Explore #68 April 20th, 2009

About

Getting up a 3am to shoot these amazing dawns is the highlight of my week, but its funny to think that the light we see took eight minutes to reach us. I can easily spend eight minutes thinking about my next shot!

Thanks again to Matt for lending me his Cokin Tobacco filter for this shot.

Enjoy.

- Canon 50D.

- ISO 100, f9, 1/15, 24mm.

- Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L lens.

- Tripod.

Processing

- 100% off camera.

- Cokin Tobacco Grad.

- Borders and logo in Lightroom 2.2.

The Sun

The Sun (Latin: Sol), a yellow dwarf, is the star at the center of the Solar System. The Earth and other matter (including other planets, asteroids, meteoroids, comets, and dust) orbit the Sun, which by itself accounts for about 98.6% of the Solar System's mass. The mean distance of the Sun from the Earth is approximately 149,600,000 kilometers, or 92,960,000 miles, and its light travels this distance in 8 minutes and 19 seconds. Energy from the Sun, in the form of sunlight, supports almost all life on Earth via photosynthesis, and drives the Earth's climate and weather.

The Gran Prix XL1000 is Pontiac's newest addition to the full-size luxury hover-car line. The Gran Prix XL1000 comes with a removable hard top to convert the car to an roadster configuration for an open air driving experience. For days when planetary weather patterns do not cooperate, the hard top can be installed to allow for smooth and comfortable hovering in even the most oppresive of conditions. Featuring a highly tuned Super Duty 465ci V-8 combustion engine driving the new Series 12 magnetrons from Sirius Cyberdine Industries, the Gran Prix XL1000 provides a smooth, dependable ride with plenty of available thrust at the touch of the accelerator. Head down to your local planetary system's Pontiac dealer today to test-drive one for yourself, and see why Pontiac is an industry leader in luxury hover-car manufacturing.

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Hey everyone, here's a BRAND NEW BUILD from me! Jumping back into the retro-futuristic hover car game here. This one was a bit difficult to get looking just right and went from a six-stud to seven-stud width which presents its own set of challenges on a build of this nature. Going from closed car to roadster only requires replacing a few simple pieces. Minifig driver by my son. Hope you enjoy, comments and constructive criticism appreciated as always and thanks for looking!

On the heels of Tuesday’s release of the first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, data from the telescope’s commissioning period is now being released on the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. The data includes images of Jupiter and images and spectra of several asteroids, captured to test the telescope’s instruments before science operations officially began July 12. The data demonstrates Webb’s to track solar system targets and produce images and spectra with unprecedented detail.

“Combined with the deep field images released the other day, these images of Jupiter demonstrate the full grasp of what Webb can observe, from the faintest, most distant observable galaxies to planets in our own cosmic backyard that you can see with the naked eye from your actual backyard,” said Bryan Holler, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who helped plan these observations.

Read more: blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/07/14/webb-images-of-jupiter-and...

Fans of Jupiter will recognize some familiar features of our solar system’s enormous planet in these images seen through Webb’s infrared gaze. A view from the NIRCam instrument’s short-wavelength filter shows distinct bands that encircle the planet as well as the Great Red Spot, a storm big enough to swallow the Earth. The iconic spot appears white in this image because of the way Webb’s infrared image was processed.

This image:

Jupiter, center, and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument 2.12 micron filter. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

Image description:

Jupiter dominates the frame, appearing to glow with bands of bright white, light yellow, and darker, brownish oranges. The stripes circle the planet, with one especially thick bright band across the planet’s center. A spot of glowing bright white interrupts the darker brown band about a third from the bottom of the planet. To the left of Jupiter, Europa appears as a tiny, black circle with a bright starburst erupting from its edges. The background of the image is pure black.

日常體制.S-預售屋 / 壓克力顏料.畫布130 x 162cm

Snaking Thru Montpelier

GMRC GP9 804 and VTR GP40-2 307 thread thru the capital of the Green Mountain state with a handful of empty gons destined for the top of The Hill at Websterville for loadout at Northeast Materials granite quarry.

The train is approaching the Main St. / Route 12 crossing at MP 1.36 on the Washington County Railroad's M&B Division. These particular rails are ex CV, first laid in 1849 by CV predecessor Vermont Central.

In 1958 Sam Pinsly's Montpelier & Barre purchased them and he quickly consolidated the parallel CV and old Montpelier & Wells River routes between this point at Barre. The state purchased these rails in 1980 when the M&B petitioned for abandonment and they've had multiple contract operators over the years until finally setting on Vermont Rail System's Washington County Subsidiary about two decades ago.

In the background is the gold dome of the Vermont State Capitol building. This Greek Revival structure is the third building on the same site to be used as the State House. Designed by Thomas Silloway in 1857 and 1858, it was occupied in 1859 although the dome was not gilded until the early 20th century, when many states did so as a part of the Colonial Revival style. The dome is topped by a statue named Agriculture, a representation of Ceres, an ancient Roman goddess of agriculture.

Montpelier, Vermont

Friday April 24, 2020

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system's earliest chapter.

Dawn missed scheduled communications sessions with NASA's Deep Space Network on Wednesday, Oct. 31, and Thursday, Nov. 1. After the flight team eliminated other possible causes for the missed communications, mission managers concluded that the spacecraft finally ran out of hydrazine, the fuel that enables the spacecraft to control its pointing. Dawn can no longer keep its antennas trained on Earth to communicate with mission control or turn its solar panels to the Sun to recharge.

The Dawn spacecraft launched 11 years ago to visit the two largest objects in the main asteroid belt. Currently, it's in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, where it will remain for decades.

This photo of Ceres and the bright regions of Occator Crater was one of the last views NASA's Dawn spacecraft transmitted before it completed its mission. This view, which faces south, was captured on Sept. 1, 2018, at an altitude of 2,340 miles (3,370 kilometers) as the spacecraft was ascending in its elliptical orbit.

Image credit: Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

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For more about the Dawn Mission

NASA Media Usage Guidelines

But we found it!

Karen and I enjoyed a delightful walk around this impressive lake last fall.

"Lost Lake is a lake located in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada. The area around it, Lost Lake Park, is part of the municipal park system's cross-country skiing trails and, until hotel development overshadowed views of the park's swimming docks, was Whistler's long-time nude sunbathing beach."

Wikipedia

Thanks for your visit.

Always appreciated!

NASA's Juno spacecraft just made the closest flybys of Jupiter's moon Io that any spacecraft has carried out in more than 20 years. An instrument on this spacecraft called “JunoCam” returned spectacular, high-resolution images—and raw data are now available for you to process, enhance, and investigate.

On Dec. 30, 2023, Juno came within about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the surface of the solar system's most volcanic world. It made a second ultra-close flyby of Io just this week. The second pass went predominantly over the southern hemisphere of Io, while prior flybys have been over the north. There's a lot to see in these photos! There's evidence of an active plume, tall mountain peaks with well-defined shadows, and lava lakes—some with apparent islands.

It will be a challenge to sort all of this out, and the JunoCam scientists need your help. Previous JunoCam volunteers like Gerald Eichstadt have seen their processed images appear in multiple scientific publications and press releases.

You can find the new raw images, see the creations of other image processors, and submit your own work at: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing

In this image of Jupiter's moon Io, its night side illuminated by reflected sunlight from Jupiter, or "Jupitershine."

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Emma Wälimäki © CC BY

#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #jpl #nasamarshall #juno #nasajuno #Io

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More about Juno

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Cu tren EC 276 "METROPOLITAN" Budapest Nyugati p.u. - Praha hlavni nadrazi

With service 276 "METROPOLITAN" Budapest Nyugati p.u - Praha hlavni nadrazi

Budapest Nyugati p.u.,

07.08.2023

During the last summer I took a series of long exposure shot of the public transport system (S-Bahn) here in Berlin. It was kind of new and fun since I played with some sort of double exposure technic on top of the long exposure. This one is at the train station South Cross (Südkreuz) of the ring system in Berlin. That station is the third largest here in Berlin so you get some space to play with your composition and change your POV (point of view). The post processing for this HDR Picture was done with Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC, the picture was taken with my Canon EOS 40D on a tripod.

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#NLE #night #longexposure #Berlin #train #trainstation #Sbahn #Germany #close2home #Canon #EOS #dslr #40D #Photoshop #Lightroom #photography #longexposure #cityscapephotography #EuropeanPhotography #nightphotography #longexposurephotography #lights #StuckInBerlin #RobertEmmerich 

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Photo © by Robert Emmerich

I rode motorcycle in rainstorm with my sister only to take photos and we got soaked in rain for 3 hours. In fact, in the next day I have mid term exam of communication system, microprocessor system practicum, and microprocessor system's project presentation. Maybe I just don't care. They went well though. :)

This is a dawn scene with three of the inner solar system’s rocky or “terrestrial” worlds in one image — four if you count the Earth as well! In this version I have labelled the objects.

This is a panorama of the waning crescent Moon above the two inner planets, Mercury and Venus, shining here as morning “stars” in the pre-dawn sky, Nov. 12, 2020. Mercury is lowest near the horizon and brighter Venus is higher, below the Moon. Mercury was two days past its greatest western elongation, placing it about as high as it gets and in a favourable elongation on an autumn morning, with the ecliptic angled up as high as it gets for the year in the dawn sky. Favourable evening elongations of Mercury in the western sky occur in spring. All the worlds were in Virgo, not to imply any astrological significance!

