and can create some interesting shapes and here, I quite liked the reflected clouds during the fading light.
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Groundbreaking for Miami-Dade College's Wolfson Building 1 occurred in 1971, and the building was completed in 1973. The campus itself first opened in 1970, with classes initially held in downtown storefronts while its permanent facility was being constructed.
Hilario Candela was the architect of Miami-Dade College's Wolfson Building 1. As a Cuban-born American architect, he designed key Brutalist-style buildings for several of the college's campuses, including Wolfson.
Candela was a key member of the architectural firm Pancoast, Ferendino, Grafton & Skeels, which designed the initial buildings for the North and Kendall campuses in the 1960s.
His signature "tropical Brutalist" style, with its use of raw concrete, is a defining feature of the Wolfson Campus architecture.
In addition to his work for Miami-Dade College, Candela is also known for designing the iconic Miami Marine Stadium.
Miami-Dade College's Wolfson Building 1 was designed in the Brutalist style, specifically a regional variant referred to as "tropical Brutalism".
Elements of this architectural style as seen in the Wolfson Campus include:
Raw concrete: The buildings prominently feature exposed concrete, emphasizing the material's raw, unadorned nature.
Massive, geometric forms: Brutalist buildings are known for their blocky and monolithic appearance. Architect Hilario Candela, who designed the Wolfson Campus, referred to his vision as "a small city of interconnected geometric masses".
Function over form: In keeping with Brutalist ethos, the building's design emphasizes its function as a modern educational institution.
Adaptation to the Miami climate: In this "tropical Brutalist" interpretation, the buildings use covered walkways and strategically placed open spaces to provide constant shade and cover from the rain.
Credit for the data above is given to the following websites:
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Can face masks help slow the spread of the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes COVID-19? Yes. Face masks combined with other preventive measures, such as getting vaccinated, frequent hand-washing and physical distancing, can help slow the spread of the virus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends fabric masks for the general public. People who haven’t been fully vaccinated should continue to wear face masks in indoor public places and outdoors where there is a high risk of COVID-19 transmission, such as crowded events or large gatherings. The CDC says that N95 masks should be reserved for health care providers. How do the different types of masks work? Medical masks Also called surgical masks, these are loosefitting disposable masks. They're meant to protect the wearer from contact with droplets and sprays that may contain germs. A medical mask also filters out large particles in the air when the wearer breathes in. To make medical masks more form-fitting, knot the ear loops where they attach to the mask. Then fold and tuck the unneeded material under the edges.
An N95 mask is a type of respirator. It offers more protection than a medical mask does because it filters out both large and small particles when the wearer inhales. Because N95 masks have been in short supply, the CDC has said they should be reserved for health care providers. Health care providers must be trained and pass a fit test before using an N95 mask. Like surgical masks, N95 masks are intended to be disposable. However, researchers are testing ways to disinfect and reuse them. Some N95 masks, and even some cloth masks, have valves that make them easier to breathe through. Unfortunately, these masks don't filter the air the wearer breathes out. For this reason, they've been banned in some places. A cloth mask is intended to trap respiratory droplets that are released when the wearer talks, coughs or sneezes. It also acts as a barrier to protect the wearer from inhaling droplets released by others.
The most effective cloths masks are made of multiple layers of tightly woven fabric like cotton. A mask with layers will stop more droplets from getting through your mask or escaping from it. How to get the most from your mask; The effectiveness of cloth and medical masks can be improved by ensuring that the masks are well fitted to the contours of your face to prevent leakage of air around the masks' edges. Masks should be snug over the nose, mouth and chin, with no gaps. You should feel warm air coming through the front of the mask when you breathe out. You shouldn't feel air coming out under the edges of the mask. Masks that have a bendable nose strip help prevent air from leaking out of the top of the mask. Some people choose to wear a disposable mask under their cloth mask. In that case, the cloth mask should press the edges of the disposable mask against the face. Don't add layers if they make it hard to breathe or obstruct your vision. Proper use, storage and cleaning of masks also affects how well they protect you. Follow these steps for putting on and taking off your mask: Wash or sanitize your hands before and after putting on your mask. Place your mask over your mouth and nose and chin. Tie it behind your head or use ear loops. Make sure it's snug.,Don't touch your mask while wearing it. If you accidentally touch your mask, wash or sanitize your hands. If your mask becomes wet or dirty, switch to a clean one. Put the used mask in a sealable bag until you can get rid of it or wash it. Remove the mask by untying it or lifting off the ear loops without touching the front of the mask or your face.
Wash your hands immediately after removing your mask.
Regularly wash cloth masks in the washing machine or by hand. (They can be washed along with other laundry.)
And don't forget these precautions: Don't put masks on anyone who has trouble breathing or is unconscious or otherwise unable to remove the mask without help. Don't put masks on children under 2 years of age. Don't use face masks as a substitute for physical distancing. What about face shields? The CDC doesn't recommend using face shields instead of masks because it's unclear how much protection shields provide. However, wearing a face mask may not be possible in every situation. If you must use a face shield instead of a mask, choose one that wraps around the sides of your face and extends below your chin.
Do you still need to wear a facemask after you’re fully vaccinated? After you're fully vaccinated, the CDC recommends that it's ok not to wear a mask except where required by a rule or law. However, if you are in an area with a high number of new COVID-19 cases in the last week, the CDC recommends wearing a mask indoors in public and outdoors in crowded areas or when you are in close contact with unvaccinated people. If you are fully vaccinated and have a condition or are taking medications that weaken your immune system, you may need to keep wearing a mask. You're considered fully vaccinated 2 weeks after you get a second dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine or 2 weeks after you get a single dose of the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. In the U.S., everyone also needs to wear a mask while on planes, buses, trains and other forms of public transportation. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends medical masks for health care workers as well as for anyone who has or may have COVID-19 or who is caring for someone who has or may have COVID-19.``
www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-dep...
The Covid-19 pandemic seems to have sorted us into three types based on our attitudes toward masking: Call them nervous maskers, never-maskers and uncertain maskers. The first feel guilty or nervous about unmasking, so they tend to default to wearing masks; the second feel angry and resentful about being told to mask, so they often refuse entirely. And the third group is just trying to do the right thing without a lot of certainty one way or another. Winter is coming, with its continued battles against delta or mu or another variant. We have better protections now (vaccinations, natural antibodies) but also are returning to higher-risk environments (nightclubs, offices, schools). To complicate matters, there are additional factors to consider such as waning immunity from vaccines and the potential of a bad flu season.
Fortunately, there have been a number of important studies on the efficacy of masking over the past 18 months. The good news is that the research suggests most of us can actually de-mask without guilt or worry in many instances — and not just outdoors. It tells us, for example, that plexiglass dividers are in most cases useless or worse. But relaxed refuseniks need a rethink, too — we shouldn’t be ditching masks entirely. On the contrary, the more people adopt a policy of tactical masking, taking situational factors into account, the lower the infection risk and the more freedoms we can enjoy again. As the probability of infection increases, mask wearers lower the risk of catching the virus compared with no masking. For N95 or FFP2 masks, the protection is far greater. Note: Relative reduction in risk-of-infection figures are for an infection probability of 4%.
It’s no wonder we’re either nervous, angry or confused about masks when you consider how masking guidance and conventions have been all over the map. It seems amazing now that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and various governments had warned against using masks in the early days of the pandemic. When Thomas Nitzsche, mayor of Jena, Germany, made the decision to require masks in public in early April 2020, his city became one of the first to do so. Infections dropped by up to 75% over the next few weeks. In May, the CDC said fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks in most public settings. Two months later, as delta variant cases rose, the CDC revised that guidance. Now seven U.S. states — Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington — require most people to wear masks indoors in public places. Some states, including Texas and Florida, bar local authorities from imposing Covid-19 restrictions, including mask-wearing. In places that view masking as an affront to liberty, university professors can’t even ask students to wear masks during office hours without putting their jobs at risk. In England, there was a general lifting of restrictions in July, though U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said last week that masking may become mandatory again in some indoor settings this winter, depending mainly on whether hospitalizations from Covid spike. While masks are required on public transport, I’d say about half or fewer comply during my journeys. Many offices require workers to mask while walking around, but few Tory lawmakers are wearing them in the House of Commons. Scotland still requires masks to be worn in shops and restaurants while not seated, as well as on public transport. Berlin requires the medical-grade FFP2 masks on public transport. Certain regions of France also have masking requirements in place. But if you care about what the evidence says (and some people don’t), the jury is in: Masks help a lot. Take, for example, the study that shows most U.S. states that had high mask usage in one month avoided high Covid rates in the subsequent month, even after adjusting for masking policy, social-distancing policy and demographic factors. The majority of states with low mask usage ended up with high Covid case rates. Note: Low mask adherence means states that fall below the 25th percentile; high adherence are those states above the 75th percentile. Study analyzed data from April to October 2020.
The largest study yet on the effectiveness of masking, posted online in pre-print earlier this month, was a randomize trial conducted in 600 villages across Bangladesh covering a population of more than 340,000 adults. It offered strong evidence that masks, and surgical masks in particular, reduce virus transmission. Researchers found that a 29 percentage-point increase in mask adoption led to an 11% reduction in symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 prevalence, where surgical masks were distributed; and a 35% reduction in people over 60. Symptom reductions using surgical masks were not statistically significant in younger age groups. While vaccines have largely broken the link between infections and hospitalizations (and death), they haven’t eliminated the need for mask-wearing. Data released last week showed that two doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine were 67% effective against delta-variant infections (compared with 80% for two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s). Infections can still be nasty; long Covid remains another reason for vigilance. Not only can fully vaccinated people catch and transmit the virus, but it is unvaccinated adults who are more mask-resistant. Since it’s estimated that around half of all transmissions come from asymptomatic persons, masks are still key to preventing infections. But masking shouldn’t be performative, as it often is with those uncertain maskers who just want to show they are being thoughtful. Which masks we wear, and especially how they fit, is important. Mind the Gap . While N95s offer a higher level of protection, a well-fitted surgical mask blocks most particles.
More particles get through mask; Of course, not all masks are created equal, as a recent study published in the journal Nature highlighted. The authors measured the thermal behavior of face masks in real time during inhalation and exhalation to determine the relationship between the fabric structure of the masks and their performance. Their experiment helped shed light on how aerosol-containing bacteria and coronaviruses penetrate three different kinds of masks — reusable face masks, disposable surgical masks and the N95 — and how we can evaluate air filtration performance.Reusable masks have longer, thicker fibers with a larger average pore diameter. Unsurprisingly, they have
higher levels of permeability, with the surgical mask coming second, followed by the F95 (similar to the FFP2 in Europe). Those findings should even help manufacturers create a new generation of masks that offer more breathability while also improving filtration. The CDC doesn’t recommend scarves and other headwear because they tend to be made from loosely woven fabrics. Loosely Denser fabrics such as cotton with a 600 thread count compared with cotton that is woven with 80 threads per inch, are much more effective. Mixed fabrics also tend to have better results. A study on masks with and without gaps shows that leaks can significantly reduce their effectiveness. In addition to materials, layering them can also improve efficacy. New lab evidence on different kinds of masks showed that a three-ply surgical mask blocked 42% of particles from a simulated cough; a three-ply cloth mask was pretty similar. But the protection jumped to 92% when a cloth mask was worn over a surgical mask. Comfort is important to being able to wear a mask for long periods of time. In addition to metal nose-bridge strips that can help a mask stay on better, straps that tie behind the head and mask extenders can help reduce soreness around the ears. Insertable filters can be replaced when masks get wet.
Masks will also help prevent more vaccine-resistant variants from emerging as well as higher rates of flu infections, which can also cause serious illness and even death. Even so, the research strips away some of the mask myths and can help all categories of maskers — nervous, nevers and uncertains — be more tactical and aware. To know whether a mask is a must-have, a good idea or entirely superfluous, check the risk factors the way you might a weather report in the mountains: How densely packed and how well-ventilated is the space you are entering? Will you be moving around or stationary? It’s certainly good to mask up in an elevator or on public transport where people are pretty close together. It’s probably not necessary in an open-planned, well-ventilated office, provided people observe a measure of social distancing. Then be mindful of the infection and vaccination rates where you are. If you are in Broward County, Florida, where 70% of over-18s are vaccinated, you’d be justified in having a more relaxed approach; drive next door to Glades County, where only 31% are vaccinated and infection rates are high, and you’ll want to be more vigilant. Similarly only 16% of over-65s in King County, Texas, are vaccinated compared with 70% next door in Knox County, where the CDC recommends even vaccinated people mask. By moving beyond the “hygiene theater” of practices that don’t offer much benefit while also accepting that there are many different levels of risk tolerance and factors that increase or lower situational risk, we can treat masking a little like checking the weather forecast. Some days require a little more covering up than others.
www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-opinion-how-to-wear-face-...
The second vessel belonging to Boston Putford to visit the Tees for a visit to dry dock to have some work carried out. The previous vessel was PUTFORD PROVIDOR.
PUTFORD PROTECTOR 8119235, At Able Bex Quay awaiting the very short journey to UK Docks No 2 Dry Dock
14/02/2021
The emotional brain provides an overview of ideas about how emotions come from the brain.It is not meant as an all-encompasssing survey of every aspect of how the brain produces emotions. It focuses on those issues that have intersted me most, namely, issues about how the brain detects and responds to emotionally arousing stimuli, how our conscious emotional feelings emerge from unconscious processses.... I also tried not to water down the science. I hope I've been successful in making the book readable and enjoyable for lay persons and scientist alike.
What's love got to do with it? Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer guided by instinct, scarcely human in that it is yet wholly guided by reason.
Souls on ice; Think, think, think, Winnie the Pooh, ahab never thinks, he just feels, feels.
The human brain contains about 10 billion neurons that are wired together in enormously complex ways. ALthough the electrical sparks within and chemical exchanges between these cells accomplish some amazing and perplexings things, the creation of our emotions stands out as one of their most amazing and perplexing feats.
The reptilian brain in humans is a suberb guide to that ultimate frontier in understanding out our emotional life, the brain.
Daniel Goleman & Joseph Ledoux
Commentary.
Along the A.25 half-way between Dorking and Guildford
this effigy of a farrier beats the bell, on the clock tower, every quarter of an hour.
The inscription above it used to say,
“By me you know how fast to go.”
This is a memorial to the medieval iron industry that thrived
here in the 16th. and 17th. Centuries.
Ironstone in the Lower Greensand rocks of Leith Hill
provided metal for a variety of artefacts from horse-shoes and gates to cannon balls and weapons.
The valley had several forges and “Hammer ponds,”
to provide water-power for the mechanical hammers.
When demand increased, in the Industrial Revolution,
the supply of iron from this area was too sparse.
Greater and cheaper supplies of iron-ore and coal from
Northern England superseded the Surrey industry and it
quickly faded into obscurity.
Now, apart from the traffic, Abinger Hammer is a peaceful
backwater, enjoyed by walkers and day-trip visitors.
The Tillingbourne stream, public house, tearooms, cricket green,
local farm produce, including watercress,
grown in the pure spring water, provide
welcome entertainment from exploring the
natural beauty of the surrounding hills.
I educated children on its geography and history
on many residential visits to this area, and have countless happy memories.
It is a place very dear to my heart!
Sometimes the evening at Heathrow provides just as much variety compared to the daytime; its during this time where more narrow-body variety can be seen alongside various flights arriving from south east Asia.
Typically, Icelandair operates twice-daily flights from its Reykjavík-Keflavík hub to London Heathrow; whilst the daytime flight (FI450/451) often sees Boeing 767-300ERs with the occasional Boeing 757-200/300 added in for good measure, their evening flight (FI454/455) does provide some interest, if you are willing to wait around until 8pm when it's due to arrive!
FI454/455 has been sporadic, going from daily to as low as 4-weekly flights, but in essence this flight should be daily. Prior to their groundings from 2019 up until 2021, Boeing 737 MAXs were the allocated type, returning once they became re-certified. Boeing 737 MAX 8s are the most commonly used considering their higher number of 8 in operation, but also operate alongside the slightly longer Boeing 737 MAX 9 which there are 4 in service.
The Boeing 737 MAX 9s was the second of the fourth-generation of this family to be certified and too was grounded between 2019 and 2021. The Boeing 737 MAX 9 is the successor to the Boeing 737-900/900ER from the third-generation Next Generation family, denoted by the extra pair of emergency exits aft of the wings, which are plugged windows for aircraft configured with lower density seating. Whilst the Boeing 737 MAX 9 has a smaller range compared to the Boeing 737 MAX 8, Icelandair uses them interchangeably on the majority of routes that see the airframe on a regular basis, Heathrow being one of them...
Currently, Icelandair operates 12 Boeing 737s, which includes 8 Boeing 737 MAX 8s and 4 Boeing 737 MAX 9s. Icelandair have 2 more Boeing 737 MAX 8s on-order.
India Charlie Charlie is one of 4 Boeing 737 MAX 9s operated by Icelandair, delivered new to the flag-carrier on 24th May 2021 and she is powered by 2 CFM International LEAP-1B engines. She carries the name of Iceland's north coast mountain of Kirkjufell, often regarded as the most visited mountain in the country, gaining further fame as being a filming location for the 6th and 7th series of HBO's Game of Thrones.
Boeing 737-9 MAX TF-ICC 'Kirkjufell' on final approach into Runway 27R at London Heathrow (LHR) on FI454 from Reykjavík-Keflavík (KEF).
