Reducing variety is a factory approach to service design. This works when you can successfully constrain your inputs to a small number of possible states and control the environment where the service is delivered.

 

McDonald’s is an example of a service company that succeeds because it is able to reduce variety. Consider the McDonald’s drive-through experience: As a customer your orders are limited by what you can see on the menu. You order some quantity of menu items, which triggers a factory-like production process behind the scenes, while you pay at a payment window. You pick up your food at a delivery window. Purpose matches performance. Service delivered.

 

As a customer you are a willing participant in the factory experience. Your car is an item in an assembly line and you can be sure that the time between your order and the delivery of your food is carefully monitored by the company.

 

This works for McDonald’s because they have organized their promise around something that can be consistently and reliably be delivered in a factory-like way. For this to work, customers must follow the process as prescribed. If you walk in to a McDonald’s restaurant, you don’t expect the kind of service you would get in a sit-down restaurant. If you sat down at a table and waited to be served, you would be waiting a long time.

 

McDonald’s works more like a giant vending machine. You wait in line until you get to the machine interface, you put in your order and your money, and the food comes out the slot. This works for McDonald’s because they have narrowed customer expectations to match a factory-like service.

 

McDonald’s is an excellent service provider in their niche, not so much because they are excellent at service delivery; but rather because they have reduced their promise to a very narrow window, reducing variety in their inputs and controlling the environment as much as possible. There is a cost to this approach, however. People in such tightly-controlled systems don’t have a lot of autonomy and they have few opportunities to exercise creativity at work. So when a McDonald’s employee says “Have a nice day,” you might feel like it came from a robot. Because when people are treated like robots, they act like robots.

 

SNR G70.0-21.5 in Pegasus is a poorly known supernova remnant because, I suppose, it is one of the faintest known in the Milky Way, albeit also one of the largest. It began to be discovered in 2002, when some filaments were found in constellation Pegasus. Studies suggest it has around 90,000 years and it is located at about 3,200 light years, within the galactic halo and unusually far from the galactic plane. Its size is estimated in 290 light years.

Some of its filaments are quite straight when compared with other SNR, which indicates its old age.

 

This image covers an area of 6.4º x 5.2º.

 

During my research I could not find any photo of it besides one in a recent paper. Due to its extreme faintness, it was a real challenge to capture and process. Due to its large size, a mosaic was needed and due to several constrains, panels frames were taken in wildly different skies (Bortle 8 and Bortle 4). Also, I feel some more hours are needed to better highlight the (few) details it has.

 

This photo contains the information coming solely from Ha. In this one (flic.kr/p/2nTyPCJ) there is a version where RGB stars were added.

 

All in all, while not the most visually appealing photo I took, it was one for sure of the most interesting projects I've worked on.

 

Hope you enjoy.

 

Technical data:

 

Integration time:

 

Ha: 25h00

RGB: 13h26

 

Panel 1 (left)

Ha >> 07.Aug, 08.Aug, 01.Oct | 192 x 300 s (Barcarena, Portugal - Bortle 8)

RGB >>29.Sep | 326 x 60 s

 

Panel 2 (right)

Ha >> 09.Aug, 30.Sep, 01.Oct | 108 x 300 s (Santa Susana, Portugal -Bortle 4)

RGB >> 25.Sep, 11.Oct | 240 x 120 s

This needed some proper moody lighting and I ended up with 3 Fresnel focused incandescent spotlights. One directly behind and up high, another around the front and up high, using the barn doors to constrain it to a strip down the centre.

 

The third light is off to camera left and is only there to light the glass ball, and the top of the table. It is fully spotted up, and the barn doors closed to a small box.

 

The background fog is from a regular 1kW fogger with dense fog fluid. The heavier than air fog that sits on the table and in the glasses, is from a Lensgo Smoke B with the diffuser to cool it to ambient.

So the iPlymouth competitions have been running for 10 years now. Between March 2009 and June 2011 they were running on the iHerald site, before we moved over to Flickr. The winner of the first competition chose 'Eggs for Easter' as the theme for April. This was my entry, which won the second ever competition, in April 2009..

 

So I thought I would post it again on here, saying Happy Easter to one and all.

 

For info, this was 4 or 5 bags of mini eggs, which I separated into colours and laid out onto a sheet of glass, atop of blue mounting board. The reason for the glass (which you can't really see) was that underneath the glass was a template of a simple map of South West England, so that I could constrain the eggs to the correct shape. Once I was happy with my creation, I removed the template, and photographed it in the late afternoon sun to get some depth in the shadows. All a bit of fun. Thanks for looking, and Happy Easter!!