The star Spica is between and to the right of the planets. At far right is the distinctive quadrilateral figure of the constellation of Corvus the crow just rising in the southeast.

This is a panorama of 2 segments, each 10 seconds with the Sigma 50mm lens at f/2.8 and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 200. I blended in a shorter 2-second exposure for the Moon to prevent its disk from being too overexposed and to show the Earthshine. Stitched in Adobe Camera Raw. A mild Orton glow added with Luminar 4 to soften the image and brighten the colours.

Altogether, the Town of Inuvik has 950 water and sewer connections, 16 km of above ground Utilidor and less than a kilometre of buried line. The older Utilidor lines, which are much bulkier, were installed in the late 1950s when the federal government built Inuvik. Following an agreement with the Government of Northwest Territories (GNWT) in June 2000, the Town of Inuvik became the system's owner and operator of the entire Town's water and sewage infrastructure.

The Town has made replacing the older Utilidor lines a priority, with an on-going program to replace 500 metres of water and sewer lines each year, at an annual cost of around 1.5 million dollars. However, unlike southern systems, Inuvik's arctic utilities system are much more costly to build and complex to operate due to factors such as extended cold winters and thaw-sensitive permafrost ground.

The Town of Inuvik's water and sewage infrastructure encompasses:

Water supply, treatment and storage facilities at Hidden Lake and at East Channel.

The Lake B pump house and pipeline.

The trunk water Utilidors from Hidden Lake to the town site and the trunk sewage lines from the town site to the lagoon.

The entire Utilidor system within the town site.

Ancillary systems such as circulation and heating stations and the water temperature monitoring system, and the structures and foundations of Utilidors and vaults.

Trunk sewage mains running to the lagoon.

The sewage lagoon system.

Utility lands and easements.

The Utility also encompasses operations, maintenance administrative and management staff, shop building and headquarters space within the Town Hall, vehicles, tools and equipment.

2018 Road Trip to Tuktoyaktuk, NWT via Dempster Highway and the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway or ITH (Tuk Highway).

It’s all by design! The Great Reset requires a currency crisis, so that we can Build Back Better. We must crash the economy and implement a fiat Central Bank Digital Currency, a Digital ID, and a Social Credit Score System—“Fascism on the Block Chain!” We will weaponize the whole currency system. We will reset the economy to a surveillance economy. It’s the surveillance era! Surveillance Capitalism/Data Capitalism: leading us down the road to Digital Feudalism. Techno-Feudalism…yay! This new Digital Economy will have programmable currency, which will be tied to vast databases that will surveil your behavior. Elvis has entered the building: “We’re caught in a trap! I can't walk out!” Step right up: get your Universal Basic Income Central Bank Digital Currency allowance. Then you can become a Global Citizen of the New World Order Digital Welfare state…woohoo! Please give me Digital Welfare!

We will be able to control every aspect of your lives. With programmable Central Bank Digital Currency we will eventually bar you from buying precious metals. Kiss your gold good-bye! You won’t be able to save your money, because it will have an expiry date. We will program your digital money, so that you can’t spend it outside your 15-minute city/neighbourhood/prison. Like the World Economic Forum mantra says: you will own nothing and be happy! You will literally rent everything you use. If you’re a good little doggy you’ll be rewarded, but if you’re a bad little doggy you’ll be punished. We will regulate who you can see, what you can eat, and where you can go. Digital slavery, here we come!

Trillions of dollars in debt: inflation, stagflation, and hyperinflation. “From dirty cash, to digital trash.” The banks will legally take money out of your bank account when everything collapses. Remember what happened in the Financial Crisis of Cyprus? The banks seized people’s money. Bye-bye savings. Bye-bye middle class. Bank run! Say what? The system’s locked up. Transactions have stopped. I can’t get my money out of the bank! I can’t use my debit card! I can’t use my credit card! My money is gone! Read ‘em and weep, boys; the writing is on the wall.

In a few years down the road we will microchip the sheeple. A new transhuman slave race…woohoo! This slave race will bow to the Image of the Beast—the ultimate ChatGPT. His image will be set up on a wing of the temple. If you can’t get to the temple to worship, his image will show up as a hologram in your transhuman mind. The Beast hologram will say: worship me or die! The AI Beast Computer will hit your kill switch if you don’t bow down to worship him. Watch out, he will know if you’re sincerely worshiping him or not. Isn’t it going to be fun when we’re living in the Book of Revelation? 666: you can’t buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast! Isn’t it interesting to watch as the Beast system is being put in place?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP72LyQNXNQ

The system's first tunnels were built just below the surface using the cut and cover method. Later, circular tunnels – which give rise to its nickname the Tube – were dug through the London Clay at a deeper level. The early lines were marketed as the UNDERGROUND in the early 20th century on maps and signs at central London stations.

[by en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground]

Eta Carinae (NGC 3372) - The Carina Nebula.

"Backyard Astronomy" - photographed in the Light Pollution of the City. To see the difference, follow the link below to a more recent photo of the same Deep Sky Object in darker skies: www.flickr.com/photos/martin_heigan/26196012013/

About the Carina Nebula:

The Carina Nebula is the closest giant star-forming region to our Solar System, in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy (7 500 light years from Earth). It is situated in the Southern Hemisphere Constellation Carina (The Keel). The Carina Nebula (also called The Grand Nebula or Eta Carinae Nebula) is one of the largest Diffuse Nebulae in our skies, and contains at least two stars with a combined luminosity over five million times that of the Sun. The star Eta Carinae is at least a hundred times more massive than our star (the Sun), and is a candidate for a Supernova.

Telescopes are like time machines, and this is what the Carina Nebula looked like 7 500 years ago (as the light took that long to reach us, traveling at 300 000 km/s or 186 411 mi/s).

About this image:

Quick test exposures in light polluted skies after months of cloudy weather. Photographed mainly in the visible wavelengths of light, and the Hydrogen Alpha (Hα) Infrared spectral line of 656.28 nm. The mount was Polar Aligned, but due to the weather there was no time for Autoguiding or longer exposures to capture more of the subtle Hydrogen Nebulosity detail.

Star Colors:

You will notice that star colors differ from red, orange and yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.

Light Pollution Map:

Photographed at 26° Latitude South, close to the light polluted suburbs to the West of Johannesburg (Gauteng Province, South Africa). Light Pollution Map.

Tech:

Lights/Subs: 25 x 30 sec RAW exposures.

Calibration Frames: Bias and Dark frames from my Library.

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight, and finished in Photoshop.

Gear:

GSO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian Reflector Telescope.

Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector.

Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter.

Celestron AVX Mount.

Canon 60Da DSLR.

Astrometry Info:

nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1060749#annotated

About the Milky Way, and our Solar System's place within it:

The Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to have over 400 billion stars. Stars are suns, and just like in our Solar System, many of the stars have planets with moons orbiting them. Our sun is a middle aged Yellow Dwarf star, located in the Orion Arm (or Orion Spur) of the Milky Way Galaxy. It's a minor side spiral arm, located between two larger arms of the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral. The Milky Way is merely one mid-sized barred spiral Galaxy, amongst over 100 billion other Galaxies in the observable Universe. When we look up at the night sky from Earth, we see a glimpse of the Carina-Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. It takes about 250 million years for the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral arms to complete one rotation.

The size, distance and age of the Universe is far beyond human comprehension. The known Universe is estimated to contain over One Billion Trillion stars.

1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000

Click on this link to view an image that illustrates ''our Solar System's position within the Milky Way Galaxy''.

Martin

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The 750mm gauge Mansfelder Bergwerksbahn (Mansfield Mining Railway), claimed to be Germany’s oldest heritage narrow gauge railway, lies in the region east of the Harz Mountains, known as the Mansfelder Land. Copper shale mining had been carried out in the district since around 1200, and the area later developed into the principal district in Germany for the mining of non-ferrous minerals. The railway was first established in 1880 to transport ore and other materials to the copper smelters, as well as operating timetabled worker’s services, which it did so until 1970. By 1930, the Mansfelder Bergwerksbahn railway system extended to almost 60 miles of track, serving thirteen copper mines and two smelters. It also had the benefit of two separate interchanges with the Deutsche Reichsbahn main line. Transporter wagons were used from the 1930s, and the traffic conveyed reached its peak in 1955. Diesel locomotives for factory and yard shunting were introduced from 1961, but steam was still retained. Orenstein & Koppel 0-8-0 tank ‘10’ was converted to oil-firing in 1965, the first narrow gauge industrial locomotive in Germany to be so converted. The last working copper mines, at Eisleben and Hettstedt, were closed between 1964 and 1969. The smelter at Eisleben remained open until 1972 and that at Halbra, along with its power station, finally closing in 1989. The railway system fell into disuse, but the section between Hettstedt and Klostermansfeld was reopened as a heritage railway in 1990, the remaining lines all subsequently being lifted by 1993. The area is dominated by abandoned shale tips from the widespread mining activities and, along with the railway’s undisputed industrial railway pedigree, offers a fascinating window into the past industry of this region. On 10th October 2010, one of the system's indigenous and purposeful 750mm gauge 0-8-0 tanks, '9' (Orenstein and Koppel works No.12347 built in 1931), heads a demonstration 'works train' near Zirkelschacht (Circle Mine), bound for Hettstedt, creating a timeless scene.