There two carts from the Hare Krsna’s Food For All (FFL) distributing prasadam (sanctified food) for anyone who is hungry on International Rebellion Week at Oxford Circus. London. They even served cakes! Each cart provides about three hundred servings. This is on top of their normal daily food distribution of about 1,000 servings in central London.
Shout out to Parashuram das and his team who have been doing this selfless act for many years.
The Symptoms of Kali-yuga
This chapter relates that, when the bad qualities of the Age of Kali will increase to an intolerable level, the Supreme Personality of Godhead will descend as Kalki to destroy those who are fixed in irreligion. After that, a new Satya-yuga will begin.
As the Age of Kali progresses, all good qualities of men diminish and all impure qualities increase. Atheistic systems of so-called religion become predominant, replacing the codes of Vedic law. The kings become just like highway bandits, the people in general become dedicated to low occupations, and all the social classes become just like śūdras. All cows become like goats, all spiritual hermitages become like materialistic homes, and family ties extend no further than the immediate relationship of marriage.
When the Age of Kali has almost ended, the Supreme Personality of Godhead will incarnate. He will appear in the village Śambhala, in the home of the exalted brāhmaṇa Viṣṇuyaśā, and will take the name Kalki. He will mount His horse Devadatta and, taking His sword in hand, will roam about the earth killing millions of bandits in the guise of kings. Then the signs of the next Satya-yuga will begin to appear. When the moon, sun and the planet Bṛhaspati enter simultaneously into one constellation and conjoin in the lunar mansion Puṣyā, Satya-yuga will begin. In the order of Satya, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali, the cycle of four ages rotates in the society of living entities in this universe.
The chapter ends with a brief description of the future dynasties of the sun and moon coming from Vaivasvata Manu in the next Satya-yuga. Even now two saintly kṣatriyas are living who at the end of this Kali-yuga will reinitiate the pious dynasties of the sun-god, Vivasvān, and the moon-god, Candra. One of these kings is Devāpi, a brother of Mahārāja Śantanu, and the other is Maru, a descendant of Ikṣvāku. They are biding their time incognito in a village named Kalāpa.
SB 12.2.1 — Śukadeva Gosvāmī said: Then, O King, religion, truthfulness, cleanliness, tolerance, mercy, duration of life, physical strength and memory will all diminish day by day because of the powerful influence of the Age of Kali.
SB 12.2.2 — In Kali-yuga, wealth alone will be considered the sign of a man’s good birth, proper behavior and fine qualities. And law and justice will be applied only on the basis of one’s power.
SB 12.2.3 — Men and women will live together merely because of superficial attraction, and success in business will depend on deceit. Womanliness and manliness will be judged according to one’s expertise in sex, and a man will be known as a brāhmaṇa just by his wearing a thread.
SB 12.2.4 — A person’s spiritual position will be ascertained merely according to external symbols, and on that same basis people will change from one spiritual order to the next. A person’s propriety will be seriously questioned if he does not earn a good living. And one who is very clever at juggling words will be considered a learned scholar.
SB 12.2.5 — A person will be judged unholy if he does not have money, and hypocrisy will be accepted as virtue. Marriage will be arranged simply by verbal agreement, and a person will think he is fit to appear in public if he has merely taken a bath.
SB 12.2.6 — A sacred place will be taken to consist of no more than a reservoir of water located at a distance, and beauty will be thought to depend on one’s hairstyle. Filling the belly will become the goal of life, and one who is audacious will be accepted as truthful. He who can maintain a family will be regarded as an expert man, and the principles of religion will be observed only for the sake of reputation.
SB 12.2.7 — As the earth thus becomes crowded with a corrupt population, whoever among any of the social classes shows himself to be the strongest will gain political power.
SB 12.2.8 — Losing their wives and properties to such avaricious and merciless rulers, who will behave no better than ordinary thieves, the citizens will flee to the mountains and forests.
SB 12.2.9 — Harassed by famine and excessive taxes, people will resort to eating leaves, roots, flesh, wild honey, fruits, flowers and seeds. Struck by drought, they will become completely ruined.
SB 12.2.10 — The citizens will suffer greatly from cold, wind, heat, rain and snow. They will be further tormented by quarrels, hunger, thirst, disease and severe anxiety.
SB 12.2.11 — The maximum duration of life for human beings in Kali-yuga will become fifty years.
SB 12.2.12-16 — By the time the Age of Kali ends, the bodies of all creatures will be greatly reduced in size, and the religious principles of followers of varṇāśrama will be ruined. The path of the Vedas will be completely forgotten in human society, and so-called religion will be mostly atheistic. The kings will mostly be thieves, the occupations of men will be stealing, lying and needless violence, and all the social classes will be reduced to the lowest level of śūdras. Cows will be like goats, spiritual hermitages will be no different from mundane houses, and family ties will extend no further than the immediate bonds of marriage. Most plants and herbs will be tiny, and all trees will appear like dwarf śamī trees. Clouds will be full of lightning, homes will be devoid of piety, and all human beings will have become like asses. At that time, the Supreme Personality of Godhead will appear on the earth. Acting with the power of pure spiritual goodness, He will rescue eternal religion.
SB 12.2.17 — Lord Viṣṇu — the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the spiritual master of all moving and nonmoving living beings, and the Supreme Soul of all — takes birth to protect the principles of religion and to relieve His saintly devotees from the reactions of material work.
SB 12.2.18 — Lord Kalki will appear in the home of the most eminent brāhmaṇa of Śambhala village, the great soul Viṣṇuyaśā.
SB 12.2.19-20 — Lord Kalki, the Lord of the universe, will mount His swift horse Devadatta and, sword in hand, travel over the earth exhibiting His eight mystic opulences and eight special qualities of Godhead. Displaying His unequaled effulgence and riding with great speed, He will kill by the millions those thieves who have dared dress as kings.
SB 12.2.21 — After all the impostor kings have been killed, the residents of the cities and towns will feel the breezes carrying the most sacred fragrance of the sandalwood paste and other decorations of Lord Vāsudeva, and their minds will thereby become transcendentally pure.
SB 12.2.22 — When Lord Vāsudeva, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, appears in their hearts in His transcendental form of goodness, the remaining citizens will abundantly repopulate the earth.
SB 12.2.23 — When the Supreme Lord has appeared on earth as Kalki, the maintainer of religion, Satya-yuga will begin, and human society will bring forth progeny in the mode of goodness.
SB 12.2.24 — When the moon, the sun and Bṛhaspatī are together in the constellation Karkaṭa, and all three enter simultaneously into the lunar mansion Puṣyā — at that exact moment the age of Satya, or Kṛta, will begin.
SB 12.2.25 — Thus I have described all the kings — past, present and future — who belong to the dynasties of the sun and the moon.
SB 12.2.26 — From your birth up to the coronation of King Nanda, 1,150 years will pass.
SB 12.2.27-28 — Of the seven stars forming the constellation of the seven sages, Pulaha and Kratu are the first to rise in the night sky. If a line running north and south were drawn through their midpoint, whichever of the lunar mansions this line passes through is said to be the ruling asterism of the constellation for that time. The Seven Sages will remain connected with that particular lunar mansion for one hundred human years. Currently, during your lifetime, they are situated in the nakṣatra called Maghā.
SB 12.2.29 — The Supreme Lord, Viṣṇu, is brilliant like the sun and is known as Kṛṣṇa. When He returned to the spiritual sky, Kali entered this world, and people then began to take pleasure in sinful activities.
SB 12.2.30 — As long as Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the husband of the goddess of fortune, touched the earth with His lotus feet, Kali was powerless to subdue this planet.
SB 12.2.31 — When the constellation of the seven sages is passing through the lunar mansion Maghā, the Age of Kali begins. It comprises twelve hundred years of the demigods.
SB 12.2.32 — When the great sages of the Saptarṣi constellation pass from Maghā to Pūrvāsāḍhā, Kali will have his full strength, beginning from King Nanda and his dynasty.
SB 12.2.33 — Those who scientifically understand the past declare that on the very day that Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa departed for the spiritual world, the influence of the Age of Kali began.
SB 12.2.34 — After the one thousand celestial years of Kali-yuga, the Satya-yuga will manifest again. At that time the minds of all men will become self-effulgent.
SB 12.2.35 — Thus I have described the royal dynasty of Manu, as it is known on this earth. One can similarly study the history of the vaiśyas, śūdras and brāhmaṇas living in the various ages.
SB 12.2.36 — These personalities, who were great souls, are now known only by their names. They exist only in accounts from the past, and only their fame remains on the earth.
SB 12.2.37 — Devāpi, the brother of Mahārāja Śāntanu, and Maru, the descendant of Ikṣvāku, both possess great mystic strength and are living even now in the village of Kalāpa.
SB 12.2.38 — At the end of the Age of Kali, these two kings, having received instruction directly from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Vāsudeva, will return to human society and reestablish the eternal religion of man, characterized by the divisions of varṇa and āśrama, just as it was before.
SB 12.2.39 — The cycle of four ages — Satya, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali — continues perpetually among living beings on this earth, repeating the same general sequence of events.
SB 12.2.40 — My dear King Parīkṣit, all these kings I have described, as well as all other human beings, come to this earth and stake their claims, but ultimately they all must give up this world and meet their destruction.
SB 12.2.41 — Even though a person’s body may now have the designation “king,” in the end its name will be “worms,” “stool” or “ashes.” What can a person who injures other living beings for the sake of his body know about his own self-interest, since his activities are simply leading him to hell?
SB 12.2.42 — [The materialistic king thinks:] “This unbounded earth was held by my predecessors and is now under my sovereignty. How can I arrange for it to remain in the hands of my sons, grandsons and other descendants?”
SB 12.2.43 — Although the foolish accept the body made of earth, water and fire as “me” and this earth as “mine,” in every case they have ultimately abandoned both their body and the earth and passed away into oblivion.
SB 12.2.44 — My dear King Parīkṣit, all these kings who tried to enjoy the earth by their strength were reduced by the force of time to nothing more than historical accounts.
~ Srimad Bhagavatam, canto 12, chapter 2
#InternationalRebellionWeek #srimadbhagavatam
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Oxford Circus, London 🇬🇧
18th April, 2019
Rural Southern Alberta is my photographic backyard and thankfully provides plenty of opportunity, but Saskatchewan trumps this from small town to hamlet. I've only started to investigate the Southern areas and ghost towns, and I can say I think I've discovered the prairie motherlode. Saskatchewan IS rural and outdoor amazing. Does this not rekindle memories of bygone days.
Adventures may only increase from Regina north towards Saskatoon. I met the caretaker of the area on a sunny crisp November morning, and what started out as an isolated situation turned into a friendly discussion of the neighbours and history of the area.
Neidpath is perhaps weeks away from a blanket of snow.
*Please view LARGE from maximum rural detail
**Textures courtesy of cleanser
Demographics
In an era where homesteaders arrived in the early 1900s and communities were situated much closer together to accommodate a day's horse ride between neighbours, many of these communities have now disappeared firstly with the advent of rail, then auto and highway which makes transportation much easier, and larger centres further apart have arisen. This has caused many small rural communities though out the Canadian Prairies to dwindle in size or to completely disappear, such as Neidpath which has died to a population of just 9 residents.
History
Neidpath was named after Neidpath Castle, near Peebles, Scotland. The name was suggested by the first postmaster, John Mitchell,[5] whose family emigrated from Peebles.[6]
During its heyday Neidpath had four grain elevators, two of which still stand derelict today. At one time Neidpath even had its own telephone company, The Neidpath Rural Telephone Central Office, two Chinese hotels and restaurants as well as the King George Hotel along Central Avenue, a pool hall, hardware store, and a blacksmith shop.
Colourful 60021 provides the power for 6E82 12.16 Rectory Jn to Lindsey discharged tanks at Muston. Colas took over operations of the Rectory tanks in February, however this flow is due to cease towards the end of the year. Bottesford's St Mary's church spire can be seen in the distance. Camera mounted on 5m pole. 14/04/15.
● Venue Provide：GD 極頂車體美學俱樂部
● Car：Mazda3 Mazda
● Model：豆花
● Photographer Team：繫夢攝影 ContactDreams
● Photographer：Rui Huang 黃永睿
● Camera：Sony a7 II + Zeiss Batis E 85mm F1.8
The Boeing Collection
From a collection of some 500 Boeing slides that I've had scanned from my archives. Hope they will provide some enjoyment and nostalgia from a bygone age.
A rather atmospheric scene in the fog at Heathrow. Myself and an onlooker take in the sheer size of a 747 passing close by across the perimeter road. The aircraft is one of the original fifteen BOAC Boeing 747-136s that British Airways inherited, G-AWNJ 'John Donne', and' is seen here under tow into the BA maintenance area at Heathrow. The aircraft still retains the old BOAC cheatline. Another member of the fleet can be seen in the old BOAC hangar. A bystander looks slightly entranced by the scene - one that is now long gone.
The British Overseas Aircraft Corporation, better known as BOAC, was an early purchaser of Boeing's new wide body 747 'Jumbo Jet'. Fifteen aircraft were delivered between April 1970 and December 1973. In April 1974, the whole fleet was transferred to the newly merged British Airways. The fleet was registered G-AWNA-P and most were given names. Of the fifteen, all but five flew their whole careers with BOAC and BA. G-AWNJ was one of the fleet that remained with BA all its flying life.
I became a bit of an aficionado of the British Airways 747 fleet of the time, and tried to record all the livery variations, which numbered a few.
G-AWNJ was the 11th in the fleet of 15 Boeing 747 'Jumbos' that were originally ordered by BOAC. The aircraft was delivered in Mar 1972, and was assimilated into the newly formed British Airways two years later in Apr 1974. A few of the aircraft retained the old BOAC sweeping cheatline for a some five years after the airline merger, this being one of them. Plenty more BA variants to follow soon :)
G-AWNJ 'John Donne' c/n 20272 Boeing 747-136 - delivered new to BOAC in Mar 1972, and assimilated into the newly formed British Airways fleet two years later in Apr 1974. The aircraft flew with the airline for 26 years, only being retired in 1998, and then flown into storage for stripping at the International Air Center, Roswell, New Mexico in the USA.
Taken with a Soviet made Zenith E camera and standard lens. From an original slide, scanned and unrestored. Frame 21 on only my second film using me newly acquired Zenit E camera!
You can see a random selection of my aviation memories here: www.flickriver.com/photos/heathrowjunkie/random/
This granite boulder created a tunnel over the Generals Highway until the road was rerouted. If you want to take a closer look, accessible parking and a paved path provide easy access to the old roadway beneath Tunnel Rock.
The KNP Complex Fire: A Variety of Fire Effects
Both above Tunnel Rock and across the river, you can see a mixture of how the 2021 KNP Complex Fire affected the vegetation. Notice a mosaic of live trees and shrubs, patches of fire-killed vegetation, and other areas where only bare, blackened ground remains. As time passes new plants will sprout in most of these bare areas.
These different burn patterns resulted from a variety of fire behavior (or how the fire burned). In places, light upcanyon winds may have pushed the fire cross-slope or it may have backed down the hillside at lower intensity. Further upcanyon, areas with no vegetation and exposed rock are places where flammable shrubs burned at higher intensity. Look on the slope below the pullout for a buckeye tree re-sprouting from its base and other plant re-growth.
Beware the three-leaved plant that grows here! Touching it can cause an intensely itchy rash. Even in winter when twigs are bare, oils from this plant can transfer from the plant to hands, clothing, and anything that touches it.
Sequoia National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California. The park was established on September 25, 1890, to protect 404,064 acres (631 sq mi; 163,519 ha; 1,635 km2) of forested mountainous terrain. Encompassing a vertical relief of nearly 13,000 feet (4,000 m), the park contains the highest point in the contiguous United States, Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 m) above sea level. The park is south of, and contiguous with, Kings Canyon National Park; both parks are administered by the National Park Service together as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. UNESCO designated the areas as Sequoia-Kings Canyon Biosphere Reserve in 1976.
The park is notable for its giant sequoia trees, including the General Sherman tree, the largest tree on Earth by volume. The General Sherman tree grows in the Giant Forest, which contains five of the ten largest trees in the world. The Giant Forest is connected by the Generals Highway to Kings Canyon National Park's General Grant Grove, home of the General Grant tree among other giant sequoias. The park's giant sequoia forests are part of 202,430 acres (316 sq mi; 81,921 ha; 819 km2) of old-growth forests shared by Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The parks preserve a landscape that was first cultivated by the Monachee tribe, the southern Sierra Nevada before Euro-American settlement.
The national park was partially closed in September 2020 due to the Sequoia Complex wildfire, and again from mid-September through mid-December 2021 due to the KNP Complex Fire.
Many park visitors enter Sequoia National Park through its southern entrance near the town of Three Rivers at Ash Mountain at 1,700 ft (520 m) elevation. The lower elevations around Ash Mountain contain the only National Park Service-protected California Foothills ecosystem, consisting of blue oak woodlands, foothills chaparral, grasslands, yucca plants, and steep, mild river valleys. Seasonal weather results in a changing landscape throughout the foothills with hot summer yielding an arid landscape while spring and winter rains result in blossoming wildflowers and lush greens. The region is also home to abundant wildlife: bobcats, foxes, ground squirrels, rattlesnakes, and mule deer are commonly seen in this area, and more rarely, reclusive mountain lions and the Pacific fisher are seen as well. The last California grizzly was killed in this park in 1922 (at Horse Corral Meadow). The California Black Oak is a key transition species between the chaparral and higher elevation conifer forest.