Barry Schwartz, author.

 

The Internet and all its applications give us great freedom and a seemingly infinite array of choices, yet it’s not clear how much happier that makes most people. That’s the contention of psychologist and Forum speakr Barry Schwartz in his book “The Paradox of Choice,” but it’s also the experience of many people we talk to. For them, opportunities are merely obligations in disguise. If you can do anything at all, then you are responsible if you fail to achieve greatness. You can no longer blame things on circumstance, lack of opportunity or other external forces. Any flaws in your life must be due to some personal unworthiness.

 

But it’s not all this bleak. Perhaps the antidote to this dilemma is not less choice, but a greater chance at creativity. In Linden Lab’s Second Life, you can create a new life – your own second life, not merely a pre-packaged choice. And with Rediff.com, India’s leading portal, millions of Indians are also creating new real-world lives for themselves in a world where many of them had extremely limited choice.

 

Schwartz develops his thesis about the downside of choice at considerable length and with specific analysis in his book. A psychology professor for 35 years, he’s talking not just about the angst of freedom, but about specific psychological mechanisms. For example, take our experience the morning of the day we went to meet him in Philadelphia. (He teaches at Swarthmore College, surrounded by bright but often unhappy students for whom everything is possible.) Our regular YMCA swimming pool was closed for maintenance, so after some deliberation we went to another Y. No problem there: Reasonable hours, free (to us as a Y member), on the way to the train. But…this Y had two pools: one large but too cold, and the other small and too hot. The choice was easy: We picked the larger, more invigorating pool. But for that whole hour of swimming we thought of how comfortable the other pool might be. The very availability of choice made us less satisfied with the option we had freely chosen.

 

It’s not simply the confusion of too many choices one can’t understand, but the way that all the options erode the pleasure of the best option.

 

This explains so much that is familiar but heretofore inexplicable. Why do more vacation choices lessen the pleasure of the vacation you actually take? And perhaps, why do too many online “friends” reduce the appeal of the friends you already have?

 

The solution to this challenge for each individual starts with constraining one’s own searches, says Schwartz: “Determine to be a satisficer, happy with ‘good enough,’ rather than an ever-searching maximizer discontented with anything but the best” …and with the Internet’s array of choices, how could you ever be sure?

 

A second tactic is commitment, he notes: Those money-back guarantees, while valuable in objective situations of defective products, decrease our commitment and lead to doubts. People who make irrevocable decisions tend to justify them and like what they have bought or done; people who dwell on an opt-out continue to agonize over whether they like the choice they have made. And mentally healthy individuals, in general, tend not to second-guess their decisions.

  

But more broadly, from the vantage point of society or at least from the IT industry, what are the implications? How can an online business support those personal approaches and make its customers happier – long-term?

 

Perhaps the commercial message of “paradox of choice” is that in a world of abundance it’s better to be a retailer or a community site or a vertical-search service, helping a user deal with the challenges of choice, than a manufacturer adding new choices to an already overwhelming array.

Annual Reports. Aicher made gradual adjustments to his designs for these reports, such as not placing the type over the jacket image by constraining the image.

these constraining chains, dictate every move, manipulate each action.

therefore you secede and fall back to this fractured world.

but these dark chains that hold you down wont hold forever.

  

My next project! It is meant to sit alongside the modular sets as a corner unit. As such, I wanted to constrain the build to 1.5 32x32 baseplates, while also encompassing the sidewalk.

It's a horrible, grey, rainy day today and I am having to do some work. That makes me glad that it is miserable as I feel there is nothing I am missing out on. Summer seems to have completely gone and yet the autumn colours aren't in full swing. The sculptures I've made in the last couple of weeks have made it look like the autumnal flush is full on here but that isn't true at all. The fire colored maple leaves I collected were all from half of one tree.

 

It's an odd one and I first noticed it last year. One half of the tree, in late august bursts into every shade of yellow, orange and red while the rest of the tree stays green and changes when all of it's neighbours do later on in September.

 

But much like it might appear to you that it is very colourful here, it felt like that to me too. Through collecting the most colourful leaves I could find, studying and working with them before photographing and looking at the photos, I got drawn into the colour and it filled my mind and senses.

 

Of course there are a few trees that are changing quickly but really they are few and far between. At least where the coloured leaves are below a height that can be reached by me. Yesterday I went searching and visited the trees I know best that produce good colours and things have some way to go yet. But the temperature is changing and a dip will certainly set them on their way.