© Gordon Edgar - All rights reserved. Please do not use my images without my explicit permission

GMCR GP9 804 and VTR GP40-2 307 trundle slowly thru the capital of the Green Mountain state with a handful of empty gons destined for the top of The Hill at Websterville for loadout at Northeast Materials granite quarry.

The train is running along side the linear trail that sits between the railroad and Stone Cutter's way in the heart of downtown near about MP 1.5 on the Washington County Railroad's M&B Division. These particular rails are ex CV, first laid in 1875 when the 1849 branch into the capital city was extended to Barre. In 1957 Sam Pinsly's Montpelier & Barre purchased them and he quickly consolidated the parallel CV and old Montpelier & Wells River routes between this point at Barre. Just out of sight to the left in days of old was the former M&W engine house. Though it is long gone, the turntable survives as part of the park.

The state purchased these rails in 1980 when the M&B petitioned for abandonment and they've had multiple contract operators over the years until finally setting on Vermont Rail System's Washington County Subsidiary about two decades ago.

Montpelier, Vermont

Friday April 24, 2020

I had originally shown up in Rutland to chase 263 on the GMRC, however it didn't end up running today. Luckily, FLSW had arrived in Rutland and started their work in Rutland's yard. Here they are seen crossing Park Street next to Vermont Rail System's shop and the lashup that would have led 263.

awesome display,as always,until the doofus in the copter totally screwed it up by invading their pre-informed airspace..they stopped the display to get it shifted safely out of harm's way but had burnt off too much fuel to finish the display..

Streetcar #948, built in 1923-1924 by Perley A. Thomas.

The St. Charles Ave streetcar line has been operating since 1835 and is the oldest running line in the world.

"Streetcars in New Orleans, Louisiana have been an integral part of the city's public transportation network since the first half of the 19th century. The longest of New Orleans' streetcar lines, the St. Charles Avenue line, is the oldest continuously operating street railway system in the world.[4] Today, the streetcars are operated by the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA).

There are currently five operating streetcar lines in New Orleans: The St. Charles Avenue Line, the Riverfront Line, the Canal Street Line (which has two branches), and the Loyola Avenue Line and Rampart/St. Claude Line (which are operated as one through-routed line). The St. Charles Avenue Line is the only line that has operated continuously throughout New Orleans' streetcar history (though service was interrupted after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and resumed only in part in December 2006, as noted below). All other lines were replaced by bus service in the period from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Preservationists were unable to save the streetcars on Canal Street, but were able to convince the city government to protect the St. Charles Avenue Line by granting it historic landmark status. In the later 20th century, trends began to favor rail transit again. A short Riverfront Line started service in 1988, and service returned to Canal Street in 2004, 40 years after it had been shut down.[5]

The wide destruction wrought on the city by Hurricane Katrina and subsequent floods from the levee breaches in August 2005 knocked all the streetcar lines out of operation and damaged many of the streetcars. Service on a portion of the Canal Street line was restored in December of that year, with the remainder of the line and the Riverfront line returning to service in early 2006. On December 23, 2007, the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) extended service from Napoleon Avenue to the end of historic St. Charles Avenue (the "Riverbend"). On June 22, 2008 service was restored to the end of the line at South Carrollton Avenue & South Claiborne Avenue.

History[edit]

The definitive history of New Orleans streetcars is found in Louis Hennick and Harper Charlton, The Streetcars of New Orleans, Pelican Press,[6] which is the source for this summary of New Orleans streetcar history.

Beginnings[edit]

On April 23, 1831, the Pontchartrain Railroad Company (PRR) established the first rail service in New Orleans along a five-mile line running north on Elysian Fields Avenue from the Mississippi River toward Lake Pontchartrain. These first trains, however, were pulled by horses because the engines had not yet arrived from England. The PRR received its first working steam engine the next year, and first put it into service on September 27, 1832. Service continued in a mixed fashion, running sometimes with locomotives, and at other times with horse traction. A round trip fare at that time was seventy-five cents.[7]

Those first operations included inter-city and suburban railroad lines, and horse-drawn (or mule-drawn) omnibus lines. (An omnibus is essentially a smaller form of a stagecoach.) The first lines of city rail service were created by the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad, which in 1835 opened three lines. In the first week of January, the company opened its Poydras-Magazine horse-drawn line on its namesake streets (Poydras Street and Magazine Street), the first true street railway line in the city. New York City was the only place to precede New Orleans with street railway service. Then a horse-drawn line to the suburb of Lafayette, which was centered on Jackson Avenue, opened on January 13. In September, the New Orleans and Carrollton started operating its third line, a steam-powered line along present-day St. Charles Avenue, then called Nayades, connecting the city with the suburb of Carrollton, and terminating near the present-day intersection of St. Charles Avenue and Carrollton Avenue. The Poydras-Magazine line ceased operation in March or April 1836, about the time that a new La Course Street line was opened along that street (now named Race Street). That line ended in the 1840s, but the Lafayette and Carrollton lines continued, eventually becoming the Jackson and St. Charles streetcar lines.[8]

As the area upriver (uptown) from the city began to be built up—much of the new development along the Nayades (St. Charles Avenue) corridor—additional lines were created by the New Orleans and Carrollton. On February 4, 1850, branch lines were opened on Louisiana and Napoleon Avenues. Like the Jackson line, these were horse- or mule-drawn cars, operating from Nayades Avenue to the river along their namesake streets.[9] The Louisiana line was lightly patronized, and was discontinued in 1878. The Napoleon line continued into the next century.[10]

Up until about 1860, omnibus lines provided the only public transit outside the area serviced by the New Orleans and Carrollton RR. The need was felt for a true citywide street railway service. Toward this end, the New Orleans City RR was chartered on June 15, 1860. The first line, Rampart and Esplanade (later called simply Esplanade), opened June 1, 1861, followed in quick succession by the Magazine, Camp and Prytania (later called Prytania), Canal, Rampart and Dauphine (later Dauphine), and finally Bayou Bridge and City Park. Despite the beginnings of war, the company opened and continued service on its new lines. A few other efforts were attempted during the Civil War, but progress resumed soon after the war's end.[11]

In 1866, several additional street railway companies made their appearance in New Orleans. The first was the Magazine Street Railroad Co., which soon merged with the second, the Crescent City Railroad Co. The St. Charles Street Railroad Co. was next, followed in 1867 by the Canal and Claiborne Streets Railroad Co. and in 1868 by the Orleans Railroad Co. The horsecar lines of these companies covered different parts of the city, overlapping in some areas. The City RR even operated a steam railroad to Lake Ponchartrain, the West End line, which eventually became part of the city streetcar system.[12]

Horsecar companies and lines operated[edit]

In the late 1800s, these were the streetcar companies and the lines they operated:[13]

The coming of electrification[edit]

A number of experiments were tried out over the next few decades in an attempt to find a better method than horses or mules for propulsion of streetcars. These included an overhead cable car system (an underground cable, such as was eventually developed in San Francisco, was impossible because of the high water table under New Orleans); a walking beam system; peneumatic propulsion; an ammonia locomotive; a "Thermo-specific" system using super-heated water; and the Lamm Fireless engine.[14] Lamm engines were actually adopted and used for a time on the New Orleans and Carrollton line, which had previously used steam locomotives. That line gradually gave up steam locomotives because of the objections of residents along the line to the smoke, soot, and noise. The area between the town of Carrollton and the City of New Orleans was sparsely populated with large swaths of agricultural land when the line was laid out in the 1830s; by the latter 19th century it was almost completely urbanized. Carrollton was annexed to New Orleans in 1874. Due to this increased urbanization, horsecars were used on the entire line.[15]

Electrical propulsion of streetcars finally won out over all the other experimental methods. Electric powered streetcars made their first appearance in New Orleans on the Carrollton line on February 1, 1893. The line was also extended out Carrollton Avenue and renamed St. Charles.[16]

Other companies followed suit. Over the next few years, almost all the streetcar lines of all six companies were electrified, including the West End steam line; the few lines that remained animal powered, such as the Girod and Poydras, were discontinued.[17] Also, operations of the six companies began to be consolidated at this time, beginning with formation of the New Orleans Traction Co., which took over operation of the New Orleans City and Lake RR (an 1883 renaming of the New Orleans City RR) and the Crescent City RR in 1892. New Orleans Traction became the New Orleans City RR in 1899, the second company to use that name. The Canal and Claiborne company was merged into the New Orleans and Carrollton in 1899. Then in 1902, New Orleans Railways Co. took over operation of all city streetcars, and in 1905 the operating company became New Orleans Railway and Light Co. Final consolidation of ownership as well as operation finally became reality in 1922 with the formation of New Orleans Public Service Incorporated (commonly abbreviated NOPSI, never NOPS).[18]

Electric streetcars under consolidated operation[edit]

Labor problems began to occupy the attention of street railway officials as consolidation progressed. At first, each of the street railway companies had its own agreement with its operating personnel. New Orleans Railways tried to maintain those separate agreements, but labor representatives insisted on one agreement for the entire company. They also demanded an increase in pay and recognition of their union, Division 194 of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America. The union struck on September 27, 1902. After about two weeks of strife, a settlement was reached, and in early 1903, the company signed a contract and recognized the union.[19]

In 1902, there were protests when the Louisiana legislature mandated that public transportation must enforce racial segregation. At first this was objected to by both white and black riders as an inconvenience, and by the streetcar companies on grounds of both added expense and the difficulties of determining the racial background of some New Orleanians.