At higher elevations in the front country, between 5,500 and 9,000 feet (1,700 and 2,700 m) in elevation, the landscape becomes montane forest-dominated coniferous belt. Found here are Ponderosa, Jeffrey, sugar, and lodgepole pine trees, as well as abundant white and red fir. Found here too are the giant sequoia trees, the most massive living single-stem trees on earth. Between the trees, spring and summer snowmelts sometimes fan out to form lush, though delicate, meadows. In this region, visitors often see mule deer, Douglas squirrels, and American black bears, which sometimes break into unattended cars to eat food left by careless visitors. There are plans to reintroduce the bighorn sheep to this park.
The vast majority of the park is roadless wilderness; no road crosses the Sierra Nevada within the park's boundaries. 84 percent of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks is designated wilderness and is accessible only by foot or by horseback. The majority was designated Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness in 1984 and the southwest portion was protected as John Krebs Wilderness in 2009.
Sequoia's backcountry offers a vast expanse of high-alpine wonders. Covering the highest-elevation region of the High Sierra, the backcountry includes Mount Whitney on the eastern border of the park, accessible from the Giant Forest via the High Sierra Trail. On a traveler's path along this 35-mile (56 km) backcountry trail, one passes through about 10 miles (16 km) of montane forest before reaching the backcountry resort of Bearpaw Meadow, just short of the Great Western Divide.
Continuing along the High Sierra Trail over the Great Western Divide via Kaweah Gap, one passes from the Kaweah River Drainage, with its characteristic V-shaped river valleys, and into the Kern River drainage, where an ancient fault line has aided glaciers in the last ice age to create a U-shaped canyon that is almost perfectly straight for nearly 20 miles (32 km). On the floor of this canyon, at least two days hike from the nearest road, is the Kern Canyon hot spring, a popular resting point for weary backpackers. From the floor of Kern Canyon, the trail ascends again over 8,000 ft (2,400 m) to the summit of Mount Whitney. At Mount Whitney, the High Sierra Trail meets with the John Muir Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail, which continue northward along the Sierra crest and into the backcountry of Kings Canyon National Park.
The area which now is Sequoia National Park shows evidence of Native American settlement as early as 1000 A.D.[ The area was first home to "Monachee" (Western Mono) Native Americans, who resided mainly in the Kaweah River drainage in the Foothills region of what is now the park, though evidence of seasonal habitation exists as high as the Giant Forest. Members of this tribe were permanent residents of the park, with a population estimate of around 2,000. In the summertime the Tubatulabal Native Americans used the eastern part of the area (the Kern River drainage) as their summer hunting grounds. During this time, the Western Mono tribe would travel over the high mountain passes to trade with tribes to the East. To this day, pictographs can be found at several sites within the park, notably at Hospital Rock and Potwisha, as well as bedrock mortars used to process acorns, a staple food for the Monachee people.
The first European settler to homestead in the area was Hale Tharp, who famously built a home out of a hollowed-out fallen giant sequoia log in the Giant Forest next to Log Meadow. Tharp arrived in 1858 to the region and encountered several groups of Native Americans, the largest being around 600 with several other smaller groups found at higher elevations. After becoming friendly with the Western Mono tribe, Tharp was shown the Giant Forest Sequoia Grove. After his settlement, more settlers came around 1860. Shortly thereafter - between 1860 and 1863, epidemics of smallpox, measles, and scarlet fever killed the majority of the Native Americans living in the area. After this, the rest of the Native Americans left with the largest campsite (Hospital Rock) abandoned by 1865. During their time in the area, the Monachee used periodic fire burning to aid in hunting and agriculture. This technique played an important role in the ecology of the region and allowed for a "natural" vegetation cover development. After they left, Tharp and other settlers allowed sheep and cattle to graze the meadow, while at the same time maintaining a respect for the grandeur of the forest and led early battles against logging in the area. From time to time, Tharp received visits from John Muir, who would stay at Tharp's log cabin. Tharp's Log can still be visited today in its original location in the Giant Forest.
However, Tharp's attempts to conserve the giant sequoias were at first met with only limited success. In the 1880s, white settlers seeking to create a utopian society founded the Kaweah Colony, which sought economic success in trading Sequoia timber. However, Giant Sequoia trees, unlike their coast redwood relatives, were later discovered to splinter easily and therefore were ill-suited to timber harvesting, though thousands of trees were felled before logging operations finally ceased. The National Park Service incorporated the Giant Forest into Sequoia National Park in 1890, the year of its founding, promptly ceasing all logging operations in the Giant Forest.
Another consequence of the Giant Forest becoming Sequoia National Park was the shift in park employment. Prior to the incorporation by the National Park Service, the park was managed by US army troops of the 24th Regiment of Infantry and the 9th Regiment of Cavalry, better known as the Buffalo Soldiers. These segregated troops, founded in 1866, were African-American men from the South, an invaluable demographic to the military with the lowest rates of desertion. The Buffalo Soldiers completed park infrastructure projects as well as park management duties, helping to shape the role of the modern-day park ranger. The Buffalo Soldiers rose to this position due to a lack of funding for the park which led to an inability to hire civilians. The third African American West Point graduate, Captain Charles Young led the cavalries of Buffalo Soldiers in the Sequoia and General Grant Parks. Young landed this post as a result of the segregation rampant throughout the Army: as a black man, he was not permitted to head any combat units. He did, however, demonstrate his leadership capability through his initiatives in the National Park delegating park infrastructure projects, hosting tourists and politicians, and setting a standard of a strong work ethic into his men. Young was also a prominent figure regarding the early conservation of Sequoia National Park. He greenlighted the dedication of trees in honor of prominent figures as a means of promoting their preservation. One such example is the Redwood dedicated to the escaped slave and activist, Booker T Washington. Young also argued to the Secretary of the Interior that the lack of enforcement of forest protection laws allowed the detrimental practices of logging and the popular tourist hobby of carving names into the redwoods to continue. To combat this, Young increased patrolling of troops around heavily trafficked areas and initiated a proposal to buy out private landowners surrounding Sequoia to further buffer the protected area.
The land buyouts Young initiated were just the beginning of increasing the area of Sequoia National Park. The park has expanded several times over the decades to its present size; one of the most significant expansions took place in 1926 and was advocated for by Susan Thew Parks. One of the most recent expansions occurred in 1978, when grassroots efforts, spearheaded by the Sierra Club, fought off attempts by the Walt Disney Corporation to purchase a high-alpine former mining site south of the park for use as a ski resort. This site known as Mineral King was annexed to the park. Its name dates back to early 1873 when the miners in the area formed the Mineral King Mining District. Mineral King is the highest-elevation developed site within the park and a popular destination for backpackers.
Sequoia National Park contains a significant portion of the Sierra Nevada. The park's mountainous landscape includes the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States, Mount Whitney, which rises to 14,505 feet (4,421 m) above sea level. The Great Western Divide parallels the Sierran crest and is visible at various places in the park, for example, Mineral King, Moro Rock, and the Giant Forest. Peaks in the Great Western Divide rise to more than 12,000 feet (3,700 m). Deep canyons lie between the mountains, including Tokopah Valley above Lodgepole, Deep Canyon on the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River, and Kern Canyon in the park's backcountry, which is more than 5,000 feet (1,500 m) deep for 30 miles (48 km).
Most of the mountains and canyons in the Sierra Nevada are composed of granitic rocks. These rocks, such as granite, diorite and monzonite, formed when molten rock cooled far beneath the surface of the earth. The molten rock was the result of a geologic process known as subduction. Powerful forces in the earth forced the landmass under the waters of the Pacific Ocean beneath and below an advancing North American Continent. Super-hot water driven from the subducting ocean floor migrated upward and melted rock as it proceeded. This process took place during the Cretaceous Period, 100 million years ago. Granitic rocks have a speckled salt-and-pepper appearance because they contain various minerals including quartz, feldspars and micas. Valhalla, or the Angel Wings, are prominent granitic cliffs that rise above the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the Kaweah River.
The Sierra Nevada is a young mountain range, probably not more than 10 million years old. Forces in the earth, probably associated with the development of the Great Basin, forced the mountains to rise. During the last 10 million years, at least four ice ages have coated the mountains in a thick mantle of ice. Glaciers form and develop during long periods of cool and wet weather. Glaciers move very slowly through the mountains, carving deep valleys and craggy peaks. The extensive history of glaciation within the range and the erosion resistant nature of the granitic rocks that make up most of the Sierra Nevada have together created a landscape of hanging valleys, waterfalls, craggy peaks, alpine lakes (such as Tulainyo Lake) and glacial canyons.
Park caves, like most caves in the Sierra Nevada of California, are mostly solutional caves dissolved from marble. Marble rock is essentially limestone that was metamorphosed by the heat and pressure of the formation and uplift of the Sierra Nevada Batholith. The batholith's rapid uplift over the past 10 million years led to a rapid erosion of the metamorphic rocks in the higher elevations, exposing the granite beneath; therefore, most Sierra Nevada caves are found in the middle and lower elevations (below 7,000 ft or 2,100 m), though some caves are found in the park at elevations as high as 10,000 ft (3,000 m) such as the White Chief cave and Cirque Cave in Mineral King. These caves are carved out of the rock by the abundant seasonal streams in the park. Most of the larger park caves have, or have had, sinking streams running through them.
The park contains more than 270 known caves, including Lilburn Cave which is California's longest cave with nearly 17 miles (27 km) of surveyed passages. The only commercial cave open to park visitors is Crystal Cave, the park's second-longest cave at over 3.4 miles (5.5 km). Crystal Cave was discovered on April 28, 1918, by Alex Medley and Cassius Webster. The cave is a constant 48 °F (9 °C), and is only accessible by guided tour.
Caves are discovered every year in the park with the most recently discovered major cave being Ursa Minor in August 2006.
According to the A. W. Kuchler U.S. Potential natural vegetation Types, Sequoia National Park encompasses five classifications listed here from highest to lowest elevation; Alpine tundra & barren vegetation type with an Alpine tundra vegetation form...Pinus contorta/ Subalpine zone vegetation type with a California Conifer Forest vegetation form...Abies magnifica vegetation type with a California Conifer Forest vegetation form...Mixed conifer vegetation type with a California Conifer Forest vegetation form...and Chaparral vegetation type with a California chaparral and woodlands vegetation form.
Animals that inhabit this park are coyote, badger, black bear, bighorn sheep, deer, fox, cougar, eleven species of woodpecker, various species of turtle, three species of owl, opossum, various species of snake, wolverine, beaver, various species of frog, and muskrat.
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.
The economy of the state of California is the largest in the United States, with a $3.4 trillion gross state product (GSP) as of 2022. It is the largest sub-national economy in the world. If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank as the world's fifth-largest economy as of 2022, behind Germany and ahead of India, as well as the 37th most populous. The Greater Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies ($1.0 trillion and $0.5 trillion respectively as of 2020). The San Francisco Bay Area Combined Statistical Area had the nation's highest gross domestic product per capita ($106,757) among large primary statistical areas in 2018, and is home to five of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people.
Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America and contained the highest Native American population density north of what is now Mexico. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization of California by the Spanish Empire. In 1804, it was included in Alta California province within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its successful war for independence, but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War. The California Gold Rush started in 1848 and led to dramatic social and demographic changes, including large-scale immigration into California, a worldwide economic boom, and the California genocide of indigenous people. The western portion of Alta California was then organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850, following the Compromise of 1850.
Notable contributions to popular culture, for example in entertainment and sports, have their origins in California. The state also has made noteworthy contributions in the fields of communication, information, innovation, environmentalism, economics, and politics. It is the home of Hollywood, the oldest and one of the largest film industries in the world, which has had a profound influence upon global entertainment. It is considered the origin of the hippie counterculture, beach and car culture, and the personal computer, among other innovations. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are widely seen as the centers of the global technology and film industries, respectively. California's economy is very diverse: 58% of it is based on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific, and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.S. state. California's ports and harbors handle about a third of all U.S. imports, most originating in Pacific Rim international trade.
The state's extremely diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast and metropolitan areas in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east, and from the redwood and Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. California is well known for its warm Mediterranean climate and monsoon seasonal weather. The large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains.
Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population have ranged from 100,000 to 300,000. The indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct ethnic groups, inhabiting environments from mountains and deserts to islands and redwood forests. These groups were also diverse in their political organization, with bands, tribes, villages, and on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash, Pomo and Salinan. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered social and economic relationships between many groups.
The first Europeans to explore the coast of California were the members of a Spanish maritime expedition led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542. Cabrillo was commissioned by Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities; they entered San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542, and reached at least as far north as San Miguel Island. Privateer and explorer Francis Drake explored and claimed an undefined portion of the California coast in 1579, landing north of the future city of San Francisco. Sebastián Vizcaíno explored and mapped the coast of California in 1602 for New Spain, putting ashore in Monterey. Despite the on-the-ground explorations of California in the 16th century, Rodríguez's idea of California as an island persisted. Such depictions appeared on many European maps well into the 18th century.
The Portolá expedition of 1769-70 was a pivotal event in the Spanish colonization of California, resulting in the establishment of numerous missions, presidios, and pueblos. The military and civil contingent of the expedition was led by Gaspar de Portolá, who traveled over land from Sonora into California, while the religious component was headed by Junípero Serra, who came by sea from Baja California. In 1769, Portolá and Serra established Mission San Diego de Alcalá and the Presidio of San Diego, the first religious and military settlements founded by the Spanish in California. By the end of the expedition in 1770, they would establish the Presidio of Monterey and Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo on Monterey Bay.
After the Portolà expedition, Spanish missionaries led by Father-President Serra set out to establish 21 Spanish missions of California along El Camino Real ("The Royal Road") and along the Californian coast, 16 sites of which having been chosen during the Portolá expedition. Numerous major cities in California grew out of missions, including San Francisco (Mission San Francisco de Asís), San Diego (Mission San Diego de Alcalá), Ventura (Mission San Buenaventura), or Santa Barbara (Mission Santa Barbara), among others.
Juan Bautista de Anza led a similarly important expedition throughout California in 1775–76, which would extend deeper into the interior and north of California. The Anza expedition selected numerous sites for missions, presidios, and pueblos, which subsequently would be established by settlers. Gabriel Moraga, a member of the expedition, would also christen many of California's prominent rivers with their names in 1775–1776, such as the Sacramento River and the San Joaquin River. After the expedition, Gabriel's son, José Joaquín Moraga, would found the pueblo of San Jose in 1777, making it the first civilian-established city in California.
The Spanish founded Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1776, the third to be established of the Californian missions.
During this same period, sailors from the Russian Empire explored along the northern coast of California. In 1812, the Russian-American Company established a trading post and small fortification at Fort Ross on the North Coast. Fort Ross was primarily used to supply Russia's Alaskan colonies with food supplies. The settlement did not meet much success, failing to attract settlers or establish long term trade viability, and was abandoned by 1841.
During the War of Mexican Independence, Alta California was largely unaffected and uninvolved in the revolution, though many Californios supported independence from Spain, which many believed had neglected California and limited its development. Spain's trade monopoly on California had limited the trade prospects of Californians. Following Mexican independence, Californian ports were freely able to trade with foreign merchants. Governor Pablo Vicente de Solá presided over the transition from Spanish colonial rule to independent.
In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave the Mexican Empire (which included California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico, which shortly after independence became a republic. The missions, which controlled most of the best land in the state, were secularized by 1834 and became the property of the Mexican government. The governor granted many square leagues of land to others with political influence. These huge ranchos or cattle ranches emerged as the dominant institutions of Mexican California. The ranchos developed under ownership by Californios (Hispanics native of California) who traded cowhides and tallow with Boston merchants. Beef did not become a commodity until the 1849 California Gold Rush.
From the 1820s, trappers and settlers from the United States and Canada began to arrive in Northern California. These new arrivals used the Siskiyou Trail, California Trail, Oregon Trail and Old Spanish Trail to cross the rugged mountains and harsh deserts in and surrounding California. The early government of the newly independent Mexico was highly unstable, and in a reflection of this, from 1831 onwards, California also experienced a series of armed disputes, both internal and with the central Mexican government. During this tumultuous political period Juan Bautista Alvarado was able to secure the governorship during 1836–1842. The military action which first brought Alvarado to power had momentarily declared California to be an independent state, and had been aided by Anglo-American residents of California, including Isaac Graham. In 1840, one hundred of those residents who did not have passports were arrested, leading to the Graham Affair, which was resolved in part with the intercession of Royal Navy officials.
One of the largest ranchers in California was John Marsh. After failing to obtain justice against squatters on his land from the Mexican courts, he determined that California should become part of the United States. Marsh conducted a letter-writing campaign espousing the California climate, the soil, and other reasons to settle there, as well as the best route to follow, which became known as "Marsh's route". His letters were read, reread, passed around, and printed in newspapers throughout the country, and started the first wagon trains rolling to California. He invited immigrants to stay on his ranch until they could get settled, and assisted in their obtaining passports.
After ushering in the period of organized emigration to California, Marsh became involved in a military battle between the much-hated Mexican general, Manuel Micheltorena and the California governor he had replaced, Juan Bautista Alvarado. The armies of each met at the Battle of Providencia near Los Angeles. Marsh had been forced against his will to join Micheltorena's army. Ignoring his superiors, during the battle, he signaled the other side for a parley. There were many settlers from the United States fighting on both sides. He convinced these men that they had no reason to be fighting each other. As a result of Marsh's actions, they abandoned the fight, Micheltorena was defeated, and California-born Pio Pico was returned to the governorship. This paved the way to California's ultimate acquisition by the United States.