 

I remarked yesterday that a year ago I thought I was getting into autumn too early. I changed my moniker to ...waiting for autumn... and by the time it was really in full swing I'd exhausted some ideas as I'd got in amongst the colours so early in the season. I think I may be doing it again this year. But when the weather can be so changeable and uninspiring you need to take your opportunities to get out there and use the colours you find.

 

It is another of the joys and fascinations of land art that with ephemeral materials, that appear only at certain times of the year, you cannot really plan what it is you want to make. If I wanted to make another Autumn Fire Colour Wheel then I would need enough fiery maple leaves. But there just aren't enough available again after what I harvested last week. When I created my first sculpture with cherry leaves it is something I have wanted to do again. But since then the four trees (in a group together) have not produced all those colours at once and the leaves have been more bedragled and diseased.

 

You have to play the cards that Mother Nature deals to you. This might seem like a pain and constraining to what you would like to achieve but it is the completely opposite of that. It is fascinating to learn more and more about how things change over the days, months and years. You'd never notice if you didn't look as closely as that and yet there is still many lifetimes of mysteries to discover.

 

I made this back in June when I created this and was waiting for the sun to move. Just a quick doodle on a rock (which might sound like a poodle doing its do on rock but it's not). The contrast was very strong so the rock looks like it is set in a sea of black as a camera cannot handle the dynamic range as well as the eye.

 

Oh and I'm now a Twit. Someone asked if I was a Twit and whether I announced what I've been up to as a Twit. Well I've always been a twit and now I'm a fully fledged Twit (as you can tell if you are still reading this) so if you wish to follow me on Twitter I am @escher303. Don't expect such things as "I've just pinned a leaf to a tree" and "I've just done another one" but I probably will mention if there is a new sculpture on Flickr or my blog and I'll have a whinge about the weather.

 

I'd thought I'd never bother with Twitter, and I don't do Facebook (arrggghhhh) but if it helps let anyone who is interested on what I've been up to then there it will be. But Flickr is the only social networking site for me. I don't really want to know what you've had for breakfast but I love to see what you've been creating. :-)

Two random somewhat experimental pages from the last few days. Very busy but somehow need a little sketch-time in my day…even though I am in a very uncoordinated mood- funny how somedays eye and hand are not in sync very well….and I seem in the mood to talk to myself.

A couple of frames to constrain my sketching to single page and not extend over the spiral binding….enjoying the change!

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Gotha 146 was a fast reconnaissance aircraft that was used throughout WWII by the German Luftwaffe, and one of the results of a mutual technology exchange program with Japan.

The Go 146 was actually a license-built, modified variant of the excellent Mitsubishi Ki-46. The latter type's career started in late 1937: the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force issued a specification to Mitsubishi for a long-range strategic reconnaissance aircraft to replace the Mitsubishi Ki-15.

 

The specification demanded an endurance of six hours and sufficient speed to evade interception by any fighter in existence or development, but otherwise did not constrain the design by a team led by Tomio Kubo.

 

The resulting design was a twin-engined, low-winged monoplane with a retractable tailwheel undercarriage. It had a small diameter oval fuselage with the pilot and observer situated in individual cockpits separated by a large fuel tank. The engines, two Mitsubishi Ha-26 radials, were housed in close fitting cowlings to reduce drag and improve pilot view.

 

The first prototype aircraft, flew in November 1939 from the Mitsubishi factory at Kakamigahara, Gifu.Tests showed that the Ki-46 was underpowered, and slower than required, only reaching 540 km/h (336 mph) rather than the specified 600 km/h (373 mph). Otherwise, the aircraft tests were successful. As the type was still faster than the Army's latest fighter, the Nakajima Ki-43, as well as the Navy's new A6M2,an initial production batch was ordered.

 

To solve the performance problems, Mitsubishi fitted Ha-102 engines, which were Ha-26s fitted with a two-stage supercharger, while increasing fuel capacity and reducing empty weight to give the Ki-46-II. This machine was also demonstrated to German officials, who became immediately aware of its potential.

 

Knowing that the German Luftwaffe lacked this fast type of aircraft (German reconnaissance aircraft of that time were either slow artillery observation types, or variants of bombers or heavy fighters), the RLM immediately asked for a batch of airframe kits in order to adapt it to the European theatre and test its capabilities.