Consolidation of operations under a single company had the advantage of untangling and rationalizing some streetcar lines. As an extreme example, consider the Coliseum line, which had the nickname Snake Line, because it wandered all over uptown New Orleans. Its early name Canal and Coliseum and Upper Magazine gives an idea of the route. Under consolidation, Coliseum was pretty much limited to service on its namesake street, with trackage on upper Magazine Street turned over to the Magazine line, as one might expect. Other efficiencies were instituted, such as reducing the number of streetcar lines operating over long stretches of Canal Street.[20]

There was another strike beginning July 1, 1920. This one was settled around the end of July with a new contract.[21]

In the early 1920s, several extensions and rearrangements of service resulted in the inauguration of the famous Desire line, the Freret line, the Gentilly line, and the St. Claude line.[22]

In 1929, there was a widespread strike by transit workers demanding better pay, which was widely supported by much of the public. Sandwiches on baguettes were given to the "poor boys" on strike, said to be the origin of the local name of "po' boy" sandwiches. There was much rioting and animosity. Several streetcars were burned, and several people were killed. Service was gradually restored, with the strike ending in October.[23]

The same year, the last of the 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge tracks were converted to 5 ft 2 1⁄2 in (1,588 mm) (Pennsylvania trolley gauge) to match the rest of the streetcar lines.[24]

Buses began to be used in New Orleans transit in 1924. Several streetcar lines were converted to bus over the next 15 years. Beginning after World War II, as in much of the United States, many streetcar lines were replaced with buses, either internal combustion (gasoline/diesel) or electric (trolley bus).[25]

The last four streetcar lines in New Orleans were the S. Claiborne and Napoleon lines, which were converted to motor bus in 1953; the Canal, which was converted in 1964; and the St. Charles, which has continued in operation, and now has historic landmark status.[26]

Racial segregation on streetcars and buses in New Orleans was finally ended peacefully in 1958. Until then, signs separating the races were carried on the backs of the seats in streetcars and buses. These signs could be moved forward or back in the vehicle as passenger loads changed during the operating day. Under court order, the signs were simply removed, and passengers were allowed to sit wherever they pleased.

In 1974, the Amalgamated won a representation election and formed Local Division 1560 in New Orleans. Negotiations between the union and NOPSI were unsuccessful, and a strike followed. In December 1974, a contract was signed between NOPSI and Local 1560, but the strike was not completely settled until the following March.[27]

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, it became apparent that private operation of the New Orleans transit system could not continue. Creation of a public body that could receive tax money and qualify for federal funding was necessary. The Louisiana legislature created the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) in 1979, and in 1983, RTA took over ownership and operation of the system.[28]

In 1988, a new Riverfront line was created, using private right of way along the river levee. This was the first new streetcar line in New Orleans since 1926. Then in 2004, the Canal line was restored to rail operation.[29] See the Current Lines and Future Network Expansion sections below.

Hurricane Katrina[edit]

Main article: Effects of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans

Fallen pole across St. Charles streetcar tracks.

The area through which the St. Charles Avenue Line traveled fared comparatively well in Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact on New Orleans at the end of August 2005, with moderate flooding only of the two ends of the line at Claiborne Avenue and at Canal Street. However, wind damage and falling trees took out many sections of trolley wire along St. Charles Avenue, and vehicles parked on the neutral ground (traffic medians) over the inactive tracks degraded parts of the right-of-way. At the start of October 2005, as this part of town started being repopulated, bus service began running on the St. Charles line.

The section running from Canal Street to Lee Circle via Carondelet Street and St. Charles Street in the Central Business District was restored December 19, 2006 at 10:30 a.m. Central time. Service from Lee Circle to Napoleon Avenue in uptown New Orleans was restored November 10, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. RTA restored streetcar service on the rest of St. Charles Ave. on December 23, 2007. Service along the remainder of the line on Carrollton Ave. to Claiborne Avenue resumed June 22, 2008.[30][31][32][33] The time was needed to repair the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina and to perform other maintenance and upgrades to the lines that had been scheduled before the hurricane. Leaving the line shut down and the electrical system unpowered allowed the upgrades to be performed more safely and easily.

Perhaps more serious was the effect on the system's rolling stock. The vintage green streetcars rode out the storm in the sealed barn in a portion of Old Carrollton that did not flood, and were undamaged. However, the newer red cars (with the exception of one which was in Carrollton for repair work at the time) were in a different barn that unfortunately did flood, and all of them were rendered inoperable; early estimates were that each car would cost between $800,000 and $1,000,000 to restore. In December 2006, RTA received a $46 million grant to help pay for the car restoration efforts. The first restored cars were to be placed in service early in 2009.

Service on the Canal Street Line was restored in December 2005, with several historic St. Charles line green cars transferred to serve there while the flood-damaged red cars were being repaired. The eventual reopening of all lines was made a major priority for the city as it rebuilt.

Brookville Equipment Corporation (BEC) of Pennsylvania was awarded the contract to provide the components to rebuild 31 New Orleans' streetcars to help the city bring its transportation infrastructure closer to full capacity. The streetcars were submerged in over five feet of water while parked in their car barn, and all electrical components affected by the flooding had to be replaced.[34] BEC's engineering and drafting departments immediately began work on this three-year project to return these New Orleans icons to service. The trucks for the cars were remanufactured by BEC with upgraded Saminco drives and TMV control systems.[35] Painting, body work, and final assembly of the restored streetcars was carried out by RTA craftsmen at Carrollton Station Shops. As of March 2009, sufficient red cars had been repaired to take over all service on the Canal Street and Riverfront lines. As of June 2009, the last three Canal Street cars were scheduled for repair. The seven Riverfront cars were worked on next; they began to return to service in early 2010.[36]

Current lines[edit]

The St. Charles Streetcar Line is the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world, having opened in 1835. Each car operating on the line is a historic landmark. It runs from Canal Street all the way to the end of St. Charles Avenue at South Carrolton Avenue, then out South Carrolton Avenue to its terminal at Carrolton and Claiborne.

The Canal Streetcar Line, which originally operated from 1861 to 1964 and which was rebuilt and reopened in 2004, runs the entire length of Canal Street, from near the Mississippi River to the cemeteries at City Park Avenue. A branch streetcar line turns off of Canal Street into North Carrollton Avenue to the entrance of City Park at Esplanade Avenue, near the New Orleans Museum of Art. Beginning July 31, 2017, and completed on December 4, a new loop terminal for the Cemeteries Branch was built north of City Park Avenue on Canal Boulevard, providing passengers with better access to transfer between the streetcars and connecting bus lines. Following a month of testing and training, the new loop went into service January 7, 2018.[37][38] At times in the past, some Canal cars have operated through on the Riverfront tracks from the French Market terminal to Canal Street, before proceeding out Canal. Effective Sunday September 30, 2018, both branches of the Canal line operate 24 hours a day, and operate on the Riverfront tracks between Canal Street and the French Market terminal at Esplanade.[39]

The Riverfront Streetcar Line opened October 14, 1988, and runs parallel to the river from Esplanade Avenue along the edge of the French Quarter, past Canal Street, to the Convention Center above Julia Street in the Arts District.

The Rampart–St. Claude Streetcar Line, opened on January 28, 2013, running along Loyola Avenue from New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal to Canal Street, and was extended along Rampart St., McShane Pl., and St. Claude Avenue to Elysian Fields Avenue effective October 2, 2016. Prior to the extension, it was known as the Loyola-UPT Line and turned off of Loyola Avenue to run along Canal Street to the river, and on weekends on the Riverfront line tracks to the French Market. The line no longer operates down Canal Street to the river, nor offers weekend service on the Riverfront line.[40] The extension of the line to Elysian Fields Avenue was known as the French Quarter Rail Expansion and entailed building 1.5 mi (2.4 km) of track with six sheltered stops, and with track laid in the street next to the neutral ground, like the track for the original 2013 portion of the line. Preparation for construction began in December 2014, and a groundbreaking ceremony was held January 28, 2015 to begin actual construction.[40][41]

Future network expansion[edit]

New Orleans streetcar network:

existing, active planning, future extensions

Original plans for the French Quarter Rail Expansion called for the line to extend to Press Street, and to have a branch extending from St. Claude via Elysian Fields Avenue to connect with the Riverfront line at the foot of Elysian Fields and Esplanade Avenues, but those extensions have not been funded. A future extension is projected down St. Claude Avenue past Press Street to Poland Avenue, next to the Industrial Canal. This would require crossing the Norfolk Southern Railroad at Press Street, which the railroad opposes on safety grounds.[42][43][44][45][46]

Current rolling stock[edit]

The last 19th century Ford Bacon & Davis car (Ole 29), still in work car service on St. Charles Avenue, 2008.