In 1846, a group of American settlers in and around Sonoma rebelled against Mexican rule during the Bear Flag Revolt. Afterward, rebels raised the Bear Flag (featuring a bear, a star, a red stripe and the words "California Republic") at Sonoma. The Republic's only president was William B. Ide,[65] who played a pivotal role during the Bear Flag Revolt. This revolt by American settlers served as a prelude to the later American military invasion of California and was closely coordinated with nearby American military commanders.
The California Republic was short-lived; the same year marked the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–48).
Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay in 1846 and began the U.S. military invasion of California, with Northern California capitulating in less than a month to the United States forces. In Southern California, Californios continued to resist American forces. Notable military engagements of the conquest include the Battle of San Pasqual and the Battle of Dominguez Rancho in Southern California, as well as the Battle of Olómpali and the Battle of Santa Clara in Northern California. After a series of defensive battles in the south, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing a censure and establishing de facto American control in California.
Following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848) that ended the war, the westernmost portion of the annexed Mexican territory of Alta California soon became the American state of California, and the remainder of the old territory was then subdivided into the new American Territories of Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The even more lightly populated and arid lower region of old Baja California remained as a part of Mexico. In 1846, the total settler population of the western part of the old Alta California had been estimated to be no more than 8,000, plus about 100,000 Native Americans, down from about 300,000 before Hispanic settlement in 1769.
In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come. Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.
The seat of government for California under Spanish and later Mexican rule had been located in Monterey from 1777 until 1845. Pio Pico, the last Mexican governor of Alta California, had briefly moved the capital to Los Angeles in 1845. The United States consulate had also been located in Monterey, under consul Thomas O. Larkin.
In 1849, a state Constitutional Convention was first held in Monterey. Among the first tasks of the convention was a decision on a location for the new state capital. The first full legislative sessions were held in San Jose (1850–1851). Subsequent locations included Vallejo (1852–1853), and nearby Benicia (1853–1854); these locations eventually proved to be inadequate as well. The capital has been located in Sacramento since 1854 with only a short break in 1862 when legislative sessions were held in San Francisco due to flooding in Sacramento. Once the state's Constitutional Convention had finalized its state constitution, it applied to the U.S. Congress for admission to statehood. On September 9, 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850, California became a free state and September 9 a state holiday.
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), California sent gold shipments eastward to Washington in support of the Union. However, due to the existence of a large contingent of pro-South sympathizers within the state, the state was not able to muster any full military regiments to send eastwards to officially serve in the Union war effort. Still, several smaller military units within the Union army were unofficially associated with the state of California, such as the "California 100 Company", due to a majority of their members being from California.
At the time of California's admission into the Union, travel between California and the rest of the continental United States had been a time-consuming and dangerous feat. Nineteen years later, and seven years after it was greenlighted by President Lincoln, the First transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. California was then reachable from the eastern States in a week's time.
Much of the state was extremely well suited to fruit cultivation and agriculture in general. Vast expanses of wheat, other cereal crops, vegetable crops, cotton, and nut and fruit trees were grown (including oranges in Southern California), and the foundation was laid for the state's prodigious agricultural production in the Central Valley and elsewhere.
In the nineteenth century, a large number of migrants from China traveled to the state as part of the Gold Rush or to seek work. Even though the Chinese proved indispensable in building the transcontinental railroad from California to Utah, perceived job competition with the Chinese led to anti-Chinese riots in the state, and eventually the US ended migration from China partially as a response to pressure from California with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Under earlier Spanish and Mexican rule, California's original native population had precipitously declined, above all, from Eurasian diseases to which the indigenous people of California had not yet developed a natural immunity. Under its new American administration, California's harsh governmental policies towards its own indigenous people did not improve. As in other American states, many of the native inhabitants were soon forcibly removed from their lands by incoming American settlers such as miners, ranchers, and farmers. Although California had entered the American union as a free state, the "loitering or orphaned Indians" were de facto enslaved by their new Anglo-American masters under the 1853 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. There were also massacres in which hundreds of indigenous people were killed.
Between 1850 and 1860, the California state government paid around 1.5 million dollars (some 250,000 of which was reimbursed by the federal government) to hire militias whose purpose was to protect settlers from the indigenous populations. In later decades, the native population was placed in reservations and rancherias, which were often small and isolated and without enough natural resources or funding from the government to sustain the populations living on them. As a result, the rise of California was a calamity for the native inhabitants. Several scholars and Native American activists, including Benjamin Madley and Ed Castillo, have described the actions of the California government as a genocide.
In the twentieth century, thousands of Japanese people migrated to the US and California specifically to attempt to purchase and own land in the state. However, the state in 1913 passed the Alien Land Act, excluding Asian immigrants from owning land. During World War II, Japanese Americans in California were interned in concentration camps such as at Tule Lake and Manzanar. In 2020, California officially apologized for this internment.
Migration to California accelerated during the early 20th century with the completion of major transcontinental highways like the Lincoln Highway and Route 66. In the period from 1900 to 1965, the population grew from fewer than one million to the greatest in the Union. In 1940, the Census Bureau reported California's population as 6.0% Hispanic, 2.4% Asian, and 89.5% non-Hispanic white.
To meet the population's needs, major engineering feats like the California and Los Angeles Aqueducts; the Oroville and Shasta Dams; and the Bay and Golden Gate Bridges were built across the state. The state government also adopted the California Master Plan for Higher Education in 1960 to develop a highly efficient system of public education.
Meanwhile, attracted to the mild Mediterranean climate, cheap land, and the state's wide variety of geography, filmmakers established the studio system in Hollywood in the 1920s. California manufactured 8.7 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking third (behind New York and Michigan) among the 48 states. California however easily ranked first in production of military ships during the war (transport, cargo, [merchant ships] such as Liberty ships, Victory ships, and warships) at drydock facilities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. After World War II, California's economy greatly expanded due to strong aerospace and defense industries, whose size decreased following the end of the Cold War. Stanford University and its Dean of Engineering Frederick Terman began encouraging faculty and graduates to stay in California instead of leaving the state, and develop a high-tech region in the area now known as Silicon Valley. As a result of these efforts, California is regarded as a world center of the entertainment and music industries, of technology, engineering, and the aerospace industry, and as the United States center of agricultural production. Just before the Dot Com Bust, California had the fifth-largest economy in the world among nations.
In the mid and late twentieth century, a number of race-related incidents occurred in the state. Tensions between police and African Americans, combined with unemployment and poverty in inner cities, led to violent riots, such as the 1965 Watts riots and 1992 Rodney King riots. California was also the hub of the Black Panther Party, a group known for arming African Americans to defend against racial injustice and for organizing free breakfast programs for schoolchildren. Additionally, Mexican, Filipino, and other migrant farm workers rallied in the state around Cesar Chavez for better pay in the 1960s and 1970s.
During the 20th century, two great disasters happened in California. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and 1928 St. Francis Dam flood remain the deadliest in U.S. history.
Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze known as "smog" has been substantially abated after the passage of federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.
An energy crisis in 2001 led to rolling blackouts, soaring power rates, and the importation of electricity from neighboring states. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric Company came under heavy criticism.
Housing prices in urban areas continued to increase; a modest home which in the 1960s cost $25,000 would cost half a million dollars or more in urban areas by 2005. More people commuted longer hours to afford a home in more rural areas while earning larger salaries in the urban areas. Speculators bought houses they never intended to live in, expecting to make a huge profit in a matter of months, then rolling it over by buying more properties. Mortgage companies were compliant, as everyone assumed the prices would keep rising. The bubble burst in 2007–8 as housing prices began to crash and the boom years ended. Hundreds of billions in property values vanished and foreclosures soared as many financial institutions and investors were badly hurt.
In the twenty-first century, droughts and frequent wildfires attributed to climate change have occurred in the state. From 2011 to 2017, a persistent drought was the worst in its recorded history. The 2018 wildfire season was the state's deadliest and most destructive, most notably Camp Fire.
Although air pollution problems have been reduced, health problems associated with pollution have continued. The brown haze that is known as "smog" has been substantially abated thanks to federal and state restrictions on automobile exhaust.
Please provide water as well as food during these hostile times. This little guy was very grateful and pleased no doubt not to be drinking starling bath water.
So I recently got tagged and by convention I'm to provide twenty facts about myself, because society today loves to know more about peoples affairs.
1. I'm British and of course as you'd expect I drink a large amount of tea as a result. I am just a walking stereotype.
2. Everyone calls Batman the greatest superhero. They're wrong, that's Superman. Anyone who thinks Batman could wipe the floor with Superman in a fight is an idiot
3. I'm curious about Batman v Superman but equally terrified. Dark, gritty and monotone may suit the Dark Knight but not the Man of Steel. Hopefully it's simply a case that they chose a few scenes just to show off Batman. Alas I fear that may not be the case. I'm also worried that in the Man of Steel sequel Superman is going to be forced to play second fiddle so Batman can sell tickets.
4. I am still not a fan of Aquadrogo, but unlike most of the internet which has now done a U-turn with the first picture of him in the suit, I was rather interested in Batfleck when he was first announced.
5. Despite all my bashing I do love the character of Batman.
6. Honestly I don't blindly hate on the New 52 like most kids these days. I actually think it's a nice idea and some of the stories have been splendid. I would highly recommend Scott Snyder's Batman, Geoff John's brief run on Superman as well as the ongoing Justice League series. I also recently picked up the Martian Manhunter comic. That's great as well and I'd recommend you take a look.
7. My favourite Marvel character is Magneto. I just find him compelling as a character and love his friendship with Charles Xavier. The fact that I love McKellen/Stewart and Fassbender/McAvoy in the roles probably helps as well.
8. I'm a massive fan of Star Trek the Next Generation and genuinely think a great idea for a television series would be something of a similar format onboard an Imperial Star Destroyer. Get on it Disney.
9. Shock and horror. Superman is my favourite DC character. But the friendship between Batman and Superman is quite possibly my favourite relationship in comics.
10. Honestly I don't follow Marvel too much in the comics. I know bits and bobs but not much, I honestly follow them more on the big screen. Speaking of the big screen my favourite MCU film is a three way tie between Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Iron Man and The Avengers.
11. For the longest time Iron Man held the spot of my favourite character in the MCU but honestly with the Winter Soldier and Age of Ultron Captain America has grown on me. I'm not even American and he makes me feel patriotic. I'd possibly go so far as to say he's maybe my favourite. It will sure be interesting when he and Stark find themselves on the opposite end of the argument.
12. I don't watch too much tv but anyone who knows me knows how much I love Doctor Who. I also enjoy watching Sherlock, Breaking Bad, Star Wars Rebels and of course the Bruce Timm era animated series.
13. Star Wars Rebels is a brilliant tv show. If you claim to be a Star Wars fan you should enjoy it, if not what's wrong with you.
14. My personal favourite film of all time is Empire Strikes Back. I really have to take my hand off to that film.
15. I'd happily argue that some of the greatest superhero films are sequels.
-Superman II
-Spiderman II
-X2: X-men United
-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
-The Dark Knight
16. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace broke my heart when I first saw it.
17. I miss Christopher Reeves. He was the definitive Superman. That being said I think Henry Cavill is good in the role as well. Hopefully he'll have better material to work with in the future.
18. Arkham Knight has consumed the last four days of my life.
19. I originally only took up the role of Batman for the DC Comics Stories group so I could write 'When World's Collide' but since then I've had an absolute blast writing him. I love writing Superman as well, though there is no doubt he is far more difficult to write for. Writing the Justice League comic is slowly making me go grey.
20. I doubt anyone will read all twenty facts. I wouldn't. But seriously thanks if you did read this it means a lot to me that you care <3.
This is the part where I tag people to have them provide twenty interesting facts about themselves so here we go!
- Brandon (TheFilmGMR)
-Sam (The_Lego_Guy)
-Michael ([Stubbs])
This glasshouse provides a great venue for weddings it has a very large function room and outdoor terrace.
The stunning Riverside Glasshouse is a unique venue set in the historic and beautiful Jephson Gardens in Leamington Spa. It has views of the River Leam on one side, the gardens fountains on another and the tropical Temperate House on the third.
Another version of this majestic ruin for you to enjoy. The left wing, bombed and burned in 1939, is missing. Some portions of the walls, along with a massive foundation (not visible on the photo) still remain and while heavily overgrown with bushes can provide a great vantage point from which converging Vistula and Narew rivers are perfectly visible.
In fact, Narew river flows just behind the granary, the walls seem to rise straight from the water, while Vistula river is maybe 100 meters in front of the main entrance. Both rivers are not really “regulated” here and they both run beautifully wild.
The building proved to be a relatively easy target for the German bombers in 1939. It was huge and aligned so perfectly in a place where the two rivers converged that the smart pilots almost “flew by the wire”. At that time it was used as a storage for the army engineers' material time so it made an inviting target.
It was said that the architect Jan Jakub Gaya made the main gate (or antrance) too beautiful, making it look like “arc de triomphe” for the hated tsar Nicolas I Romanov who, in 1844, was both the Emperor of Russia and the King of Poland (and the Grand Duke of Finland for that matter).
Today we can only be thankful to Gaya since what he had designed, despite heavy damage and merciless passage of time, is still a majestic and beautiful construction, a true sight to behold.
This photo is Best on black at Fluidr
See more at: www.visualmanuscripts.com or connect with me on Google+, Facebook or Twitter.
One of Webb’s most complex instrument modes is with the MIRI Medium Resolution Spectrometer (MRS). The MRS is an integral-field spectrograph, which provides spectral and spatial information simultaneously for the entire field of view. The spectrograph provides three-dimensional ‘data cubes’ in which every pixel in an image contains a unique spectrum. Such spectrographs are extremely powerful tools to study the composition and kinematics of astronomical objects, as they combine the benefits of both traditional imaging and spectroscopy.
“The MRS is designed to have a spectral resolving power (observed wavelength divided by the smallest detectable wavelength difference) of about 3,000. That is high enough to resolve key atomic and molecular features in a variety of environments. At the highest redshifts, the MRS will be able to study hydrogen emission from the first galaxies. At lower redshifts, it will probe molecular hydrocarbon features in dusty nearby galaxies and detect the bright spectral fingerprints of elements such as oxygen, argon, and neon that can tell us about the properties of ionized gas in the interstellar medium. Closer to home, the MRS will produce maps of spectral features due to water ice and simple organic molecules in giant planets in our own solar system and in planet-forming disks around other stars.
“In order to cover the wide 5 to 28 micron wavelength range as efficiently as possible, the MRS integral field units are broken up into twelve individual wavelength bands, each of which must be calibrated individually. Over the past few weeks, the MIRI team (a large international group of astronomers from the USA and Europe) has been focusing primarily on calibrating the imaging components of the MRS. They want to ensure that all twelve bands are spatially well aligned with each other and with the MIRI Imager, so that it can be used to place targets accurately into the smaller MRS field of view. We show some early test results from this alignment process, illustrating the image quality achieved in each of the twelve bands using observations of the bright K giant star HD 37122 (located in the southern sky near the Large Magellanic Cloud).
“Once the spatial alignment and image quality of the several bands are well characterized, the MIRI team will prioritize calibrating the spectroscopic response of the instrument. This step will include determining the wavelength solution and spectral resolution throughout each of the twelve fields of view using observations of compact emission-line objects and diffuse planetary nebulae ejected by dying stars. We show the exceptional spectral resolving power of the MRS with a small segment of a spectrum obtained from recent engineering observations of the active galactic nucleus at the core of Seyfert galaxy NGC 6552. Once these basic instrument characteristics are established, it will be possible to calibrate MRS so that it is ready to support the wealth of Cycle 1 science programs due to start in a few short weeks.”
Read more: blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/06/16/webbs-mid-infrared-spectro...
This image: This portion of the MIRI MRS wavelength range shows engineering calibration data obtained of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 6552 (red line) in the constellation Draco. The strong emission feature is due to molecular hydrogen, with an additional weaker feature nearby. The blue line shows a lower spectral resolution Spitzer IRS spectrum of a similar galaxy for comparison. The Webb test observations were obtained to establish the wavelength calibration of the spectrograph. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the MIRI Consortium.
Shaved periodically to provide "cork" for the trade--think wine bottles, bulletin boards, floor tiles. I just laid cork flooring throughout my apartment and am extremely happy with it! It's beautiful and quiet and soft underfoot. . . . . . and natural.
Background on the tree:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercus_suber
I have included other cork oak images/info in my stream . . . .
67012 provides the power at the rear of 1W96 1714 Cardiff to Holyhead as it speeds through Pontrilas on a sunny 21st June 2024.
The mark IV coaches are well suited to the run along the Marches line and are far preferable to the CAF units that are starting to appear. The fact that there is also a buffet service on the cushioned ride makes these popular trains, not just for 67 fans!
The McKenzie & Holland designed signal box was opened in 1880 to GWR specification and still retains a fair few lower quadrant semaphores.
Penzance provides a nice bit of variety for both Go Cornwall Bus and Kernow, being quite a hub for operations want to reach the north, south and western coasts of Cornwall.
Other than the 16 Enviro200MMCs that Go Cornwall Bus received from Kernow back in 2020, the company also received brand new batches throughout 2020, although they are specified with dealer stock interiors.