 

The result was a delivery of seven engine-less airframe kits that arrived in Germany in early 1940. In the meantime, with the help of blueprints and other documentations, an alternative engine installation had been devised - the German aircraft was to be powered by liquid-cooled DB 601 engines, which delivered more power than the Ha-102 and offered improved aerodynamics, despite the necessity to add radiators under the outer wings.Effectively, many stock parts from the Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter were incorporated, so that development time was very short.

 

In May 1940 the first batch of the Gotha 146 (which had officially been described as a further development of a four seat, twin-engine transport aircraft from the 1930s) was ready, and they were immediately transferred to the Western Front and based in France.

 

Allocated to the 14. Aufklärungsgruppe, the Go 146 A-0 machines carried out various reconnaissance tasks over the North Sea, Great Britain and France, and they were also used for camouflage trials: each of the five aircraft sported a different paint scheme, raging from uniform, all-over grey to disruptive geometrical patterns, reminiscent of Dazzle camouflage!

 

The Go 146 was popular among its crews, since it was fast, agile and easy to fly. During the test phase in summer 1940 the Go 146 proved to be slightly faster than its Japanese Ki-46 ancestor, and with a top speed of more than 375 mph (600 km/h) it was hard to intercept by any British or French fighter. The results were so convincing that serial production was ordered, and from October 1940 on the Go 146 A-1 was produced in limited numbers, and the type was steadily developed further, including the change of the nose section that came withe the Ki-46III and augmented engines.

  

Specifications:

Crew: two (pilot and observer)

Length: 11.00 m (36 ft 1 in)

Wingspan: 14.70 m (48 ft 2¾ in)

Height: 3.88 m (12 ft 8¾ in)

Wing area: 32.0 m² (344 ft²)

Empty weight: 3,263 kg (7,194 lb)

Loaded weight: 5,050 kg (11,133 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 5,800 kg (12,787 lb)

 

Powerplant:

2× Daimler-Benz DB 601B-1 liquid-cooled inverted V-12, 809 kW (1,100 hp) each

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 625 km/h (345 knots, 388 mph) at 5,800 m (19,000 ft)

Cruise speed: 400 km/h (217 knots, 249 mph)

Range: 2,474 km (1,337 nmi, 1,537 mi)

Service ceiling: 10,720 m (35,200 ft)

Wing loading: 157.8 kg/m² (32.3 lb/ft²)

Climb to 8,000 m (26,250 ft): 17 min 58 sec

 

Armament:

1x 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine gun in the observer's cabin, facing rearwards

  

The kit and its assembly:

This sounds like a weird idea, but the Luftwaffe had seriously been interested in the Ki-46, even though no aircraft ever made it to Europe. On the other side, several German aircraft were delivered to Japan (including the Bf 109E, Ju 87 and Me 210) for trials, so reversing this procedure makes sense.

 

Anyway, a German version would certainly not have been powered by radials, since this type of engine was not very popular in Europe and rather seen as a "slow" option for bombers. So the idea was born to convert a stock Ki-46 II into a prototype with German liquid-cooled engines - and it was easier to realize than expected!

 

The basis is the Airfix Dinah, a vintage and very simple kit. Fit is basically good, but the clear parts were (in my case) somewhat damaged around the edges of both canopies. Engines and landing gear are also basic - so I used different wheels, and the radials were replaced, anyway.

I used DB 601 engines, taken from an Airfix Bf 110 C kit, which also donated the radiators.

 

The latter were easy to place outside or the engine nacelles, the engines took some effort. The DB 601's height is perfect for the nacelles, just the width had to be enlarged in order to fit the original, circular shape of the radials' attachment points.

 

The remedy was simple: two long cuts in the upper cowling made the new engines flexible and wide enough to press them onto the nacelles' front ends! Some putty was necessary to hide gaps and smooth out the intersection, but the result looks very natural!

 

Otherwise not much was changed. The cockpits and the pilots were taken OOB, I just added a typical ring antenna under the fuselage and an additional pitot under the nose.

  

Painting and markings:

The fun part, even though it took a while to find something... different. The typical RLM 70/71/65 splinter scheme with a low waterline for prototypes or bombers of the BoB era was a valid option, but soooo boring.

 

While looking for inspiration I stumbled across some experimental schemes that had been tested on Bf109E fighters from JG53 - and that's what I finally settled upon.

 

What the Go 146 now carries is effectively a mix of two schemes: the stylish, geometric pattern was taken from one Bf 109, the colors (RLM 61/02/71/65) from another. Everything was painted with brushes and without masks, some light panel shading, black ink and grinded graphite were used for weathering.