The St. Charles Avenue Line has traditionally used streetcars of the type that were common all over the United States in the early parts of the 20th century. Most of the streetcars running on this line are Perley Thomas cars dating from the 1920s. The one exception is an 1890s vintage streetcar that is still in running condition; it is used for maintenance and special purposes. Unlike most North American cities with streetcar systems, New Orleans never adopted PCC cars in the 1930s or 1940s, and never traded in older streetcars for modern light rail vehicles in the later 20th century. New Orleanians also continue to prefer use of the term streetcar, rather than trolley, tram, or light rail.

In the Carrollton neighborhood, the RTA has a streetcar barn, called Carrollton Station, where the streetcars of the city's lines are stored and maintained. The block wide complex consists of two buildings: an older carbarn at Dante and Jeannette Streets and a newer barn at Willow and Dublin Streets. The shop there has become adept at duplicating any part needed for the vintage cars.[4]

With the addition of the new Riverfront and Canal lines, more vehicles were needed for the system. The RTA's shops built two groups of modern cars as near duplicates of the older cars in appearance. One group of seven cars was built for the Riverfront line in 1997, and another group for the restored Canal Street line in 1999 (one car) and 2002–2003 (23 cars). The trucks for the 2002–2003 cars were manufactured by Brookville Equipment Corporation.[47] These new cars can be distinguished from the older vehicles by their bright red color; unlike the older cars, they are ADA-compliant, and the Canal Street cars are air conditioned.

Before Hurricane Katrina, the historic cars ran exclusively on the St. Charles Avenue Line, and the newer cars on the other two lines. However, in the wake of hurricane damage to the St. Charles line tracks and overhead wires, and to almost all of the new red cars, the older cars were run on Canal Street and Riverfront until the new cars could be repaired. Using whatever worked wherever it could be run continued for several years. By 2010 enough restored streetcars were back in service to again confine the historic Perley Thomas cars to the St. Charles line." -wikipedia

OSIRIS-REx has spent almost two years circling near-Earth asteroid Bennu. Tomorrow, it swoops in to scoop up a sample. But Bennu has turned out to be more complicated than we expected. Thanks to laser altimetry data and high-resolution imagery from OSIRIS-REx, we can take a tour of Bennu’s remarkable terrain.

When NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission arrived at asteroid Bennu in December 2018, its close-up images confirmed what mission planners had predicted nearly two decades before: Bennu is made of loose material weakly clumped together by gravity, and shaped like a spinning top.

Scientists had expected Bennu’s surface to consist of fine-grained material like a sandy beach, but were instead greeted by a rugged world littered with boulders — the size of cars, the size of houses, the size of football fields.

Take a tour of this fascinating asteroid that could help unlock secrets of the solar system's formation.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; data provided by NASA/University of Arizona/CSA/York University/Open University/MDA

More info/download video files: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13729

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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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Green Sea Turtles basking in the sun on Tern Island in the French Frigate Shoals, Hawaii.

Camera: Olympus OM-1

Lens: Olympus OM-System S Zuiko MC Auto-Zoom f/4 35-70mm. Yellow filter.

Film: Adox HR-50

Developer: Beerenol (Rainier Beer)

August 5, 1979. The Chessie System's F7 farewell trip comes through Benwood, West Virginia.

A view of the Juice thermal development model inside the Large Space Simulator at ESA's technical heart in the Netherlands.

Juice, or the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, is ESA's future mission to explore the Solar System's largest planet and its ocean-bearing moons. Planned for launch in June 2022, it will embark on a seven year cruise that will make use of several flybys – of Earth, Venus, Earth, Mars, and again Earth – before leaving the inner Solar System for Jupiter.

In order to ensure that the spacecraft will survive the extreme temperature variations it will experience along the journey, a thermal verification test was completed in May 2018.

The spacecraft model, wrapped in multi-layer insulation, is visible in the foreground, while the high-energy lamps and mirrors of the Sun simulator can be seen in the upper part of the frame. The Sun simulator was used to heat the Sun-facing side of the spacecraft model to around 200ºC. Meanwhile the internal temperature of the vacuum chamber was lowered to -180ºC by thermal shrouds filled with liquid nitrogen to reproduce the cold conditions of the sides that will face away from the Sun.

This hot phase was followed by the cold phase, which simulated the low-temperature environment at Jupiter by maintaining the frigid conditions inside the chamber and switching off the Sun simulation lamps.

More about the testing campaign: Juice comes in from extreme temperature test

Credits: ESA–M.Cowan

Credit to Soren (www.flickr.com/photos/bricklovinfreakboy/) for the Chub base.

The Tumble Tiger is a standard Chub space proofed and outfitted with off the shelf parts to supplement the Terran Transit Marines squads' far more advanced Ospreys housed in the Byron System's Transit Gate. The Tumble Tiger is designed to engage with enemy frames that have made it to the surface of the Gate and dislodge them. Because projectile weapons or plasma edges may inadvertently damage the Gate, the Tiger executes its mission in a less orthodox fashion. Using a system of 14 thrusters and fueled by 4 additional fuel tanks, the Tiger barrels into enemy frames at high velocities, using a combination of its crash shield and twin eskrima batons to bullrush them, usually into the killzones of point defense clusters or the TTM Ospreys.

Hull Classification: DD-20

Class & type:

Valley Forge Class Destroyer

Complement:

22 officers, 298 enlisted

Armament:

4x Electromagnetic rail system

16x 50 caliber anti-ship gun, mounted on eight turrets

4x 38 caliber twin-barrel point defense cannons

20x Superluminal torpedo tubes

--

The third Valley Forge-class destroyer commissioned by the Union Space Navy, the USS Ticonderoga entered service in 2265.

The "Tico" served with distinction during the pivotal final engagement of "Operation Black Sword", where she and two Hulick-class destroyers, USS Saratoga and USS Ranger, successfully engaged and destroyed a superior enemy taskforce that was en route to attack the civilian hospital complex in the Beta Aquilae star system. By activating their stealth suites and hiding in the system's Kuiper belt, the three destroyers were able to play cat and mouse for 26 hours with the enemy taskforce and lure them into orbit around the system's Jovian gas giant. The planet's gravity well limited the movement of the enemy's larger battlecruisers and carriers, and evened the odds for the more nimble destroyers.

Ships of the Valley Forge-class:

Valley Forge, Bunker Hill, Ticonderoga, Yorktown, Antietam, Gettysburg, Normandy

--

Credit to Red Spacecat for his amazing USS Saratoga, which is the inspiration for this design.

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The quench system arm and nozzle are seen at the test area where the second and final qualification motor (QM-2) test for the Space Launch System’s booster will take place, Sunday, June 26, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion Systems test facilities in Promontory, Utah. The test is scheduled for Tuesday, June 28 at 10:05 a.m. EDT (8:05 a.m. MDT). Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The antenna that will connect Europe’s BepiColombo with Earth is being testing for the extreme conditions it must endure orbiting Mercury.

The trial is taking place over 10 days inside ESA’s Large Space Simulator, which, at 15 m high and 10 m across, is cavernous enough to accommodate an upended double decker bus.

The 1.5 m-diameter high-gain antenna, plus its boom and support structure, are subjected to a shaft of intense sunlight in vacuum conditions, while gradually rotated through 90º.

The antenna will be part of ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter, one of two main components of the January 2017 BepiColombo mission – the other being Japan’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter.

The two will be launched together in a stack, carried by the Mercury Transfer Module for their seven-year journey towards the Solar System’s innermost world.

The Simulator is part of the largest spacecraft testing facility in Europe, at ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

The mammoth chamber’s high-performance pumps create a vacuum a billion times lower than standard sea-level atmosphere, while the chamber’s black interior walls are lined with tubes pumped full of –190°C liquid nitrogen to mimic the extreme cold of deep space.

At the same time, the hexagonal mirrors seen at the top of the picture reflect simulated sunlight onto the satellite from a set of 25 kW bulbs more typically employed to project IMAX movies.

In this case, the alignment of the 121 mirrors was adjusted to tighten the focus of their light beam, reproducing the intensity of sunlight experienced in Mercury orbit – around 10 times more intense than terrestrial illumination.

Credit: ESA–A. Le Floc'h

The Marseilles job sits in front of the depot at Ottawa on the Chessie System's New Rock sub. The crew is inside getting their train orders and talking to the agent about the work they have to do. I had been called off the furlough board and was happy to be out there on the job.

Hey guys,

great to be back here :) After 5 months nothing to do with bricks and building I'm proudly announce to be back in business. Like every time disney release something new from Mando and Grogu my building motivation increased from 0 to 100. Almost a half year my building motivation and inspiration didn't excist so it was very quiet on my social media.

But for now I want to start with this creation a new building series: Season 3 vignettes from the disney+ series THE MANDALORIAN.

Starting with a small scene on Nevarro from the first chapter: My goal was to catch the new look of that beautiful city and I hope I got it. Here is a small summary of the scene.

[...]