Go Cornwall Bus's own short-wheelbase Enviro200MMCs they received during 2020 are 2016-2026 and are usually found on less popular and more rural services.
One such service is the irregular 515, even though it may look simple going to Hayle from Penzance, it takes a more winding route to reach St. Erth and later serving the surrounding Hayle area such as Hayle Towans, West Cornwall Shopping Park and Gwithian.
Alexander Dennis Enviro200MMC 2020 'David Edwards' (WA20 DVH) arrives at Penzance Bus Station on 515 to Hayle via St. Erth.
Glasgow 22 provides an interesting example of a traditional four-wheeled tramcar, of which there are several at Crich. Many of these (for example Chesterfield 7) were purchased ‘off the peg’ from established tramcar suppliers and received relatively little modification over the years. Others, however, such as Glasgow 22, were built in-house by their operators and were often extensively modified over time, thereby acquiring a distinctive local ‘character’ that set them apart from those operated by other tramway undertakings.
Crich Tramway Village.
Different forms of fluctuations of the terrestrial gravity field are observed by gravity experiments. For example, atmospheric pressure fluctuations generate a gravity-noise foreground in measurements with super-conducting gravimeters. Gravity changes caused by high-magnitude earthquakes have been detected with the satellite gravity experiment GRACE, and we expect high-frequency terrestrial gravity fluctuations produced by ambient seismic fields to limit the sensitivity of ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. Accordingly, terrestrial gravity fluctuations are considered noise and signal depending on the experiment. Here, we will focus on ground-based gravimetry. This field is rapidly progressing through the development of GW detectors. The technology is pushed to its current limits in the advanced generation of the LIGO and Virgo detectors, targeting gravity strain sensitivities better than 10−23 Hz−1/2 above a few tens of a Hz. Alternative designs for GW detectors evolving from traditional gravity gradiometers such as torsion bars, atom interferometers, and superconducting gradiometers are currently being developed to extend the detection band to frequencies below 1 Hz. The goal of this article is to provide the analytical framework to describe terrestrial gravity perturbations in these experiments. Models of terrestrial gravity perturbations related to seismic fields, atmospheric disturbances, and vibrating, rotating or moving objects, are derived and analyzed. The models are then used to evaluate passive and active gravity noise mitigation strategies in GW detectors, or alternatively, to describe their potential use in geophysics. The article reviews the current state of the field, and also presents new analyses especially with respect to the impact of seismic scattering on gravity perturbations, active gravity noise cancellation, and time-domain models of gravity perturbations from atmospheric and seismic point sources. Our understanding of terrestrial gravity fluctuations will have great impact on the future development of GW detectors and high-precision gravimetry in general, and many open questions need to be answered still as emphasized in this article.
Keywords: Terrestrial gravity, Newtonian noise, Wiener filter, Mitigation
Go to:
Introduction
In the coming years, we will see a transition in the field of high-precision gravimetry from observations of slow lasting changes of the gravity field to the experimental study of fast gravity fluctuations. The latter will be realized by the advanced generation of the US-based LIGO [1] and Europe-based Virgo [7] gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. Their goal is to directly observe for the first time GWs that are produced by astrophysical sources such as inspiraling and merging neutron-star or black-hole binaries. Feasibility of the laser-interferometric detector concept has been demonstrated successfully with the first generation of detectors, which, in addition to the initial LIGO and Virgo detectors, also includes the GEO600 [119] and TAMA300 [161] detectors, and several prototypes around the world. The impact of these projects onto the field is two-fold. First of all, the direct detection of GWs will be a milestone in science opening a new window to our universe, and marking the beginning of a new era in observational astronomy. Second, several groups around the world have already started to adapt the technology to novel interferometer concepts [60, 155], with potential applications not only in GW science, but also geophysics. The basic measurement scheme is always the same: the relative displacement of test masses is monitored by using ultra-stable lasers. Progress in this field is strongly dependent on how well the motion of the test masses can be shielded from the environment. Test masses are placed in vacuum and are either freely falling (e.g., atom clouds [137]), or suspended and seismically isolated (e.g., high-quality glass or crystal mirrors as used in all of the detectors listed above). The best seismic isolations realized so far are effective above a few Hz, which limits the frequency range of detectable gravity fluctuations. Nonetheless, low-frequency concepts are continuously improving, and it is conceivable that future detectors will be sufficiently sensitive to detect GWs well below a Hz [88].
Terrestrial gravity perturbations were identified as a potential noise source already in the first concept laid out for a laser-interferometric GW detector [171]. Today, this form of noise is known as “terrestrial gravitational noise”, “Newtonian noise”, or “gravity-gradient noise”. It has never been observed in GW detectors, but it is predicted to limit the sensitivity of the advanced GW detectors at low frequencies. The most important source of gravity noise comes from fluctuating seismic fields [151]. Gravity perturbations from atmospheric disturbances such as pressure and temperature fluctuations can become significant at lower frequencies [51]. Anthropogenic sources of gravity perturbations are easier to avoid, but could also be relevant at lower frequencies [163]. Today, we only have one example of a direct observation of gravity fluctuations, i.e., from pressure fluctuations of the atmosphere in high-precision gravimeters [128]. Therefore, almost our entire understanding of gravity fluctuations is based on models. Nonetheless, potential sensitivity limits of future large-scale GW detectors need to be identified and characterized well in advance, and so there is a need to continuously improve our understanding of terrestrial gravity noise. Based on our current understanding, the preferred option is to construct future GW detectors underground to avoid the most dominant Newtonian-noise contributions. This choice was made for the next-generation Japanese GW detector KAGRA, which is currently being constructed underground at the Kamioka site [17], and also as part of a design study for the Einstein Telescope in Europe [140, 139]. While the benefit from underground construction with respect to gravity noise is expected to be substantial in GW detectors sensitive above a few Hz [27], it can be argued that it is less effective at lower frequencies [88].
Alternative mitigation strategies includes coherent noise cancellation [42]. The idea is to monitor the sources of gravity perturbations using auxiliary sensors such as microphones and seismometers, and to use their data to generate a coherent prediction of gravity noise. This technique is successfully applied in gravimeters to reduce the foreground of atmospheric gravity noise using collocated pressure sensors [128]. It is also noteworthy that the models of the atmospheric gravity noise are consistent with observations. This should give us some confidence at least that coherent Newtonian-noise cancellation can also be achieved in GW detectors. It is evident though that a model-based prediction of the performance of coherent noise cancellation schemes is prone to systematic errors as long as the properties of the sources are not fully understood. Ongoing experiments at the Sanford Underground Research Facility with the goal to characterize seismic fields in three dimensions are expected to deliver first data from an underground seismometer array in 2015 (see [89] for results from an initial stage of the experiment). While most people would argue that constructing GW detectors underground is always advantageous, it is still necessary to estimate how much is gained and whether the science case strongly profits from it. This is a complicated problem that needs to be answered as part of a site selection process.
More recently, high-precision gravity strainmeters have been considered as monitors of geophysical signals [83]. Analytical models have been calculated, which allow us to predict gravity transients from seismic sources such as earthquakes. It was suggested to implement gravity strainmeters in existing earthquake-early warning systems to increase warning times. It is also conceivable that an alternative method to estimate source parameters using gravity signals will improve our understanding of seismic sources. Potential applications must still be investigated in greater detail, but the study already demonstrates that the idea to use GW technology to realize new geophysical sensors seems feasible. As explained in [49], gravitational forces start to dominate the dynamics of seismic phenomena below about 1 mHz (which coincides approximately with a similar transition in atmospheric dynamics where gravity waves start to dominate over other forms of oscillations [164]). Seismic isolation would be ineffective below 1 mHz since the gravitational acceleration of a test mass produced by seismic displacement becomes comparable to the seismic acceleration itself. Therefore, we claim that 10 mHz is about the lowest frequency at which ground-based gravity strainmeters will ever be able to detect GWs, and consequently, modelling terrestrial gravity perturbations in these detectors can focus on frequencies above 10 mHz.
This article is divided into six main sections. Section 2 serves as an introduction to gravity measurements focussing on the response mechanisms and basic properties of gravity sensors. Section 3 describes models of gravity perturbations from ambient seismic fields. The results can be used to estimate noise spectra at the surface and underground. A subsection is devoted to the problem of noise estimation in low-frequency GW detectors, which differs from high-frequency estimates mostly in that gravity perturbations are strongly correlated between different test masses. In the low-frequency regime, the gravity noise is best described as gravity-gradient noise. Section 4 is devoted to time domain models of transient gravity perturbations from seismic point sources. The formalism is applied to point forces and shear dislocations. The latter allows us to estimate gravity perturbations from earthquakes. Atmospheric models of gravity perturbations are presented in Section 5. This includes gravity perturbations from atmospheric temperature fields, infrasound fields, shock waves, and acoustic noise from turbulence. The solution for shock waves is calculated in time domain using the methods of Section 4. A theoretical framework to calculate gravity perturbations from objects is given in Section 6. Since many different types of objects can be potential sources of gravity perturbations, the discussion focusses on the development of a general method instead of summarizing all of the calculations that have been done in the past. Finally, Section 7 discusses possible passive and active noise mitigation strategies. Due to the complexity of the problem, most of the section is devoted to active noise cancellation providing the required analysis tools and showing limitations of this technique. Site selection is the main topic under passive mitigation, and is discussed in the context of reducing environmental noise and criteria relevant to active noise cancellation. Each of these sections ends with a summary and a discussion of open problems. While this article is meant to be a review of the current state of the field, it also presents new analyses especially with respect to the impact of seismic scattering on gravity perturbations (Sections 3.3.2 and 3.3.3), active gravity noise cancellation (Section 7.1.3), and timedomain models of gravity perturbations from atmospheric and seismic point sources (Sections 4.1, 4.5, and 5.3).
Even though evident to experts, it is worth emphasizing that all calculations carried out in this article have a common starting point, namely Newton’s universal law of gravitation. It states that the attractive gravitational force equation M1 between two point masses m1, m2 is given by
equation M21
where G = 6.672 × 10−11 N m2/kg2 is the gravitational constant. Eq. (1) gives rise to many complex phenomena on Earth such as inner-core oscillations [156], atmospheric gravity waves [157], ocean waves [94, 177], and co-seismic gravity changes [122]. Due to its importance, we will honor the eponym by referring to gravity noise as Newtonian noise in the following. It is thereby clarified that the gravity noise models considered in this article are non-relativistic, and propagation effects of gravity changes are neglected. While there could be interesting scenarios where this approximation is not fully justified (e.g., whenever a gravity perturbation can be sensed by several sensors and differences in arrival times can be resolved), it certainly holds in any of the problems discussed in this article. We now invite the reader to enjoy the rest of the article, and hope that it proves to be useful.
Go to:
Gravity Measurements
In this section, we describe the relevant mechanisms by which a gravity sensor can couple to gravity perturbations, and give an overview of the most widely used measurement schemes: the (relative) gravimeter [53, 181], the gravity gradiometer [125], and the gravity strainmeter. The last category includes the large-scale GW detectors Virgo [6], LIGO [91], GEO600 [119], KAGRA [17], and a new generation of torsion-bar antennas currently under development [13]. Also atom interferometers can potentially be used as gravity strainmeters in the future [62]. Strictly speaking, none of the sensors only responds to a single field quantity (such as changes in gravity acceleration or gravity strain), but there is always a dominant response mechanism in each case, which justifies to give the sensor a specific name. A clear distinction between gravity gradiometers and gravity strainmeters has never been made to our knowledge. Therefore the sections on these two measurement principles will introduce a definition, and it is by no means the only possible one. Later on in this article, we almost exclusively discuss gravity models relevant to gravity strainmeters since the focus lies on gravity fluctuations above 10 mHz. Today, the sensitivity near 10 mHz of gravimeters towards gravity fluctuations is still competitive to or exceeds the sensitivity of gravity strainmeters, but this is likely going to change in the future so that we can expect strainmeters to become the technology of choice for gravity observations above 10 mHz [88]. The following sections provide further details on this statement. Space-borne gravity experiments such as GRACE [167] will not be included in this overview. The measurement principle of GRACE is similar to that of gravity strainmeters, but only very slow changes of Earth gravity field can be observed, and for this reason it is beyond the scope of this article.
The different response mechanisms to terrestrial gravity perturbations are summarized in Section 2.1. While we will identify the tidal forces acting on the test masses as dominant coupling mechanism, other couplings may well be relevant depending on the experiment. The Shapiro time delay will be discussed as the only relativistic effect. Higher-order relativistic effects are neglected. All other coupling mechanisms can be calculated using Newtonian theory including tidal forces, coupling in static non-uniform gravity fields, and coupling through ground displacement induced by gravity fluctuations. In Sections 2.2 to 2.4, the different measurement schemes are explained including a brief summary of the sensitivity limitations (choosing one of a few possible experimental realizations in each case). As mentioned before, we will mostly develop gravity models relevant to gravity strainmeters in the remainder of the article. Therefore, the detailed discussion of alternative gravimetry concepts mostly serves to highlight important differences between these concepts, and to develop a deeper understanding of the instruments and their role in gravity measurements.
Gravity response mechanisms
Gravity acceleration and tidal forces We will start with the simplest mechanism of all, the acceleration of a test mass in the gravity field. Instruments that measure the acceleration are called gravimeters. A test mass inside a gravimeter can be freely falling such as atom clouds [181] or, as suggested as possible future development, even macroscopic objects [72]. Typically though, test masses are supported mechanically or magnetically constraining motion in some of its degrees of freedom. A test mass suspended from strings responds to changes in the horizontal gravity acceleration. A test mass attached at the end of a cantilever with horizontal equilibrium position responds to changes in vertical gravity acceleration. The support fulfills two purposes. First, it counteracts the static gravitational force in a way that the test mass can respond to changes in the gravity field along a chosen degree of freedom. Second, it isolates the test mass from vibrations. Response to signals and isolation performance depend on frequency. If the support is modelled as a linear, harmonic oscillator, then the test mass response to gravity changes extends over all frequencies, but the response is strongly suppressed below the oscillators resonance frequency. The response function between the gravity perturbation δg(ω) and induced test mass acceleration δa(ω) assumes the form
equation M32
where we have introduced a viscous damping parameter γ, and ω0 is the resonance frequency. Well below resonance, the response is proportional to ω2, while it is constant well above resonance. Above resonance, the supported test mass responds like a freely falling mass, at least with respect to “soft” directions of the support. The test-mass response to vibrations δα(ω) of the support is given by
equation M43
This applies for example to horizontal vibrations of the suspension points of strings that hold a test mass, or to vertical vibrations of the clamps of a horizontal cantilever with attached test mass. Well above resonance, vibrations are suppressed by ω−2, while no vibration isolation is provided below resonance. The situation is somewhat more complicated in realistic models of the support especially due to internal modes of the mechanical system (see for example [76]), or due to coupling of degrees of freedom [121]. Large mechanical support structures can feature internal resonances at relatively low frequencies, which can interfere to some extent with the desired performance of the mechanical support [173]. While Eqs. (2) and (3) summarize the properties of isolation and response relevant for this paper, details of the readout method can fundamentally impact an instrument’s response to gravity fluctuations and its susceptibility to seismic noise, as explained in Sections 2.2 to 2.4.
Next, we discuss the response to tidal forces. In Newtonian theory, tidal forces cause a relative acceleration δg12(ω) between two freely falling test masses according to
equation M54
where equation M6 is the Fourier amplitude of the gravity potential. The last equation holds if the distance r12 between the test masses is sufficiently small, which also depends on the frequency. The term equation M7 is called gravity-gradient tensor. In Newtonian approximation, the second time integral of this tensor corresponds to gravity strain equation M8, which is discussed in more detail in Section 2.4. Its trace needs to vanish in empty space since the gravity potential fulfills the Poisson equation. Tidal forces produce the dominant signals in gravity gradiometers and gravity strainmeters, which measure the differential acceleration or associated relative displacement between two test masses (see Sections 2.3 and 2.4). If the test masses used for a tidal measurement are supported, then typically the supports are designed to be as similar as possible, so that the response in Eq. (2) holds for both test masses approximately with the same parameter values for the resonance frequencies (and to a lesser extent also for the damping). For the purpose of response calibration, it is less important to know the parameter values exactly if the signal is meant to be observed well above the resonance frequency where the response is approximately equal to 1 independent of the resonance frequency and damping (here, “well above” resonance also depends on the damping parameter, and in realistic models, the signal frequency also needs to be “well below” internal resonances of the mechanical support).