 

The markings are minimal, typical for German reconnaissance aircraft of the time and based upon Bf 110 of the 14. Aufklärungsgruppe, the decals come from various aftermarket sheets and the code was puzzled together from single letter decals (TL Modellbau). A coat of acrylic matt varnish finally sealed the kit.

 

An exotic whif, and despite the weird basic idea I made it even more spectacular through the strange paint scheme which reminds of similar experiments by the US Navy. Odd thing is that I had the idea for a German Ki-46 on the agenda for quite a while, but this was/is to become a beefed-up Ki-46III for the late WWII period.

 

Building this kit's ancestor now, even before the Ki-46III conversion even started, is a little odd - but confirms the feasibility of an engine change and adds another contribution to the 2015 "Battle of Britain" Group Build at whatifmodelers.com.

 

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Gotha 146 was a fast reconnaissance aircraft that was used throughout WWII by the German Luftwaffe, and one of the results of a mutual technology exchange program with Japan. The Go 146 was actually a license-built, but modified variant of the excellent Mitsubishi Ki-46. The latter type's career started in late 1937, when the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force issued a specification to Mitsubishi for a long-range strategic reconnaissance aircraft to replace the Mitsubishi Ki-15. The specification demanded an endurance of six hours and sufficient speed to evade interception by any fighter in existence or development at that time, but otherwise did not constrain the design by a team led by Tomio Kubo.

 

The resulting design was a twin-engine, low-winged monoplane with a retractable tailwheel undercarriage. It had a small diameter oval fuselage with the pilot and observer situated in individual cockpits separated by a large fuel tank. The engines, two Mitsubishi Ha-26 radials, were housed in close-fitting cowlings to reduce drag and improve pilot view.

 

The first prototype aircraft, flew in November 1939 from the Mitsubishi factory at Kakamigahara, Gifu. Tests showed that the Ki-46 was underpowered and slower than required, only reaching 540 km/h (336 mph) rather than the specified 600 km/h (373 mph), but, otherwise, the aircraft tests were successful. As the type was still faster than the Army's latest fighter, the Nakajima Ki-43, as well as the Navy's new A6M2, an initial production batch was ordered. To solve the performance problems, Mitsubishi switched to Ha-102 engines, which were Ha-26s fitted with a two-stage supercharger, while increasing fuel capacity and reducing empty weight. This became the Ki-46-II, and this type was also demonstrated to German officials who immediately noticed its potential.

 

Knowing that the German Luftwaffe lacked this specialized, fast type of aircraft (German reconnaissance aircraft of that time were either slow artillery observation types, or variants of bombers or heavy fighters), the RLM immediately asked for a batch of airframe kits to adapt it to the European theatre and test its capabilities. Seven engine-less airframe kits were delivered to Germany in early 1940. In the meantime, with the help of blueprints and other documentations, an alternative engine installation had been devised: the “Germanized” aircraft was to be powered by liquid-cooled DB 601 engines, which delivered more power than the Ha-102 and offered improved aerodynamics, despite the necessity to add radiators under the outer wings. Many stock parts from the contemporary Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter were incorporated, so that the development time was very short, and the commonality of mechanical parts eased logistics and maintenance.

 

In May 1940 the first batch of the Gotha 146 A-0 pre-production aircraft (which had officially been described as a further development of a four seat, twin-engine transport aircraft from the 1930s to cloud its origins and mission) was ready. They were immediately transferred to the Western Front for field tests, and the specialized Go 146 became quickly popular among its crews. It was fast, agile and easy to fly – almost on par with state-of-the-art fighters like the Bf 109. During the test phase in summer 1940 the Go 146 proved to be slightly faster than its Japanese Ki-46 ancestor, and with a top speed of more than 375 mph (600 km/h) it was hard to intercept by any British or French fighter of the time. The results were so convincing that the type was ordered into serial production, and from October 1940 on the Go 146 A-1 was produced in limited numbers at the Gothaer Waggonfabrik in Thuringia. Even though production only ran at small scale, it was continuous, and the Go 146 was steadily developed further, including the change of the nose section that came with the Ki-46-III, stronger engines and an improved defensive armament.