Djarin flies the N-1 starfighter to Nevarro where he is greeted by air traffic control. He tells them that he has come to visit an "old friend." Djarin walks through the streets of Nevarro City while Grogu rides in his repulsorlift cradle. Djarin notices that the streets are cleaner and safer. Droids and beings of different species roam through the streets. Kowakian monkey-lizards watch from trees.

As the two pass a statue of IG-11, Djarin reminds Grogu of his old droid friend. Djarin greets Greef Karga, who has become Nevarro's new High Magistrate. Inside his office, Karga tells Djarin that Nevarro has become an official trade spur of the Hydian Way. Karga also tells him that Nevarro has been undergoing a construction boom due to mining in the system's asteroid field. Karga offers Djarin and Grogu a parcel of land to settle in the outskirts of the city.

[...]

Source: starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Chapter_17:_The_Apostate

I hope you like my small comeback vignette and as alwaya I would be happy about reading some feedback from you!

Please share your opinion in the comments below.

Greetings Kevin

See you for the next building ;)

Date: 19 Nov 2013

Comet ISON shows off its tail in this three-minute exposure taken on 19 Nov. 2013 at 6:10 a.m. EST, using a 14-inch telescope located at the Marshall Space Flight Center. The comet is just nine days away from its close encounter with the sun; hopefully it will survive to put on a nice show during the first week of December. The star images are trailed because the telescope is tracking on the comet, which is now exhibiting obvious motion with respect to the background stars over a period of minutes.

At the time of this image, Comet ISON was some 44 million miles from the sun -- and 80 million miles from Earth -- moving at a speed of 136,700 miles per hour.

Credit: NASA/MSFC/Aaron Kingery

--------

More details on Comet ISON:

Comet ISON began its trip from the Oort cloud region of our solar system and is now travelling toward the sun. The comet will reach its closest approach to the sun on Thanksgiving Day -- 28 Nov 2013 -- skimming just 730,000 miles above the sun's surface. If it comes around the sun without breaking up, the comet will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere with the naked eye, and from what we see now, ISON is predicted to be a particularly bright and beautiful comet.

Catalogued as C/2012 S1, Comet ISON was first spotted 585 million miles away in September 2012. This is ISON's very first trip around the sun, which means it is still made of pristine matter from the earliest days of the solar system’s formation, its top layers never having been lost by a trip near the sun. Comet ISON is, like all comets, a dirty snowball made up of dust and frozen gases like water, ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide -- some of the fundamental building blocks that scientists believe led to the formation of the planets 4.5 billion years ago.

NASA has been using a vast fleet of spacecraft, instruments, and space- and Earth-based telescope, in order to learn more about this time capsule from when the solar system first formed.

The journey along the way for such a sun-grazing comet can be dangerous. A giant ejection of solar material from the sun could rip its tail off. Before it reaches Mars -- at some 230 million miles away from the sun -- the radiation of the sun begins to boil its water, the first step toward breaking apart. And, if it survives all this, the intense radiation and pressure as it flies near the surface of the sun could destroy it altogether.

This collection of images show ISON throughout that journey, as scientists watched to see whether the comet would break up or remain intact.

The comet reaches its closest approach to the sun on Thanksgiving Day -- Nov. 28, 2013 -- skimming just 730,000 miles above the sun’s surface. If it comes around the sun without breaking up, the comet will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere with the naked eye, and from what we see now, ISON is predicted to be a particularly bright and beautiful comet.

ISON stands for International Scientific Optical Network, a group of observatories in ten countries who have organized to detect, monitor, and track objects in space. ISON is managed by the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

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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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What do you do when trash is piling up and there's nowhere to put it? You invent teleportation of course! Then you retrofit a fleet of municipal custodial vehicles to power miniaturized teleporters and send them on their way. The original vehicle had its nose lengthened to house the power cells and micro-reactor necessary to power the device, and the whole frame was reworked to bear the weight of the device. The result is a somewhat ungainly vehicle that is notoriously difficult to control.

Although the far-side output location for the teleporter is a closely guarded secret, the rumor-mill places it high above a barren lava plain on the third moon of one of the system's gas giants. Speaking of rumors, gossip and tall tales surround the trash teleporter. There are stories of city workers looking the other way or taking payoffs as organized crime syndicates dispose of evidence and "competition". Although the manufacturers insist that the portals are one-way, city workers insist they have seen "things" coming back through the gateway: from the odd grotesque hand reaching through, to the occasional swarm of flying creatures funneling out of the vortex. There's even whispers that the municipal garage is now inhabited by a shape-shifting beast that made its way through when the teleporter was left on overnight by a careless worker...

The Zagreus...

After winning the grand prix rally at the outer orbit, Vield's homeworld Bensin was attacked by the Deepness. He must fly back to save his little brother, unfortunately the only ship that he can take is the one that he can't control, because of its A.I. system's upgraded prejudice program.

Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved

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London | Architecture | Night Photography | London Underground

London Underground - Mind The Gap

Red-Footed Boobies on the old sea wall on Tern Island in the French Frigate Shoals, Hawaii.

Camera: Olympus OM-1

Lens: Olympus OM-System S Zuiko MC Auto-Zoom f/4 35-70mm. Yellow filter.

Film: Adox HR-50

Developer: Beerenol (Rainier Beer)

里山の蝋梅。

Photographed with OLYMPUS OM-SYSTEM S ZUIKO AUTO-ZOOM 1:4 f=75-150mm No.276091

MDOT F9PH-7183 (nee B&O F7A-369 to 4566, then MARC 83, now Branson Scenic 98) & APCU 7100 (nee B&O F7A-293A to 4553 to MARC APCU 7100) are on the point of a W/B commuter. The train is on track one of Chessie System's Metropolitan Sub near Seneca Fill.

Two White Terns on Tern Island in the French Frigate Shoals, Hawaii.

Camera: Olympus OM-1

Lens: Olympus OM-System S Zuiko MC Auto-Zoom f/4 35-70mm. Yellow filter.

Film: Adox HR-50

Developer: Beerenol (Rainier Beer)

Rho Ophiuchi is a multiple star system in the constellation Ophiuchus. The central system has an apparent magnitude of 4.63. Based on the central system's parallax of 9.03 mas, it is located about 360 light-years away. M4 is a globular cluster at a distance of 7.1k light years.

Captured at F/2.8 and iso1600, 20 x 90s + darks, flats.Canon 800D and Canon 200mm fix lens.

Another shot from my visit to the Taralga Wind Farm in NSW, Australia, today’s photo shows the dregs of the Milky Way’s core region and central-band as they were setting in the western sky two Saturdays ago. I messed up with my lighting of the tree, so it’s darker than I intended, but its silhouette shows some of its misshapen frame and the way it leans to the north.

Over on the right, you can see a transmission mast, pointing towards the lovely beacons of Jupiter and Saturn, our Solar System’s largest and second-largest planets. As well as the indistinct fuzz of the Milky Way on the horizon, the mast signifies something else that was subject to fading. The wind turbines at this farm aren’t visible in my photo, but they made their presence known by killing off the TV reception for the town of Taralga when they began service in 2015. The transmission mast–in fact, a retransmission mast–was erected by the owners of the installation to restore the service to the locals, who had green electricity to power their televisions, but nothing to watch.

My photo is another single-frame image (my favourite format), that I shot with my Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens @ f/3.2, using an exposure time of 15 seconds @ ISO 6400.

The River Tummel (Scottish Gaelic: Uisge Theimheil) is a river in Perth and Kinross, Scotland. Water from the Tummel is used in the Tummel hydro-electric power scheme, operated by SSE.

As a tributary of the River Tay, the Tummel is included as part of the River Tay Special Area of Conservation. The designation notes the river system's importance for salmon, otters, brook lampreys, river lampreys and sea lampreys.

Discharging from Loch Rannoch, it flows east to a point near the Falls of Tummel, where it bends to the southeast, a direction which it maintains until it falls into the River Tay, just below Logierait, after a course of 58 miles (93 km) from its source in Stob Ghabbar (3,565 ft (1,087 m)). Its only considerable affluent is the Garry, 24 miles (39 km) long, an impetuous river which issues from Loch Garry (2.5 mi (4.0 km) and 1,334 ft (407 m) above sea level). Some 2 miles from its outlet from Loch Rannoch the river expands into Dunalastair Water (or Dunalastair Reservoir), a man made loch formed by a weir, part of the Tummel Hydro Electric power scheme. About midway in its course the Tummel expands into Loch Tummel, between which and the confluence with the Garry occur the Pass and Falls of the Tummel, which are rather in the nature of rapids, the descent altogether amounting to 15 ft (4.6 m).[4] Loch Tummel was previously 4.43 km (2.75 mi) long and 39 m (128 ft) deep, but with the construction of the Clunie Dam in 1950, the water level was raised by 4.5 metres, and Loch Tummel is now approximately 11 km (7 mi) long.

The scenery throughout this reach is most picturesque, culminating at the point above the eastern extremity of the loch, known as the "Queen's View" (Queen Victoria made the view famous in 1866, although it is said to have been named after Queen Isabel, wife of Robert the Bruce). The chief places of interest on the river are Kinloch Rannoch; Dunalastair, a rocky hill in well-wooded grounds, the embellishment of which was largely due to Alexander Robertson of Struan, the Jacobite and poet, from whom the spot takes its name (the stronghold of Alexander); Foss; Faskally House (beautifully situated on the left bank); Pitlochry; and Ballinluig.