Shapiro time delay Another possible gravity response is through the Shapiro time delay [19]. This effect is not universally present in all gravity sensors, and depends on the readout mechanism. Today, the best sensitivities are achieved by reflecting laser beams from test masses in interferometric configurations. If the test mass is displaced by gravity fluctuations, then it imprints a phase shift onto the reflected laser, which can be observed in laser interferometers, or using phasemeters. We will give further details on this in Section 2.4. In Newtonian gravity, the acceleration of test masses is the only predicted response to gravity fluctuations. However, from general relativity we know that gravity also affects the propagation of light. The leading-order term is the Shapiro time delay, which produces a phase shift of the laser beam with respect to a laser propagating in flat space. It can be calculated from the weak-field spacetime metric (see chapter 18 in [124]):
equation M95
Here, c is the speed of light, ds is the so-called line element of a path in spacetime, and equation M10. Additionally, for this metric to hold, motion of particles in the source of the gravity potential responsible for changes of the gravity potential need to be much slower than the speed of light, and also stresses inside the source must be much smaller than its mass energy density. All conditions are fulfilled in the case of Earth gravity field. Light follows null geodesics with ds2 = 0. For the spacetime metric in Eq. (5), we can immediately write
equation M116
As we will find out, this equation can directly be used to calculate the time delay as an integral along a straight line in terms of the coordinates equation M12, but this is not immediately clear since light bends in a gravity field. So one may wonder if integration along the proper light path instead of a straight line yields additional significant corrections. The so-called geodesic equation must be used to calculate the path. It is a set of four differential equations, one for each coordinate t, equation M13 in terms of a parameter λ. The weak-field geodesic equation is obtained from the metric in Eq. (5):
equation M147
where we have made use of Eq. (6) and the slow-motion condition equation M15. The coordinates equation M16 are to be understood as functions of λ. Since the deviation of a straight path is due to a weak gravity potential, we can solve these equations by perturbation theory introducing expansions equation M17 and t = t(0) +t(1) + …. The superscript indicates the order in ψ/c2. The unperturbed path has the simple parametrization
equation M188
We have chosen integration constants such that unperturbed time t(0) and parameter λ can be used interchangeably (apart from a shift by t0). Inserting these expressions into the right-hand side of Eq. (7), we obtain
equation M199
As we can see, up to linear order in equation M20, the deviation equation M21 is in orthogonal direction to the unperturbed path equation M22, which means that the deviation can be neglected in the calculation of the time delay. After some transformations, it is possible to derive Eq. (6) from Eq. (9), and this time we find explicitly that the right-hand-side of the equation only depends on the unperturbed coordinates1. In other words, we can integrate the time delay along a straight line as defined in Eq. (8), and so the total phase integrated over a travel distance L is given by
equation M2310
In static gravity fields, the phase shift doubles if the light is sent back since not only the direction of integration changes, but also the sign of the expression substituted for dt/dλ.
Gravity induced ground motion As we will learn in Section 3, seismic fields produce gravity perturbations either through density fluctuations of the ground, or by displacing interfaces between two materials of different density. It is also well-known in seismology that seismic fields can be affected significantly by self-gravity. Self-gravity means that the gravity perturbation produced by a seismic field acts back on the seismic field. The effect is most significant at low frequency where gravity induced acceleration competes against acceleration from elastic forces. In seismology, low-frequency seismic fields are best described in terms of Earth’s normal modes [55]. Normal modes exist as toroidal modes and spheroidal modes. Spheroidal modes are influenced by self-gravity, toroidal modes are not. For example, predictions of frequencies and shapes of spheroidal modes based on Earth models such as PREM (Preliminary Reference Earth Model) [68] are inaccurate if self-gravity effects are excluded. What this practically means is that in addition to displacement amplitudes, gravity becomes a dynamical variable in the elastodynamic equations that determine the normal-mode properties. Therefore, seismic displacement and gravity perturbation cannot be separated in normal-mode formalism (although self-gravity can be neglected in calculations of spheroidal modes at sufficiently high frequency).
In certain situations, it is necessary or at least more intuitive to separate gravity from seismic fields. An exotic example is Earth’s response to GWs [67, 49, 47, 30, 48]. Another example is the seismic response to gravity perturbations produced by strong seismic events at large distance to the source as described in Section 4. It is more challenging to analyze this scenario using normal-mode formalism. The sum over all normal modes excited by the seismic event (each of which describing a global displacement field) must lead to destructive interference of seismic displacement at large distances (where seismic waves have not yet arrived), but not of the gravity amplitudes since gravity is immediately perturbed everywhere. It can be easier to first calculate the gravity perturbation from the seismic perturbation, and then to calculate the response of the seismic field to the gravity perturbation at larger distance. This method will be adopted in this section. Gravity fields will be represented as arbitrary force or tidal fields (detailed models are presented in later sections), and we simply calculate the response of the seismic field. Normal-mode formalism can be avoided only at sufficiently high frequencies where the curvature of Earth does not significantly influence the response (i.e., well above 10 mHz). In this section, we will model the ground as homogeneous half space, but also more complex geologies can in principle be assumed.
Gravity can be introduced in two ways into the elastodynamic equations, as a conservative force −∇ψ [146, 169], or as tidal strain The latter method was described first by Dyson to calculate Earth’s response to GWs [67]. The approach also works for Newtonian gravity, with the difference that the tidal field produced by a GW is necessarily a quadrupole field with only two degrees of freedom (polarizations), while tidal fields produced by terrestrial sources are less constrained. Certainly, GWs can only be fully described in the framework of general relativity, which means that their representation as a Newtonian tidal field cannot be used to explain all possible observations [124]. Nonetheless, important here is that Dyson’s method can be extended to Newtonian tidal fields. Without gravity, the elastodynamic equations for small seismic displacement can be written as
equation M2411
where equation M25 is the seismic displacement field, and equation M26 is the stress tensor [9]. In the absence of other forces, the stress is determined by the seismic field. In the case of a homogeneous and isotropic medium, the stress tensor for small seismic displacement can be written as
equation M2712
The quantity equation M28 is known as seismic strain tensor, and λ, μ are the Lamé constants (see Section 3.1). Its trace is equal to the divergence of the displacement field. Dyson introduced the tidal field from first principles using Lagrangian mechanics, but we can follow a simpler approach. Eq. (12) means that a stress field builds up in response to a seismic strain field, and the divergence of the stress field acts as a force producing seismic displacement. The same happens in response to a tidal field, which we represent as gravity strain equation M29. A strain field changes the distance between two freely falling test masses separated by equation M30 by equation M312. For sufficiently small distances L, the strain field can be substituted by the second time integral of the gravity-gradient tensor equation M32. If the masses are not freely falling, then the strain field acts as an additional force. The corresponding contribution to the material’s stress tensor can be written
equation M3313
Since we assume that the gravity field is produced by a distant source, the local contribution to gravity perturbations is neglected, which means that the gravity potential obeys the Laplace equation, equation M34. Calculating the divergence of the stress tensor according to Eq. (11), we find that the gravity term vanishes! This means that a homogeneous and isotropic medium does not respond to gravity strain fields. However, we have to be more careful here. Our goal is to calculate the response of a half-space to gravity strain. Even if the half-space is homogeneous, the Lamé constants change discontinuously across the surface. Hence, at the surface, the divergence of the stress tensor reads
equation M3514
In other words, tidal fields produce a force onto an elastic medium via gradients in the shear modulus (second Lamé constant). The gradient of the shear modulus can be written in terms of a Dirac delta function, equation M36, for a flat surface at z = 0 with unit normal vector equation M37. The response to gravity strain fields is obtained applying the boundary condition of vanishing surface traction, equation M38:
equation M3915
Once the seismic strain field is calculated, it can be used to obtain the seismic stress, which determines the displacement field equation M40 according to Eq. (11). In this way, one can for example calculate that a seismometer or gravimeter can observe GWs by monitoring surface displacement as was first calculated by Dyson [67].
Coupling in non-uniform, static gravity fields If the gravity field is static, but non-uniform, then displacement equation M41 of the test mass in this field due to a non-gravitational fluctuating force is associated with a changing gravity acceleration according to
equation M4216
We introduce a characteristic length λ, over which gravity acceleration varies significantly. Hence, we can rewrite the last equation in terms of the associated test-mass displacement ζ
equation M4317
where we have neglected directional dependence and numerical factors. The acceleration change from motion in static, inhomogeneous fields is generally more significant at low frequencies. Let us consider the specific case of a suspended test mass. It responds to fluctuations in horizontal gravity acceleration. The test mass follows the motion of the suspension point in vertical direction (i.e., no seismic isolation), while seismic noise in horizontal direction is suppressed according to Eq. (3). Accordingly, it is possible that the unsuppressed vertical (z-axis) seismic noise ξz(t) coupling into the horizontal (x-axis) motion of the test mass through the term ∂xgz = ∂zgx dominates over the gravity response term in Eq. (2). Due to additional coupling mechanisms between vertical and horizontal motion in real seismic-isolation systems, test masses especially in GW detectors are also isolated in vertical direction, but without achieving the same noise suppression as in horizontal direction. For example, the requirements on vertical test-mass displacement for Advanced LIGO are a factor 1000 less stringent than on the horizontal displacement [22]. Requirements can be set on the vertical isolation by estimating the coupling of vertical motion into horizontal motion, which needs to take the gravity-gradient coupling of Eq. (16) into account. Although, because of the frequency dependence, gravity-gradient effects are more significant in low-frequency detectors, such as the space-borne GW detector LISA [154].
Next, we calculate an estimate of gravity gradients in the vicinity of test masses in large-scale GW detectors, and see if the gravity-gradient coupling matters compared to mechanical vertical-to-horizontal coupling.
One contribution to gravity gradients will come from the vacuum chamber surrounding the test mass. We approximate the shape of the chamber as a hollow cylinder with open ends (open ends just to simplify the calculation). In our calculation, the test mass can be offset from the cylinder axis and be located at any distance to the cylinder ends (we refer to this coordinate as height). The gravity field can be expressed in terms of elliptic integrals, but the explicit solution is not of concern here. Instead, let us take a look at the results in Figure Figure1.1. Gravity gradients ∂zgx vanish if the test mass is located on the symmetry axis or at height L/2. There are also two additional ∂zgx = 0 contour lines starting at the symmetry axis at heights ∼ 0.24 and ∼0.76. Let us assume that the test mass is at height 0.3L, a distance 0.05L from the cylinder axis, the total mass of the cylinder is M = 5000 kg, and the cylinder height is L = 4 m. In this case, the gravity-gradient induced vertical-to-horizontal coupling factor at 20 Hz is
equation M4418
This means that gravity-gradient induced coupling is extremely weak, and lies well below estimates of mechanical coupling (of order 0.001 in Advanced LIGO3). Even though the vacuum chamber was modelled with a very simple shape, and additional asymmetries in the mass distribution around the test mass may increase gravity gradients, it still seems very unlikely that the coupling would be significant. As mentioned before, one certainly needs to pay more attention when calculating the coupling at lower frequencies. The best procedure is of course to have a 3D model of the near test-mass infrastructure available and to use it for a precise calculation of the gravity-gradient field.
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Figure 1
Gravity gradients inside hollow cylinder. The total height of the cylinder is L, and M is its total mass. The radius of the cylinder is 0.3L. The axes correspond to the distance of the test mass from the symmetry axis of the cylinder, and its height above one of the cylinders ends. The plot on the right is simply a zoom of the left plot into the intermediate heights.
Gravimeters
Gravimeters are instruments that measure the displacement of a test mass with respect to a non-inertial reference rigidly connected to the ground. The test mass is typically supported mechanically or magnetically (atom-interferometric gravimeters are an exception), which means that the test-mass response to gravity is altered with respect to a freely falling test mass. We will use Eq. (2) as a simplified response model. There are various possibilities to measure the displacement of a test mass. The most widespread displacement sensors are based on capacitive readout, as for example used in superconducting gravimeters (see Figure Figure22 and [96]). Sensitive displacement measurements are in principle also possible with optical readout systems; a method that is (necessarily) implemented in atom-interferometric gravimeters [137], and prototype seismometers [34] (we will explain the distinction between seismometers and gravimeters below). As will become clear in Section 2.4, optical readout is better suited for displacement measurements over long baselines, as required for the most sensitive gravity strain measurements, while the capacitive readout should be designed with the smallest possible distance between the test mass and the non-inertial reference [104].
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Figure 2
Sketch of a levitated sphere serving as test mass in a superconducting gravimeter. Dashed lines indicate magnetic field lines. Coils are used for levitation and precise positioning of the sphere. Image reproduced with permission from [96]; copyright by Elsevier.
Let us take a closer look at the basic measurement scheme of a superconducting gravimeter shown in Figure Figure2.2. The central part is formed by a spherical superconducting shell that is levitated by superconducting coils. Superconductivity provides stability of the measurement, and also avoids some forms of noise (see [96] for details). In this gravimeter design, the lower coil is responsible mostly to balance the mean gravitational force acting on the sphere, while the upper coil modifies the magnetic gradient such that a certain “spring constant” of the magnetic levitation is realized. In other words, the current in the upper coil determines the resonance frequency in Eq. (2).
Capacitor plates are distributed around the sphere. Whenever a force acts on the sphere, the small signal produced in the capacitive readout is used to immediately cancel this force by a feedback coil. In this way, the sphere is kept at a constant location with respect to the external frame. This illustrates a common concept in all gravimeters. The displacement sensors can only respond to relative displacement between a test mass and a surrounding structure. If small gravity fluctuations are to be measured, then it is not sufficient to realize low-noise readout systems, but also vibrations of the surrounding structure forming the reference frame must be as small as possible. In general, as we will further explore in the coming sections, gravity fluctuations are increasingly dominant with decreasing frequency. At about 1 mHz, gravity acceleration associated with fluctuating seismic fields become comparable to seismic acceleration, and also atmospheric gravity noise starts to be significant [53]. At higher frequencies, seismic acceleration is much stronger than typical gravity fluctuations, which means that the gravimeter effectively operates as a seismometer. In summary, at sufficiently low frequencies, the gravimeter senses gravity accelerations of the test mass with respect to a relatively quiet reference, while at higher frequencies, the gravimeter senses seismic accelerations of the reference with respect to a test mass subject to relatively small gravity fluctuations. In superconducting gravimeters, the third important contribution to the response is caused by vertical motion ξ(t) of a levitated sphere against a static gravity gradient (see Section 2.1.4). As explained above, feedback control suppresses relative motion between sphere and gravimeter frame, which causes the sphere to move as if attached to the frame or ground. In the presence of a static gravity gradient ∂zgz, the motion of the sphere against this gradient leads to a change in gravity, which alters the feedback force (and therefore the recorded signal). The full contribution from gravitational, δa(t), and seismic, equation M45, accelerations can therefore be written
equation M4619
It is easy to verify, using Eqs. (2) and (3), that the relative amplitude of gravity and seismic fluctuations from the first two terms is independent of the test-mass support. Therefore, vertical seismic displacement of the reference frame must be considered fundamental noise of gravimeters and can only be avoided by choosing a quiet measurement site. Obviously, Eq. (19) is based on a simplified support model. One of the important design goals of the mechanical support is to minimize additional noise due to non-linearities and cross-coupling. As is explained further in Section 2.3, it is also not possible to suppress seismic noise in gravimeters by subtracting the disturbance using data from a collocated seismometer. Doing so inevitably turns the gravimeter into a gravity gradiometer.
Gravimeters target signals that typically lie well below 1 mHz. Mechanical or magnetic supports of test masses have resonance frequencies at best slightly below 10 mHz along horizontal directions, and typically above 0.1 Hz in the vertical direction [23, 174]4. Well below resonance frequency, the response function can be approximated as equation M47. At first, it may look as if the gravimeter should not be sensitive to very low-frequency fluctuations since the response becomes very weak. However, the strength of gravity fluctuations also strongly increases with decreasing frequency, which compensates the small response. It is clear though that if the resonance frequency was sufficiently high, then the response would become so weak that the gravity signal would not stand out above other instrumental noise anymore. The test-mass support would be too stiff. The sensitivity of the gravimeter depends on the resonance frequency of the support and the intrinsic instrumental noise. With respect to seismic noise, the stiffness of the support has no influence as explained before (the test mass can also fall freely as in atom interferometers).
For superconducting gravimeters of the Global Geodynamics Project (GGP) [52], the median spectra are shown in Figure Figure3.3. Between 0.1 mHz and 1 mHz, atmospheric gravity perturbations typically dominate, while instrumental noise is the largest contribution between 1 mHz and 5 mHz [96]. The smallest signal amplitudes that have been measured by integrating long-duration signals is about 10−12 m/s2. A detailed study of noise in superconducting gravimeters over a larger frequency range can be found in [145]. Note that in some cases, it is not fit to categorize seismic and gravity fluctuations as noise and signal. For example, Earth’s spherical normal modes coherently excite seismic and gravity fluctuations, and the individual contributions in Eq. (19) have to be understood only to accurately translate data into normal-mode amplitudes [55].
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Figure 3
Median spectra of superconducting gravimeters of the GGP. Image reproduced with permission from [48]; copyright by APS.
Gravity gradiometers
It is not the purpose of this section to give a complete overview of the different gradiometer designs. Gradiometers find many practical applications, for example in navigation and resource exploration, often with the goal to measure static or slowly changing gravity gradients, which do not concern us here. For example, we will not discuss rotating gradiometers, and instead focus on gradiometers consisting of stationary test masses. While the former are ideally suited to measure static or slowly changing gravity gradients with high precision especially under noisy conditions, the latter design has advantages when measuring weak tidal fluctuations. In the following, we only refer to the stationary design. A gravity gradiometer measures the relative acceleration between two test masses each responding to fluctuations of the gravity field [102, 125]. The test masses have to be located close to each other so that the approximation in Eq. (4) holds. The proximity of the test masses is used here as the defining property of gradiometers. They are therefore a special type of gravity strainmeter (see Section 2.4), which denotes any type of instrument that measures relative gravitational acceleration (including the even more general concept of measuring space-time strain).
Gravity gradiometers can be realized in two versions. First, one can read out the position of two test masses with respect to the same rigid, non-inertial reference. The two channels, each of which can be considered a gravimeter, are subsequently subtracted. This scheme is for example realized in dual-sphere designs of superconducting gravity gradiometers [90] or in atom-interferometric gravity gradiometers [159].