 

This evolution led to the Go 146 B, which had the traditional stepped windshield replaced with a smooth, curved, glazed panel extended over the pilot's seat. It not only gave a more aerodynamic nose profile, the re-shaped nose also offered room for an extra fuel tank. The space between the two crewmen, connected with a crawl tunnel, held another fuel tank, the radio equipment (a Sprechfunkgerät FuG 16 ZY and a FuG 25a „Erstling“ IFF beacon), as well as a compartment for up to three cameras with several ventral windows, which could take Rb (“Reihenbildner” = serial picture device) 20/30, 50/30 and 75/30 devices that could be mounted in different combinations and angles as needed.

Power came now from a pair of new Daimler-Benz DB 603A liquid-cooled piston engines, which offered 1,290 kW (1,750 hp) each for take-off. Since the engine mounts had to be re-designed for the DB603s (the Go 146 A had used adapters to attach its shorter DB 601s to the original Ha-102 radials’ hardpoints), German engineers used the opportunity to redesign the complete engine nacelles. As a result, their diameter and “wet” surface was reduced, so much that the landing gear had to be modified, too. It now rotated 90° upon retraction, so that the main wheels were lying in shallow wells within the wing structure. Beyond better aerodynamics, structural measures saved almost 250 kg (550 lb).

 

Instead of the Go 146 A’s single 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine gun in the observer's cabin, facing rearwards, the defensive armament was improved and consisted of a pair of 13 mm (0.51 in) MG 131 machine guns, firing rearward from FDSL 131/1B remotely-operated barbettes, one per side. This rather complex installation had become possible (and in part necessary) due to a center of gravity shift from the modified engines and their empennage. The weapons were aimed by the rear crewman through a periscope that covered both the upper and lower rear hemisphere. The control unit had a rotating transverse crossbar with a sideways-pivoting handgun-style grip and trigger at its center, "forked" at its forward pivoting end to fit around the crossbar, with the upper fork extended beyond the rotating crossbar to mount the gunsight. This unique aiming and control scheme rotated the crossbar axially, when the handgrip was elevated or depressed, to aim the guns vertically by rotating both turrets together, and a sideways movement of the handgrip would pivot either one of the guns outwards from the fuselage-mounted turrets for diagonal firing. The guns were electrically fired, and an electrical contact breaker prevented the gunner from shooting off the aircraft’s tailplane. When not in use, the guns would return to a neutral position that would allow to fire directly backwards with both guns.

Furthermore, plumbed hardpoints were added to the inner wings, just inside of the engines. These could carry a 300 l drop tank each for an extended range and loiter time. Single bombs of up to 250 kg or racks with four 50 kg bombs each were theoretically possible too, but the aircraft lacked any bomb aiming support. Crew protection was slightly improved, too, but the airframe was overall kept as light as possible. Despite these efforts, however, MTOW rose to 6,500 kg (14,317 lb), but this was still relatively light in comparison with the similar contemporary Me 410 multi-purpose aircraft, which weighed more than 9 tons and was powered by similar engines. Consequently, and thanks to its clean lines, the G 146 B had a top speed of almost 700 km/h (434 mph) at ideal altitude and the aircraft retained its excellent handling, even though its structure was rather fragile and could not take much stress and punishment.

 

Two versions of the Go 146 B were produced, steadily but only at a low rate because the aircraft received, due to its highly specialized role and limited offensive capabilities, only a low priority. The B-1 was the main variant and kept the A version’s standard wing, a total of 54 were produced between 1943 and 1945. Additionally, the B-2 was produced between late 1943 and early 1944 as a dedicated high altitude photo reconnaissance aircraft. This sub-variant had an extended wingspan of 16.00 m (52 ft 5 in) instead of the standard 14.70 m (48 ft 2¾ in) and an improved oxygen system, even though the cabin was not pressurized. Its maximum service ceiling was almost 12.000 m (39.305 ft), with a maximum speed of 415 mph (668 km/h), a cruise speed of 250 mph (400 km/h) and a range of 3,200 km (1,987 nmi). Only twelve of these machines were produced and put into service, primarily for flights over Southern Great Britain. When the Arado Ar 234 became available from September 1944 on, though, this new, jet-powered type immediately replaced the Go 146 B-2 because it offered even better performance. Therefore, the B-3, a planned version with a fully pressurized cabin and an even bigger wingspan of 19.00 m, never left the drawing board.