The ancient name of the river, in its upper reaches at least, was the Dubhag.

While these images look horribly crooked look again. Yes the train is listing badly but the horizon is dead on. That should tell you how little used and less maintained these tracks are.

GMCR GP9 804 and VTR GP40-2 307 have dropped their train behind them at MP 3.15 on Washington County Railroad's M&B Division and are seem making an ultra rare move to the east on what is now known as the M&WR spur. These rails they are on once led another 35 miles east to a junction with the Boston & Maine / Canadian Pacific Conn River Mainline at Wells River. Built in 1873 it was a through route operated by the Montpelier & Wells River and later Barre & Chelsea Railroads. But in November 1956 the last train ran the length of the line and the rails were removed. All that remained on this end was about an 1800 ft stub from this switch to a couple of customers in East Montpelier. With those customers long since closed even this stub was out of service for years and overgrown with trees. Recently cleared by present operator Vermont Railway, they have been loading company material here and this is why the crew had to make the rare move up the old M&WR mainline to switch a couple tie gons.

The location of the junction where they diverged was once known as Barre Transfer because here the rails of the Central Vermont, Barre Railroad and Montpelier & Wells River all met. The particular rails their train is sitting on are ex Central Vermont, first laid in 1875 when the 1849 branch into the capital city was extended to Barre. In 1957 Sam Pinsly's Montpelier & Barre purchased them and he quickly consolidated the parallel CV and old Montpelier & Wells River (later Barre & Chelsea) routes between this point at Barre. The state purchased these rails in 1980 when the M&B petitioned for abandonment and they've had multiple contract operators over the years until finally setting on Vermont Rail System's Washington County Subsidiary about two decades ago.

One historical tidbit that this image got me thinking about was the similarity to two other long abandoned but one time east west thru routes cutting across northern New England. While nearly all the historic North South routes in New England still survive nearly intact only the Green Mountain's ex Rutland line, SLR's ex Grand Trunk and the former CP International of Maine east-west routes remain. The old Mountain Sub is a tourist operation and half out of service. This line is long abandoned and similar fates befell the Northern, the old Concord and Montreal. the Claremont and Concord and the St. Johnsbury and Lake Champlain Routes.

The later two are particularly interesting in that like the M&WR route here both the C&C and StJ&LC came into the fold of the Boston & Maine in the early 20th century then were spun off to local interests within decades. In the middle 20th century all would end up in the Pinsly family of shortlines in some form or fashion before ultimately losing traffic and being abandoned. While Pinsly never owned the line between here and Wells River, his company did save the remainder of the M&WR and operate it for nearly two decades after the Barre & Chelsea petitioned for abandonment.

Montpelier, Vermont

Friday April 24, 2020

Just another wider frame of this scene cause it's just so cool despite the sad light...or lack thereof.

While I lucked out with sun in most spots of the chase this was a particular disappointment since it was such a cool scene that would have been stunning in full sun. CPKC GP20C-ECO 2280 and VTR GP38-2 209 lead train NPWJ south past Morrison's Custom Feeds mill at about MP L53.2. The track here reminds me of those old photos of the Milwaukee Road branchlines in the Dakotas back in the 1970s that had to be mowed. They did not stop to switch here at this long time steady customer and kept on rolling along through the grass that has grown rampantly due to leakage from hoppers when trains stop here to work.

The Canadian Pacific Railway had been operating in the state of Vermont for 115 years when they finally retrenched in 1996 and sold the Newport and Lyndonville Subs to Iron Roads Railways which created the new Northern Vermont Railway which took over on September 28th of that year. The Iron Roads system was bankrupt within a half dozen years and the NV ceased to exist with the Lyndonville Sub and the former Boston and Maine Conn River Mainline between Newport and White River Junction being purchased by the State of Vermont and contracted to Vermont Rail System's Washington County Railroad Subsidiary. The WACR is now at the two decade mark operating the 103 mile line while the Newport Sub north into Canada passed to succesors Montreal, Maine and Atlantic and then Central Maine and Quebec until remarkably returning to the CP fold in 2020 when they purchased the CMQ.

Recently VRS and CP have been pooling power, with one unit from each running thru between White River Junction, VT and Farnham, QC on an up and back every other day schedule. This harkens back to the B&M pool power days so with a bit of imagination one can pretend this is train 904 headed down from Newport to hand off to the B&M.

Barnet, Vermont

Friday August 11, 2023

The San Francisco cable car system is the world's last manually operated cable car system and an icon of the city of San Francisco. The system forms part of the intermodal urban transport network operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway, which also includes the separate E Embarcadero and F Market & Wharves heritage streetcar lines, and the Muni Metro modern light rail system. Of the 23 cable car lines established between 1873 and 1890, only three remain (one of which combines parts of two earlier lines): two routes from downtown near Union Square to Fisherman's Wharf, and a third route along California Street. While the cable cars are used to a certain extent by commuters, the vast majority of the millions of passengers who use the system every year are tourists, and as a result, the wait to get on can often reach two hours or more. They are among the most significant tourist attractions in the city, along with Alcatraz Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Fisherman's Wharf. San Francisco's cable cars are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are designated as a National Historic Landmark.

In 1869, Andrew Smith Hallidie had the idea for a cable car system in San Francisco, reportedly after witnessing an accident in which a streetcar drawn by horses over wet cobblestones slid backwards, killing the horses. Hallidie solicited financial support in 1871 and 1872, and his primary backers were Henry L. Davis, Joseph Britton, and James Moffit.

The first successful cable-operated street running train was the Clay Street Hill Railroad, which had its inaugural run on August 2, 1873. The promoter of the line was Hallidie, and the engineer was William Eppelsheimer; both Hallidie and Eppelsheimer obtained several patents for their work on the Clay Street line. The line involved the use of grip cars, which carried the grip that engaged with the cable, towing trailer cars; the design was the first to use grips. The term "grip" became synonymous with the operator.

The line started regular service on September 1, 1873, and its success led it to become the template for other cable car transit systems. It was a financial success, and Hallidie's patents were enforced on other cable car promoters, making him wealthy.

Accounts differ as to the precise degree of Hallidie's involvement in the inception of the line, and to the exact date on which it first ran. According to the franchise granted by the city, operations were required to begin by August 1, 1873. Retrospective published in 1895 stated that a single car was run over the line at 4 AM on the morning of August 1 with few witnesses to ensure the franchise would not expire.  Eppelsheimer would later bring a suit against Hallidie and the Clay Street Hill RR in June 1877 over patents, but dismissed it voluntarily the following March.

The next cable car line to open was the Sutter Street Railway, which converted from horse operation in January 1877. This line introduced the side grip, and lever operation, both designed by Henry Casebolt and his assistant Asa Hovey, and patented by Casebolt. This idea came about because Casebolt did not want to pay Hallidie royalties of $50,000 a year for the use of his patent. The side grip allowed cable cars to cross at intersections.

In 1878, Leland Stanford opened his California Street Cable Railroad (Cal Cable). This company's first line was on California Street, and is the oldest cable car line still in operation. In 1880, the Geary Street, Park & Ocean Railway began operation. The Presidio and Ferries Railway followed two years later, and was the first cable company to include curves on its routes. The curves were "let-go" curves, in which the car drops the cable and coasts around the curve on its own momentum.

In 1883, the Market Street Cable Railway opened its first line. This company was controlled by the Southern Pacific Railroad and would grow to become San Francisco's largest cable car operator. At its peak, it operated five lines, all of which converged on Market Street to a common terminus at the Ferry Building. During rush hours, cars left that terminus every 15 seconds.

In 1888, the Ferries and Cliff House Railway opened its initial two-line system. The Powell–Mason line is still operated on the same route today; their other route was the Powell–Washington–Jackson line, stretches of which are used by today's Powell–Hyde line. The Ferries & Cliff House Railway was also responsible for the building of a car barn and powerhouse at Washington and Mason, and this site is still in use today. In the same year, it also purchased the original Clay Street Hill Railway, which it incorporated into a new Sacramento–Clay line in 1892.

In 1889, the Omnibus Railroad and Cable Company became the last new cable car operator in San Francisco. The following year the California Street Cable Railroad opened two new lines, these being the last entirely new cable car lines built in the city. One of them was the O'Farrell–Jones–Hyde line, the Hyde section of which still remains in operation as part of the current Powell–Hyde line.

In all, twenty-three lines were established between 1873 and 1890.

Originally, the cables were powered by stationary steam engines. For the initial three cables, the Ferries & Cliff House Railway constructed a three-story structure to house two 450-horsepower coal-burning steam engines. The building was complete with a 185-foot-tall smokestack to vent away the heavy black smoke created by the Welsh anthracite coal that the company burned. Expansion of service required two additional 500-horsepower coal-fired steam engines in 1890, and the number and type of engines continued to vary over time. Coal consumption in 1893 was about 10 tons per day. The system was converted to oil in 1901, and the lessened amount of smoke allowed the smokestack to be shortened to 60’; this shortened smokestack still exists at Washington-Mason today.