It is schematically shown in Figure Figure4.4. Let us first consider the dual-sphere design of a superconducting gradiometer. If the reference is perfectly stiff, and if we assume as before that there are no cross-couplings between degrees of freedom and the response is linear, then the subtraction of the two gravity channels cancels all of the seismic noise, leaving only the instrumental noise and the differential gravity signal given by the second line of Eq. (4). Even in real setups, the reduction of seismic noise can be many orders of magnitude since the two spheres are close to each other, and the two readouts pick up (almost) the same seismic noise [125]. This does not mean though that gradiometers are necessarily more sensitive instruments to monitor gravity fields. A large part of the gravity signal (the common-mode part) is subtracted together with the seismic noise, and the challenge is now passed from finding a seismically quiet site to developing an instrument with lowest possible intrinsic noise.
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Figure 4
Basic scheme of a gravity gradiometer for measurements along the vertical direction. Two test masses are supported by horizontal cantilevers (superconducting magnets, …). Acceleration of both test masses is measured against the same non-inertial reference frame, which is connected to the ground. Each measurement constitutes one gravimeter. Subtraction of the two channels yields a gravity gradiometer.
The atom-interferometric gradiometer differs in some important details from the superconducting gradiometer. The test masses are realized by ultracold atom clouds, which are (nearly) freely falling provided that magnetic shielding of the atoms is sufficient, and interaction between atoms can be neglected. Interactions of a pair of atom clouds with a laser beam constitute the basic gravity gradiometer scheme. Even though the test masses are freely falling, the readout is not generally immune to seismic noise [80, 18]. The laser beam interacting with the atom clouds originates from a source subject to seismic disturbances, and interacts with optics that require seismic isolation. Schemes have been proposed that could lead to a large reduction of seismic noise [178, 77], but their effectiveness has not been tested in experiments yet. Since the differential position (or tidal) measurement is performed using a laser beam, the natural application of atom-interferometer technology is as gravity strainmeter (as explained before, laser beams are favorable for differential position measurements over long baselines). Nonetheless, the technology is currently insufficiently developed to realize large-baseline experiments, and we can therefore focus on its application in gradiometry. Let us take a closer look at the response of atom-interferometric gradiometers to seismic noise. In atom-interferometric detectors (excluding the new schemes proposed in [178, 77]), one can show that seismic acceleration δα(ω) of the optics or laser source limits the sensitivity of a tidal measurement according to
equation M4820
where L is the separation of the two atom clouds, and is the speed of light. It should be emphasized that the seismic noise remains, even if all optics and the laser source are all linked to the same infinitely stiff frame. In addition to this noise term, other coupling mechanisms may play a role, which can however be suppressed by engineering efforts. The noise-reduction factor ωL/c needs to be compared with the common-mode suppression of seismic noise in superconducting gravity gradiometers, which depends on the stiffness of the instrument frame, and on contamination from cross coupling of degrees-of-freedom. While the seismic noise in Eq. (20) is a fundamental noise contribution in (conventional) atom-interferometric gradiometers, the noise suppression in superconducting gradiometers depends more strongly on the engineering effort (at least, we venture to claim that common-mode suppression achieved in current instrument designs is well below what is fundamentally possible).
To conclude this section, we discuss in more detail the connection between gravity gradiometers and seismically (actively or passively) isolated gravimeters. As we have explained in Section 2.2, the sensitivity limitation of gravimeters by seismic noise is independent of the mechanical support of the test mass (assuming an ideal, linear support). The main purpose of the mechanical support is to maximize the response of the test mass to gravity fluctuations, and thereby increase the signal with respect to instrumental noise other than seismic noise. Here we will explain that even a seismic isolation of the gravimeter cannot overcome this noise limitation, at least not without fundamentally changing its response to gravity fluctuations. Let us first consider the case of a passively seismically isolated gravimeter. For example, we can imagine that the gravimeter is suspended from the tip of a strong horizontal cantilever. The system can be modelled as two oscillators in a chain, with a light test mass m supported by a heavy mass M representing the gravimeter (reference) frame, which is itself supported from a point rigidly connected to Earth. The two supports are modelled as harmonic oscillators. As before, we neglect cross coupling between degrees of freedom. Linearizing the response of the gravimeter frame and test mass for small accelerations, and further neglecting terms proportional to m/M, one finds the gravimeter response to gravity fluctuations:
equation M4921
Here, ω1, γ1 are the resonance frequency and damping of the gravimeter support, while ω2, γ2 are the resonance frequency and damping of the test-mass support. The response and isolation functions R(·), S(·) are defined in Eqs. (2) and (3). Remember that Eq. (21) is obtained as a differential measurement of test-mass acceleration versus acceleration of the reference frame. Therefore, δg1(ω) denotes the gravity fluctuation at the center-of-mass of the gravimeter frame, and δg2(ω) at the test mass. An infinitely stiff gravimeter suspension, ω1 → ∞, yields R(ω; ω1, γ1) = 0, and the response turns into the form of the non-isolated gravimeter. The seismic isolation is determined by
equation M5022
We can summarize the last two equations as follows. At frequencies well above ω1, the seismically isolated gravimeter responds like a gravity gradiometer, and seismic noise is strongly suppressed. The deviation from the pure gradiometer response ∼ δg2(ω) − δg1(ω) is determined by the same function S(ω; ω1, γ1) that describes the seismic isolation. In other words, if the gravity gradient was negligible, then we ended up with the conventional gravimeter response, with signals suppressed by the seismic isolation function. Well below ω1, the seismically isolated gravimeter responds like a conventional gravimeter without seismic-noise reduction. If the centers of the masses m (test mass) and M (reference frame) coincide, and therefore δg1(ω) = δg2(ω), then the response is again like a conventional gravimeter, but this time suppressed by the isolation function S(ω; ω1, γ1).
Let us compare the passively isolated gravimeter with an actively isolated gravimeter. In active isolation, the idea is to place the gravimeter on a stiff platform whose orientation can be controlled by actuators. Without actuation, the platform simply follows local surface motion. There are two ways to realize an active isolation. One way is to place a seismometer next to the platform onto the ground, and use its data to subtract ground motion from the platform. The actuators cancel the seismic forces. This scheme is called feed-forward noise cancellation. Feed-forward cancellation of gravity noise is discussed at length in Section 7.1, which provides details on its implementation and limitations. The second possibility is to place the seismometer together with the gravimeter onto the platform, and to suppress seismic noise in a feedback configuration [4, 2]. In the following, we discuss the feed-forward technique as an example since it is easier to analyze (for example, feedback control can be unstable [4]). As before, we focus on gravity and seismic fluctuations. The seismometer’s intrinsic noise plays an important role in active isolation limiting its performance, but we are only interested in the modification of the gravimeter’s response. Since there is no fundamental difference in how a seismometer and a gravimeter respond to seismic and gravity fluctuations, we know from Section 2.2 that the seismometer output is proportional to δg1(ω) − δα(ω), i.e., using a single test mass for acceleration measurements, seismic and gravity perturbations contribute in the same way. A transfer function needs to be multiplied to the acceleration signals, which accounts for the mechanical support and possibly also electronic circuits involved in the seismometer readout. To cancel the seismic noise of the platform that carries the gravimeter, the effect of all transfer functions needs to be reversed by a matched feed-forward filter. The output of the filter is then equal to δg1(ω) − δα(ω) and is added to the motion of the platform using actuators cancelling the seismic noise and adding the seismometer’s gravity signal. In this case, the seismometer’s gravity signal takes the place of the seismic noise in Eq. (3). The complete gravity response of the actively isolated gravimeter then reads
equation M5123
The response is identical to a gravity gradiometer, where ω2, γ2 are the resonance frequency and damping of the gravimeter’s test-mass support. In reality, instrumental noise of the seismometer will limit the isolation performance and introduce additional noise into Eq. (23). Nonetheless, Eqs. (21) and (23) show that any form of seismic isolation turns a gravimeter into a gravity gradiometer at frequencies where seismic isolation is effective. For the passive seismic isolation, this means that the gravimeter responds like a gradiometer at frequencies well above the resonance frequency ω1 of the gravimeter support, while it behaves like a conventional gravimeter below ω1. From these results it is clear that the design of seismic isolations and the gravity response can in general not be treated independently. As we will see in Section 2.4 though, tidal measurements can profit strongly from seismic isolation especially when common-mode suppression of seismic noise like in gradiometers is insufficient or completely absent.
Gravity strainmeters
Gravity strain is an unusual concept in gravimetry that stems from our modern understanding of gravity in the framework of general relativity. From an observational point of view, it is not much different from elastic strain. Fluctuating gravity strain causes a change in distance between two freely falling test masses, while seismic or elastic strain causes a change in distance between two test masses bolted to an elastic medium. It should be emphasized though that we cannot always use this analogy to understand observations of gravity strain [106]. Fundamentally, gravity strain corresponds to a perturbation of the metric that determines the geometrical properties of spacetime [124]. We will briefly discuss GWs, before returning to a Newtonian description of gravity strain.
Gravitational waves are weak perturbations of spacetime propagating at the speed of light. Freely falling test masses change their distance in the field of a GW. When the length of the GW is much larger than the separation between the test masses, it is possible to interpret this change as if caused by a Newtonian force. We call this the long-wavelength regime. Since we are interested in the low-frequency response of gravity strainmeters throughout this article (i.e., frequencies well below 100 Hz), this condition is always fulfilled for Earth-bound experiments. The effect of a gravity-strain field equation M52 on a pair of test masses can then be represented as an equivalent Newtonian tidal field
equation M5324
Here, equation M54 is the relative acceleration between two freely falling test masses, L is the distance between them, and equation M55 is the unit vector pointing from one to the other test mass, and equation M56 its transpose. As can be seen, the gravity-strain field is represented by a 3 × 3 tensor. It contains the space-components of a 4-dimensional metric perturbation of spacetime, and determines all properties of GWs5. Note that the strain amplitude h in Eq. (24) needs to be multiplied by 2 to obtain the corresponding amplitude of the metric perturbation (e.g., the GW amplitude). Throughout this article, we define gravity strain as h = ΔL/L, while the effect of a GW with amplitude aGW on the separation of two test mass is determined by aGW = 2ΔL/L.
The strain field of a GW takes the form of a quadrupole oscillation with two possible polarizations commonly denoted × (cross)-polarization and +(plus)-polarization. The arrows in Figure Figure55 indicate the lines of the equivalent tidal field of Eq. (24).
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Figure 5
Polarizations of a gravitational wave.
Consequently, to (directly) observe GWs, one can follow two possible schemes: (1) the conventional method, which is a measurement of the relative displacement of suspended test masses typically carried out along two perpendicular baselines (arms); and (2) measurement of the relative rotation between two suspended bars. Figure Figure66 illustrates the two cases. In either case, the response of a gravity strainmeter is obtained by projecting the gravity strain tensor onto a combination of two unit vectors, equation M57 and equation M58, that characterize the orientation of the detector, such as the directions of two bars in a rotational gravity strain meter, or of two arms of a conventional gravity strain meter. This requires us to define two different gravity strain projections. The projection for the rotational strain measurement is given by
equation M5925
where the subscript × indicates that the detector responds to the ×-polarization assuming that the x, y-axes (see Figure Figure5)5) are oriented along two perpendicular bars. The vectors equation M60 and equation M61 are rotated counter-clockwise by 90° with respect to equation M62 and equation M63. In the case of perpendicular bars equation M64 and equation M65. The corresponding projection for the conventional gravity strain meter reads
equation M6626
The subscript + indicates that the detector responds to the +-polarization provided that the x, y-axes are oriented along two perpendicular baselines (arms) of the detector. The two schemes are shown in Figure Figure6.6. The most sensitive GW detectors are based on the conventional method, and distance between test masses is measured by means of laser interferometry. The LIGO and Virgo detectors have achieved strain sensitivities of better than 10−22 Hz−1/2 between about 50 Hz and 1000 Hz in past science runs and are currently being commissioned in their advanced configurations [91, 7]. The rotational scheme is realized in torsion-bar antennas, which are considered as possible technology for sub-Hz GW detection [155, 69]. However, with achieved strain sensitivity of about 10−8 Hz−1/2 near 0.1 Hz, the torsion-bar detectors are far from the sensitivity we expect to be necessary for GW detection [88].
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Figure 6
Sketches of the relative rotational and displacement measurement schemes.
Let us now return to the discussion of the previous sections on the role of seismic isolation and its impact on gravity response. Gravity strainmeters profit from seismic isolation more than gravimeters or gravity gradiometers. We have shown in Section 2.2 that seismically isolated gravimeters are effectively gravity gradiometers. So in this case, seismic isolation changes the response of the instrument in a fundamental way, and it does not make sense to talk of seismically isolated gravimeters. Seismic isolation could in principle be beneficial for gravity gradiometers (i.e., the acceleration of two test masses is measured with respect to a common rigid, seismically isolated reference frame), but the common-mode rejection of seismic noise (and gravity signals) due to the differential readout is typically so high that other instrumental noise becomes dominant. So it is possible that some gradiometers would profit from seismic isolation, but it is not generally true. Let us now consider the case of a gravity strainmeter. As explained in Section 2.3, we distinguish gradiometers and strainmeters by the distance of their test masses. For example, the distance of the LIGO or Virgo test masses is 4 km and 3 km respectively. Seismic noise and terrestrial gravity fluctuations are insignificantly correlated between the two test masses within the detectors’ most sensitive frequency band (above 10 Hz). Therefore, the approximation in Eq. (4) does not apply. Certainly, the distinction between gravity gradiometers and strainmeters remains somewhat arbitrary since at any frequency the approximation in Eq. (4) can hold for one type of gravity fluctuation, while it does not hold for another. Let us adopt a more practical definition at this point. Whenever the design of the instrument places the test masses as distant as possible from each other given current technology, then we call such an instrument strainmeter. In the following, we will discuss seismic isolation and gravity response for three strainmeter designs, the laser-interferometric, atom-interferometric, and superconducting strainmeters. It should be emphasized that the atom-interferometric and superconducting concepts are still in the beginning of their development and have not been realized yet with scientifically interesting sensitivities.
Laser-interferometric strainmeters The most sensitive gravity strainmeters, namely the large-scale GW detectors, use laser interferometry to read out the relative displacement between mirror pairs forming the test masses. Each test mass in these detectors is suspended from a seismically isolated platform, with the suspension itself providing additional seismic isolation. Section 2.1.1 introduced a simplified response and isolation model based on a harmonic oscillator characterized by a resonance frequency ω0 and viscous damping γ6. In a multi-stage isolation and suspension system as realized in GW detectors (see for example [37, 121]), coupling between multiple oscillators cannot be neglected, and is fundamental to the seismic isolation performance, but the basic features can still be explained with the simplified isolation and response model of Eqs. (2) and (3). The signal output of the interferometer is proportional to the relative displacement between test masses. Since seismic noise is approximately uncorrelated between two distant test masses, the differential measurement itself cannot reject seismic noise as in gravity gradiometers. Without seismic isolation, the dominant signal would be seismic strain, i.e., the distance change between test masses due to elastic deformation of the ground, with a value of about 10−15 Hz−1/2 at 50 Hz (assuming kilometer-scale arm lengths). At the same time, without seismically isolated test masses, the gravity signal can only come from the ground response to gravity fluctuations as described in Section 2.1.3, and from the Shapiro time delay as described in Section 2.1.2.
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Introduction to Cemlyn
Cemlyn is one of North Wales Wildlife Trust’s star reserves and regarded by the Anglesey County Council as the “jewel in the crown” of its Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
It is valued both for its scenic qualities and its unique range of wildlife, and is as popular with general visitors – local people, holidaymakers, walkers etc. as it is with birdwatchers and naturalists.
Situated on the North coast of Anglesey, about three miles West of Cemaes, the reserve land, which is owned by the National Trust and has been leased by NWWT since 1971, includes a large lagoon, separated from the sea by a spectacular, naturally-created shingle ridge.
The ridge, known as Esgair Gemlyn, is formed by the process of longshore drift, its profile changing with the action of tide and weather. This unique geographical feature also provides a habitat for interesting coastal plants such as Sea Kale, Sea Campion, and Yellow Horned Poppy.
In the summer, the lagoon is the backdrop for Cemlyn’s most famous wildlife spectacle. Clustered on islands in the brackish water is a large and internationally important seabird colony, including breeding Common and Arctic Terns, and one of the U.K.’s largest nesting populations of Sandwich Terns. From the vantage point of the tern viewing area on the ridge, visitors experience these rare and elegant birds close-up – chasing and diving in courtship displays; incubating eggs; preening and bathing in the lagoon, or calling to their hungry chicks as they come winging in with freshly-caught fish.
Around the reserve there are also areas of coastal grassland, farmland, scrub, wetland, and both rocky and sandy shore encircling Cemlyn Bay. These are home to a wealth of life - birds, mammals, insects, wildflowers and marine creatures which, together with the tern colony, make up a fascinating ecosystem: an ideal ‘outdoor classroom’ for studying biodiversity.
In addition to being a Wildlife Trust reserve, Cemlyn is a Special Protection Area, a candidate Special Area of Conservation, and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It is also part of the Anglesey Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
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History of the reserve
Much of Cemlyn’s history as a wildlife site is tied to the story of Captain Vivian Hewitt, who came to the area in the 1930s, settling in Bryn Aber, the large house that dominates the western end of the reserve, and buying up much of the surrounding land.