 

Furthermore, the RLM had idea to convert the fast Go 146 into a fighter amd even a night fighter in mid-1944 as the “C” series. But these plans were not executed because the light airframe could hardly be adapted to heavy weapons or equipment like a radar set, and it was unsuited for vigorous dogfighting. The type’s poor climbing rate made it ineffective as an interceptor, too. There were, nevertheless, tests with at least one Go 146 B-1 that carried four Werfer-Granate 21 rocket launchers under the outer wings, as a fast bomber interceptor esp. against the high-flying B-29, which was expected to appear over continental Europe soon. But this kind of weaponry never reached frontline units and the Go 146 was never operated as a fighter of any kind.

There were, however, other uses: in 1944 the Go 146 was enlisted as a fast liaison aircraft for the RLM (Ministry of Aviation) in Berlin. Stripped off of any armament and cameras and outfitted with two passenger seats in the rear cabin, at least one Go 146 B (with the confirmed registration “ST+ZA”, others in similar configuration may have existed, too) was operated by the RLM’s Zentralabteilung (central command) from Tempelhof airfield for top brass officials between Luftwaffe locations on German terrain. ST+ZA’s fate after January 1945 is uncertain, though.

  

Specifications:

Crew: two (pilot and observer)

Length: 11.00 m (36 ft 1 in)

Wingspan: 14.70 m (48 ft 2¾ in)

Height: 3.88 m (12 ft 8¾ in)

Wing area: 32.0 m² (344 ft²)

Empty weight: 3,830 kg (8,436 lb)

Loaded weight: 5,661 kg (12,480 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 6,500 kg (14,317 lb)

 

Powerplant:

2× Daimler-Benz DB 603A V-12 inverted liquid-cooled piston engines, rated at:

- 1,290 kW (1,750 hp) each for take-off

- 1,360 kW (1,850 PS) at 2,100 m (6,890 ft)

- 1,195 kW (1,625 PS) at 5,700 m (18,700 ft)

- 1,162 kW (1580 PS) combat power at 2500 rpm at sea level

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 695 km/h (377 knots, 430 mph) at 5,800 m (19,000 ft)

Cruise speed: 450 km/h (245 knots, 280 mph)

Range: 2,800 km (1,522 nmi, 1,740 mi) with internal fuel

Service ceiling: 11,250 m (36,850 ft)

Wing loading: 157.8 kg/m² (32.3 lb/ft²)

Climb rate: 14.7 m/sec (2,900 feet per minute)

Climb to 8,000 m (26,250 ft): 15 min 20 sec

 

Armament:

2× 13 mm (0.51 in) defensive MG 131 machine guns with 500 RPG,

each firing rearward from FDSL 131/1B remote-operated turret, one per side

2× underwing hardpoints under the inner wings for 250 kg (550 lb) each,

typically occupied by 300 l drop tanks

  

The kit and its assembly:

This is a déjà vu build: I already did a “Germanized” Ki-46 in 2015, it was an Airfix Ki-46-II outfitted with DB 601s from a Bf 110 as a pre-series Gotha Go 146 A-0, an aircraft that (naturally) never existed but appeared plausible, since German military hardware including aircraft had been evaluated by Japanese forces. And why should this exchange not have worked the other way around, too? However, as I built this modified Dinah for the first time, I already thought that the basic idea had more potential than just one model, and the streamlined Ki-46-III just lent itself for an updated, later version.

 

This B-2 variant of the Go 146 was based on the LS Models/ARII Ki-46-III. Like the Airfix kit (its molds are from 1965, and that’s just what the kit feels, looks and builds like…), it’s a rather vintage offering, but it is in many aspects markedly ahead, with fine surfaces, recessed details, 3D engines and clear parts that actually fit into their intended places. The LS Models kit’s 10 years less of age are recognizable, and there are three boxings around with different versions of the aircraft (a Ki-46-II, a -III and a trainer with a raised tutor cockpit), differing in small extra sprues for the respective fuselage parts, but they all share a common sprue with the clear parts for all three versions.

 

The Ki-46-III kit was taken OOB, with just some minor mods. The most obvious change concerns the engines: they were transplanted from a Bilek Me 210, together with the underwing radiators outside of the nacelles. The Me 210, even though it’s from 1997, is a rather mediocre model with some dubious solutions, therefore earmarked for a conversion and ready to donor some body parts… The engine switch was insofar easy because the Ki-46 kit comes with completely separate parts for the engines and their fairings which also contain the main landing gear wells.

Because of this “clean” basis I decided to cut the nacelles out from the Me 210 and attach them to the Ki-46 wings, so that the DB 603 engines would have perfect attachment points. While this was a bigger overall surgery stunt than on the earlier Airfix Dinah, this was easier than expected and resulted in a cleaner solution that also underlines the Ki-46’s clean and slender shape. The modified nacelles were much smaller than the Dinah’s, though. The main wheels were replaced with slightly smaller and narrower ones from the scrap box.