Electric energy was introduced in 1912, when a 600-horsepower General Electric motor came on-line. By 1926, all steam operation of the cable ended when a second complete electrical drive was installed, a 750-horsepower General Electric product. With reduction in the number of cable car lines, the single 750-horsepower electric motor took over the job of running all of the lines. The problem with that configuration was that if one cable car on one line broke down, all lines had to be stopped. After the 1984 reconstruction, each of the four cables for the three lines (California, Hyde, Mason and Powell) is separately powered by its own 510-hp electric motor.

The first electric streetcars in San Francisco began operation in 1892 under the auspices of the San Francisco and San Mateo Electric Railway.

By the beginning of 1906 many of San Francisco's remaining cable cars were under the control of the United Railroads of San Francisco (URR), although Cal Cable and the Geary Street Company remained independent. URR was pressing to convert many of its cable lines to overhead electric traction, but this was met with resistance from opponents who objected to what they saw as ugly overhead lines on the major thoroughfares of the city center.

Those objections disappeared after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The quake and resulting fire destroyed the power houses and car barns of both the Cal Cable and the URR's Powell Street lines, together with the 117 cable cars stored within them. The subsequent race to rebuild the city allowed the URR to replace most of its cable car lines with electric streetcar lines. By 1912, only eight cable car lines remained, all with steep grades impassable to electric streetcars. In the 1920s and 1930s, these remaining lines came under pressure from the much improved motor buses of the era, which could now climb steeper hills than the electric streetcar. By 1944, five of those cable car lines had survived: the two Powell Street lines – by then under municipal ownership, as part of Muni – and the three lines owned by the still-independent Cal Cable.

In 1947, Mayor Roger Lapham proposed the closure of the two municipally owned lines. In response, a joint meeting of 27 women's civic groups, led by Friedel Klussmann, formed the Citizens' Committee to Save the Cable Cars. In a famous battle of wills, the citizens' committee eventually forced a referendum on an amendment to the city charter, compelling the city to continue operating the Powell Street lines. This passed overwhelmingly, by 166,989 votes to 51,457. Klussman led another campaign in 1948 to have the city acquire Cal Cable, but the referendum fell short of the required 2⁄3 majority, with 58% in favor of acquisition; a second referendum in 1949, requiring a simple majority, passed and the city began negotiations with Cal Cable.

In August 1951, the three Cal Cable lines were shut down when the company was unable to afford insurance. The city purchased and reopened the lines in January 1952, but another referendum that would have funded maintenance for the California Street tracks and the powerhouse and car barn at Hyde and California failed in November 1953. The amendment to the city charter did not protect the newly acquired Cal Cable lines, and the city proceeded with plans to replace them with buses; in addition, businesses in Union Square and downtown began advancing plans to convert O'Farrell to automobile traffic, which would remove service through the Tenderloin district via the inner section of the O'Farrell Jones & Hyde line. The result was a compromise that formed the current system: a protected system made up of the California Street line from Cal Cable, the Powell–Mason line already in municipal ownership, and a third hybrid line formed by grafting the Hyde Street section of Cal Cable's O'Farrell-Jones-Hyde line onto a truncated Powell–Washington–Jackson line, now known as the Powell–Hyde line.

This solution required some rebuilding to convert the Hyde Street trackage and terminus to operation by the single-ended cars of the Powell line, and also to allow the whole system to be operated from a single car barn and power house. Much of the infrastructure remained unchanged from the time of the earthquake.

By 1979, the cable car system had become unsafe; it needed to be closed for seven months for urgently-needed repairs. A subsequent engineering evaluation concluded that it needed comprehensive rebuilding at a cost of $60 million. Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who took charge of the effort, helped win federal funding for the bulk of the rebuilding job. In 1982 the cable car system was closed again for a complete rebuild. This involved the complete replacement of 69 city blocks' worth of tracks and cable channels, the complete rebuilding of the car barn and powerhouse within the original outer brick walls, new propulsion equipment, and the repair or rebuild of 37 cable cars. The system reopened on June 21, 1984, in time to benefit from the publicity that accompanied San Francisco's hosting of that year's Democratic National Convention.

Since 1984, Muni has continued to upgrade the system. Work has included rebuilding of another historical car, the building of nine brand new replacement cars, the building of a new terminal and turntable at the Hyde and Beach terminus, and a new turntable at the Powell and Market terminus.

Between 2017 and 2019, the system received a second, but less extensive rebuild. Over the two year project, Muni rehabilitated the cable car system's gearboxes, which had been in service since the last rebuild in 1984.

The system was shut down in March 2020 to protect operators during the COVID-19 pandemic, as cable cars do not offer a compartment separating them from passengers (unlike Muni buses, which kept running). Limited service on all three lines resumed on August 2, 2021. Full revenue service began on September 4. On September 9, a valve failure caused the fire suppression system in the carbarn to activate, shutting down electric power to the powerhouse. Service resumed on September 18.

The cable cars are an iconic part of San Francisco and are protected National Historic Landmarks, but they are not without their critics. Most complaints center around the high cost of operating a system that mostly serves tourists, and the large number of accidents involving the cable cars.

The cable car lines serve around seven million passengers per year, but the vast majority are tourists, rather than commuters. The area where the cable cars operate is well-served by a large number of buses and trolleybuses that often give residents better options for their trips. Also, during busy times, the wait to board a cable car can often reach two hours or more.

While Muni does allow monthly passholders to ride the cable cars at no additional charge, single ride fares are more than triple the fares charged on other Muni routes. The high fares led the San Francisco Chronicle to describe the cable cars in 2017 as a "cash cow" for Muni, yielding a yearly revenue of around $30 million. Still, according to Mission Local, the cable car system had a $46 million operating deficit in 2019. In 2006, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom reported that he had observed several conductors pocketing cash fares from riders without receipt. The following year, the San Francisco auditor's office reported that the city was not receiving the expected revenue from cable cars, with an estimated 40% of cable car riders riding for free. Muni's management disputed this figure and pointed out that safe operation, rather than revenue collection, is the primary duty of conductors. In 2017, after an audit showing that some conductors were "consistently turn[ing] in low amounts of cash", as well as a sting operation, one conductor was arrested on charges of felony embezzlement.

Among U.S. mass transportation systems the cable cars have the most accidents per year and per vehicle mile, with 126 accidents and 151 injuries reported in the 10 years ending 2013. In the three years ending 2013 the city paid some $8 million to settle four dozen cable car accident claims.

Courtesy NASA.

Lagrange Points are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two body system like the Sun and the Earth produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion. These can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position.

Lagrange points are named in honor of Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange.

There are five special points where a small mass can orbit in a constant pattern with two larger masses. The Lagrange Points are positions where the gravitational pull of two large masses precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them. This mathematical problem, known as the "General Three-Body Problem" was considered by Lagrange in his prize winning paper (Essai sur le Problème des Trois Corps, 1772).

Of the five Lagrange points, three are unstable and two are stable. The unstable Lagrange points - labeled L1, L2 and L3 - lie along the line connecting the two large masses. The stable Lagrange points - labeled L4 and L5 - form the apex of two equilateral triangles that have the large masses at their vertices. L4 leads the orbit of earth and L5 follows.

The L1 point of the Earth-Sun system affords an uninterrupted view of the sun and is currently home to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite SOHO.

The L2 point of the Earth-Sun system was the home to the WMAP spacecraft, current home of Planck, and future home of the James Webb Space Telescope. L2 is ideal for astronomy because a spacecraft is close enough to readily communicate with Earth, can keep Sun, Earth and Moon behind the spacecraft for solar power and (with appropriate shielding) provides a clear view of deep space for our telescopes. The L1 and L2 points are unstable on a time scale of approximately 23 days, which requires satellites orbiting these positions to undergo regular course and attitude corrections.

NASA is unlikely to find any use for the L3 point since it remains hidden behind the Sun at all times. The idea of a hidden planet has been a popular topic in science fiction writing.

The L4 and L5 points are home to stable orbits so long as the mass ratio between the two large masses exceeds 24.96. This condition is satisfied for both the Earth-Sun and Earth-Moon systems, and for many other pairs of bodies in the solar system. Objects found orbiting at the L4 and L5 points are often called Trojans after the three large asteroids Agamemnon, Achilles and Hector that orbit in the L4 and L5 points of the Jupiter-Sun system. (According to Homer, Hector was the Trojan champion slain by Achilles during King Agamemnon's siege of Troy). There are hundreds of Trojan Asteroids in the solar system. Most orbit with Jupiter, but others orbit with Mars. In addition, several of Saturn's moons have Trojan companions.

In 1956 the Polish astronomer Kordylewski discovered large concentrations of dust at the Trojan points of the Earth-Moon system. The DIRBE instrument on the COBE satellite confirmed earlier IRAS observations of a dust ring following the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The existence of this ring is closely related to the Trojan points, but the story is complicated by the effects of radiation pressure on the dust grains.

In 2010 NASA's WISE telescope finally confirmed the first Trojan asteroid (2010 TK7) around Earth's leading Lagrange point.

The second and final qualification motor (QM-2) test for the Space Launch System’s booster is seen, Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Orbital ATK Propulsion Systems test facilities in Promontory, Utah. During the Space Launch System flight the boosters will provide more than 75 percent of the thrust needed to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth, the first step on NASA’s Journey to Mars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)