A wealthy eccentric, his interest in birds led him to construct the first dam and weir at Cemlyn, replacing tidal saltmarsh with a large and permanent lagoon which he intended as a refuge for wildfowl. He also had a scheme to nurture an area of woodland within the grounds of Bryn Aber, to attract smaller birds. To this end he began construction of an imposing double wall, which was intended both as a wind-brake for the trees, and a means for observing the birds – the gap between the two walls had viewing holes. A further plan to top the walls with polished stone was never completed, and after Captain Hewitt’s death the house was left to his housekeeper’s family, but the walls themselves remain, and lend the site its mysterious, even foreboding presence.
It is the legacy of the lagoon that has had most significance for wildlife however. The change from a tidal habitat that frequently dried out in summer, to a stable body of water encompassing small islands, has provided the terns with nesting sites that are less attractive to ground predators. Over the following decades, various changes have occurred to the lagoon – some natural, eg. storms breaking over and swamping – some man-made, eg. the reconstruction of the weir and the creation or removal of islands. The water level and salinity of the lagoon is now monitored to maintain the ideal habitat for terns and other wildlife.
A couple of years after Captain Hewitt died, the Cemlyn estate was bought by the National Trust. Since 1971, they have leased the land around the lagoon to the North Wales Wildlife Trust, who manage it as a nature reserve. The two organisations work in partnership to enhance and maintain the site for wildlife and the public.
The reserve has had a warden every summer since 1981, with two wardens being employed every season since 1997. With the help of numerous volunteers, their work has included the detailed monitoring of the tern’s breeding success, protection of the colonies from a variety of natural predators (and in a couple of cases from the unwanted attentions of egg-collectors), as well as recording other forms of wildlife, and providing information to the public. Their presence on the ridge and around the reserve helps maintain the profile of Cemlyn as an important and nationally valuable site.
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Terns
Three species of tern breed regularly at Cemlyn. The numbers of Sandwich Tern nesting on the islands in the lagoon have been going up in recent years, making the colony one of the largest in the country.
There were over 1000 nests in 2005, and a good percentage of chicks fledged. The Sandwich Terns generally nest in dense groups, and seem to benefit from being close to groups of nesting Black-headed Gulls, which react aggressively to the threat of a predator, while the Sandwich Terns sit tight. Common Terns nest in sparser groups and smaller numbers on the islands, as do the very similar Arctic Terns, which make an epic journey from the southern to the northern hemisphere and back every year - the longest migration of any bird.
One of Britain's rarest seabirds, the Roseate Tern was a former breeder at Cemlyn, and is still sometimes seen on passage, as are other rarities like Little Tern and Black Tern. A vagrant Sooty Tern caused great excitement when it visited the colony in the summer of 2005.
The tern colony is the main focus of conservation work at Cemlyn. Because of disturbance at their traditional breeding areas, due to increased coastal access and development, terns have declined historically in Britain, so sites like Cemlyn, which still hold healthy populations, are a precious and nationally importance resource.
Two wardens are employed by NWWT every summer, to monitor and protect the terns. As well as dealing with disturbance and predation, they record the numbers of nests, the fledging success of chicks, and also the kinds of fish being brought in by their parents. Feeding studies are important because availability of fish, especially the terns ideal food, Sandeels, can be the key factor in a successful breeding season. The combined results of warming seas and commercial overfishing of Sandeels around Shetland for example, have had a disastrous effect on the productivity of Arctic Terns there.
All terns are migratory. Sandwich Terns are usually the first to be seen, in late March and April, with the bulk of breeding adults of all species arriving on site in May. June and July are the busiest months for the terns, and a good time to visit the reserve, the lagoon islands becoming a hive of activity.
By mid-August, the majority of chicks should have fledged, and be ready to join their parents on the journey south to their wintering areas - the coast of West Africa in the case of most Common and Sandwich Terns, even further south for Arctics.
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Other Birds
Oystercatcher and Ringed Plover both breed on the reserve, making their nests in the shingle of the Esgair.
In such an exposed choice of site, both species rely on wonderful camouflage of eggs and chick. In response to a direct perceived threat however, adult Ringed Plovers may resort to the 'broken wing trick' - drawing the attention of a potential predator by feigning injury and leading it away from the nest. To protect these waders, as well as the tern colony, visitors are asked to avoid walking on the lagoon-side of the Esgair during the summer months.
Cemlyn's situation and range of habitats make it a haven for a range of birds at all times of the year. Coot, Little Grebe and Shelduck can usually be seen around the lagoon, and Stonechats are a regular feature of the surrounding areas of scrub.
A variety of waders such as Curlew, Dunlin, Golden Plover, and Redshank use the area, and Purple Sandpiper may be seen on the rocky shoreline.
Summer visitors to look out for include Whitethroat and Sedge Warbler, while Wigeon, Teal, Red-breasted Meganser and other widfowl may be present in significant numbers in Autumn and Winter.
Other migrants turn up from time to time, and over the years a variety of rarities have been spotted –
2005 sightings included, apart from the Sooty Tern, an American Golden Plover, a Terek Sandpiper and a Melodious Warbler. Any keen birdwatcher will want to scour the site for something unusual.
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Other animals
Grey Seals can often be seen in the sea around Cemlyn, or hauled up on Craig yr Iwrch, the rocky island just off the Trwyn, and Harbour Porpoise sometimes feed close to the western end of Cemlyn Bay.
Brown Hares can be seen in or around the reserve, occasionally crossing the Esgair at dawn or dusk.
Weasels and Stoats both hunt the hedgerows and grassland at Cemlyn, and during the summer, basking Adders and Common Lizards may be spotted.
There’s also a wide range of insect life – butterflies, such as Grayling, Wall Brown and Common Blue, and day-flying moths like the Six-spot Burnet can all be seen, as can various beetles, grasshoppers and dragonflies.
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Underwater Life
The coastline of Cemlyn includes areas of shingle, sand and exposed rocky shore. These provide habitats for a variety of marine life including sea-anemones, crabs, prawns, blennies, butterfish, winkles, whelks, limpets, coastal lichens and a range of seaweeds. e.g. kelp.
The lagoon, with its changing mixture of fresh and salt water is a challenging environment, but Grey Mullet and Eels thrive in the brackish conditions. In fact Cemlyn is one of the top sites for specialised saline lagoon wildlife including shrimps and molluscs, and waterplants like Tassel Pondweed.
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Plantlife
The shingle of the Esgair is one of the harshest habitats imaginable for plants – arid because of the quick-draining pebbles, and exposed to wind, salt-spray, and the ravages of winter storms. Nevertheless it provides a home to specialists like the rare Sea Kale, whose deep roots and fleshy leaves enable it to survive close to the tide-line, and whose profuse white flowers give off a strong sweet smell.
Other characteristic coastal plants to look for along the ridge include Sea Campion, Sea Beet, and the striking Yellow Horned Poppy. Stands of Sea Purslane and Glasswort (Sea Asparagus) can be found at low tide close to the car park at Bryn Aber.
The grassland around Cemlyn is rich in wildflowers; an early spread of colour is provided by Spring Squill and Thrift which punctuate the grass with blues and pinks, while later blooming flowers along the Trwyn include Tormentil, Yellow Rattle, Knapweed and Centaury.
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Cemlyn through the Seasons
Spring
Early signs of Spring may include the first Wheatears arriving on Trwyn Cemlyn, the first Manx Shearwaters weaving through the waves out to sea, or the first Sandwich Tern’s call in the Bay - these are all possible from March onwards. Later on, Spring colour on the grassland around the reserve is provided by Spring Squill and Thrift which stud the ground with blues and pinks, and the first sunny spells may tempt out Common Lizards or Adders to bask. By mid-May, a range of birdlife is becoming visible and audible around the reserve, including terns settling on the islands in the lagoon, Whitethroat and Sedge Warbler singing in the scrub and water-margins, Whimbrel foraging along the rocky shore, and other waders like Dunlin and Black-tailed Godwit on the beach or in the lagoon.
Summer
Summer sees activity on the lagoon islands reach fever pitch with the terns and Black-headed Gulls using every hour of daylight to bring food to fast-growing chicks. The sight, sound and smell of this bustling seabird metropolis make up a memorable Cemlyn experience. June and July is the time to see the stands of Sea Kale in full flower, and to spot Yellow Horned Poppy and Sea Campion along the Esgair - Oystercatcher and Ringed Plover are also nesting on the shingle during this period. On the Trwyn, look out for Tormentil and the deep pink flowers of Centaury, as well as the passing colours of butterflies like Small Heath and Common Blue.
Also look out for the red and green leaf-beetle Chrysolina polita on the Dwarf Willow along Trwyn Pencarreg.
Autumn
The tern chicks are usually fledged by mid-August, ready to start the long migration south to their wintering grounds on the coast of Africa, so by early Autumn, the islands seem strangely peaceful. Other wildlife moves in however – flocks of Golden Plover, along with other waders like Lapwing and Curlew can be seen. Big Autumn tides can uncover interesting marine life that usually remains hidden on the lower reaches of the shore, and rough weather at this time brings a range of seabirds passing close to Trwyn Cemlyn – Manx Shearwaters, Gannets, Kittiwakes and Guillemots.
Winter
The lagoon remains an important resource for birds throughout the Winter months – Little Grebe, Shoveler, and Shelduck can regularly be seen, along with the Coot and Wigeon that also graze on the surrounding fields. The Herons that fish the lagoon at Cemlyn through the year are sometimes joined by a Little Egret darting in the shallows for shrimps. Red-breasted Merganser and Great Crested Grebe can often be spotted either in the lagoon or out in the Bay, while on the rocky shore, a keen eye may pick out a Turnstone or Purple Sandpiper foraging close to the water’s edge.
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Education & Outreach
The aim of the project is to raise awareness in local children about the importance of biodiversity and conservation by enabling them to explore the array of unique wildlife habitats on their local doorstep.
The project is designed to link in with National Curriculum topics covered in subjects including Science, Geography, History, English & RE, and provide a basis for ongoing work in the classroom. These different topics are often linked in with general environmental themes, in a conscious effort to encourage pupils to think about their relationship to their surroundings.
The activities include carrying out habitat surveys, where pupils record different species along a line of samples (as in an ecological transect), investigating the wildlife of the lagoon and shore using nets, and observing the tern colony through binoculars. Art-based exercises focus on perception of surroundings through the senses and encourage pupils to explore, using materials found on the beach to create their own 3D designs.
In some cases, the People and Wildlife Officers can visit schools to give illustrated talks and initiate written or interactive exercises in the classroom.
Outreach
The Coastal Nature Reserves project also involves general education, awareness-raising and outreach to the local community. Activities have been organised both on and off the reserve - there was a Cemlyn Creature Count in June 2010, and guided walks have also been arranged for the general public as well as for youth clubs and a daycentre group for people with learning difficulties. The project has been represented in The Anglesey Show and the Wylfa Community Fun Day. Illustrated talks have also been carried out for groups such as the Urdd, Scouts and for two branches of the University of the 3rd Age.
The People and Wildlife team aim to extend the range of this work, and are very keen to hear from any organisations or community groups interested in either on or off-site activities.
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How to get involved
Anglesey’s coastline is famous for its stunning scenery and the fantastic array of wildlife it holds. North Wales Wildlife Trust has a number of ways you can get involved in helping to protect this resource and raise awareness about its importance. The emphasis is very much on getting people involved, interacting with and enjoying their local naturalheritage.
As a volunteer with the Coastal Nature Reserve Project, opportunities will vary depending on the reserve and time of year. There’s a rough guide (by location) to the possibilities below.
Cemlyn Nature Reserve
The season will commence with a volunteer open day in March. This is a fantastic opportunity to meet the rest of the Cemlyn team, learn more about the work, the reserve and the wildlife you may encounter, with a guided walk and volunteer fact sheets also provided.
Check out the detailed information on helping at Cemlyn here (pdf 80k)
Mariandyrys Nature Reserve
Working to maintain the diverse grasslands and heathlands by scrub clearance and fencing
Monitoring and species survey work
Help with events and raising awareness
Coed Porthamel Reserve
Scrub clearance
Path and fence maintenance
Building and erecting bird and bat boxes
Porth Diana and Trearddur Bay
Help with events such as guided walks and beach cleans
Surveys (including Spotted Rock Rose) and monitoring
Working to maintain the diverse grasslands and heathlands by scrub clearance and fencing
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Visiting the reserve
Cemlyn is sign-posted from Tregele on the A5025 between Valley and Amlwch. Although the roads to the site are narrow, there are two car parks adjacent to the reserve (OS 1:50, 000 Sheet 114 and Explorer 262. Grid ref. SH329936 & SH336932).
The reserve is open throughout the year: admission is free.
Group visits are possible by appointment
Suggested walks around Cemlyn
These are a few popular routes around the reserve, focussing mainly on wildlife and landscape features.
Esgair Gemlyn
The shingle ridge at Cemlyn is accessible from the Beach car park at the eastern end of the reserve.
Although the distance along the ridge to the tern viewing area opposite the islands is only about 0.5 km, it's worth bearing in mind that during the summer months, visitors are asked to use only the seaward side of the ridge, and the shingle can make for arduous walking.
It’s a much shorter walk from the Bryn Aber car park on the western side of the lagoon, but beware – the causeway linking the car park and the ridge can flood an hour or more either side of high tide, so it’s worth checking the times to avoid getting stranded.
During the summer, daily tide-times may be chalked up close to the causeway by the wardens.
Outside of the tern breeding season, the lagoon-side of the ridge is open to the public, and its interesting habitat can be explored at closer range.
Trwyn Cemlyn
This little peninsula (Trwyn is Welsh for nose) makes a favourite short walk for local people. Accessible via the Bryn Aber car park, it comprises coastal grassland with small patches of gorse and heather, and a rocky shoreline allowing views out to The Skerries in the west, Wylfa to the east, and if there’s good visibility, sometimes the Isle of Man to the north.
It’s a good spot for spring wildflowers, and also for seeing seabirds, seals, and sometimes porpoises.
It also links up with the National Trust coastal footpath to the west.
Lagoon inlet
The narrow bridge at the western end of the lagoon, just before Bryn Aber, makes a good vantage point for the lagoon islands if the ridge is inaccessible. It also allows views over the freshwater inlet and the adjacent area of gorse and scrub known as Morfa. The road alongside the inlet that leads to the farm of Tyn Llan has no parking, but a walk down gives views of the reedy inlet margins and surrounding damp pasture, which sometimes harbour interesting birdlife.
Coastal footpath towards Hen Borth
.Cemlyn forms the eastern end of a stretch of wonderful coastal footpath, taking in rugged landscape characteristic of the north Anglesey coast.
From the stile at the ‘brow’ of Trwyn Cemlyn, the path leads off the reserve up past Craig yr Iwrch, an outlying rock favoured by seals, cormorants and roosting curlews, and along the cliffs, passing Tyn Llan farm on the left, to the bay of Hen Borth.
Keen walkers may wish to carry on following the coastline as far as Carmel Head or Ynys y Fydlyn, while others may wish to visit the small church of St Rhwydrus, returning through the gate by the farm and back past the lagoon inlet.
Coast towards Wylfa Head
Trwyn Pencarreg - the area of rocky outcrops, grassland and coastal heath to the east of the Beach car park at Cemlyn, is interesting for its plant communities, wildflowers and insects, and for its impressive views back across Cemlyn Bay. A circular walk is possible via the old mill at Felin Gafnan.
The National Trust has produced a booklet detailing several circular walks around, or starting from Cemlyn. It includes illustrated routes for all of the areas described above, and of walks that take you further afield.
To obtain a copy, or for further information regarding other National Trust walks on Anglesey, contact:
The National Trust Wales, Trinity Square, Llandudno, LL30 2DE
New observations by the MESSENGER spacecraft provide compelling support for the long-held hypothesis that Mercury harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials in its permanently shadowed polar craters.
Three independent lines of evidence support this conclusion: the first measurements of excess hydrogen at Mercury's north pole with MESSENGER's Neutron Spectrometer, the first measurements of the reflectance of Mercury's polar deposits at near-infrared wavelengths with the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA), and the first detailed models of the surface and near-surface temperatures of Mercury's north polar regions that utilize the actual topography of Mercury's surface measured by the MLA. These findings are presented in three papers published online today in Science Express.
Given its proximity to the Sun, Mercury would seem to be an unlikely place to find ice. But the tilt of Mercury's rotational axis is almost zero — less than one degree — so there are pockets at the planet's poles that never see sunlight. Scientists suggested decades ago that there might be water ice and other frozen volatiles trapped at Mercury's poles.
The idea received a boost in 1991, when the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected unusually radar-bright patches at Mercury's poles, spots that reflected radio waves in the way one would expect if there were water ice. Many of these patches corresponded to the location of large impact craters mapped by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in the 1970s. But because Mariner saw less than 50 percent of the planet, planetary scientists lacked a complete diagram of the poles to compare with the images.
MESSENGER's arrival at Mercury last year changed that. Images from the spacecraft's Mercury Dual Imaging System taken in 2011 and earlier this year confirmed that radar-bright features at Mercury's north and south poles are within shadowed regions on Mercury's surface, findings that are consistent with the water-ice hypothesis.
To read more go to: 1.usa.gov/TtNwM2
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory
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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