 

Inside of the cockpit, I implanted a dashboard. In the rear cabin the seat was reversed and moved further forward. In the cabin’s rear a scratched targeting scope/weapon control column for the FDSL 131 installation was added. Since I left the single-part canopies (which are quite thick but very clear) closed I outfitted the model with a crew. The Ki-46 III kit comes with a pair of figures, but they are very small (H0 scale, at best!) and look goofy, so that I exchanged them with Matchbox WWII pilots, which had their legs bent and their bottoms cut away to make them fit into the tight fuselage and under the canopies.

 

Unfortunately, the Me 210 kit had already donated its machine gun barbettes (they had gone onto an upgraded Heinkel He 115 floatplane), so that I scratched them for the Go 146. WWII bombs became the fairings, some leftover landing gear struts were used as gun barrels, and round styrene bases were used as mounts that also lift the fairings slightly off the hull. The barbettes as such look a little superficial on the slender Dinah, but they are a nice, typically German detail, über-complicated for this type of fast aircraft that probably would have more benefited from leaving them away altogether to save weight and drag.

The (typically German) 300 l drop tanks come from Hobby Boss Bf 109s and each received four short attachment struts, made from styrene profile material, so that they could be stuck under the inner wings.

  

Painting and markings:

This was more complicated than expected. I wanted to apply a plausible, late German WWII livery with typical colors, but finding something that would be suited for high-altitude operations and not copy anything I had already done turned out to be challenging.

 

The paint scheme would be very light, with only low-contrast camouflage added on top. Therefore, the basis became an overall coat with RLM 76 (I used Tamiya XF-23, Light Blue, which is an excellent option). Inspired by He 177 bombers I found in literature, large blotches of a rather obscure and uncommon tone, RLM 77 “Hellgrau” were added to the flanks of fuselage, fin and engine nacelles. RLM 77 is/was a very light grey, and it was primarily used for markings like code letters on night fighters and not for camouflage. AFAIK it would later become the RAL 7035 (Lichtgrau) tone that still exists today. Humbrol 196 would have been an authentic option, but to keep the contrast to the underlying RLM 76 low I rather used XF-19 (Sky Grey) and extended the blotches under the fuselage and the nacelles, for a semi-wraparound scheme.

 

Then came the upper surfaces, everything was painted with brushes and without masks, with an intentional uneven finish. The wings and stabilizers were to receive a slightly darker camouflage in the form of RLM 02 and 75 splotches (with Tamiya XF-22 and XF-XX as proxies) over the uniform RLM 76 base, so that the aircraft’s outlines would be broken up from above. However, after first tests I found this did not look convincing, the RLM 76 was very prominent and bluish, so that I rather gave the upper wings and the spine a semi-translucent but continuous coat of paint, with the underlying RLM 76 just showing through here and there – much better. At this stage I added the decals (see below), but now found the upper surfaces to look too uniform and somewhat dark, so that, as a final measure, I added a meander pattern with RLM 77 (again XF-19) to the wings. This not only looked good and very “German”, it lightened the cammo and also helped to break the aircraft’s lines up. Some light panel shading to the uniform undersides, black ink and grinded graphite were used for weathering, but the effects are very soft.

 

Interior surfaces (cockpit and landing gear wells) became late-war style RAL 7021 Schwarzgrau (Humbrol 67), the landing gear struts were painted in RLM 02, this time Revell 45 was used. The propeller blades were painted in a very dark mix of green and black, the spinners became black with simple white spirals – the only detail with a high contrast on this aircraft.

 

The markings of this aircraft are minimal. Balkenkreuz markings only consisting of outlines were used, another typical late-war practice and for a low-visibility look/effect. They were taken from an Academy Fw 190 D. On the fuselage, the gun barbettes caused some headaches, because they take up a lot of space and made the application of a standard Luftwaffe code almost impossible. Consequently, the fuselage Balkenkreuze were placed ahead of the barbettes, partly disrupted by the observer’s lower side windows, while the tactical code became separated by the guns. At starboard the code even had to be reversed - not correct, but a pragmatic solution.

The model/aircraft belongs to a fictional unit, its code “P3” in front of the fuselage Balkenkreuz has no real-world reference and was executed in small letters, a typical late WWII measure. This part of the code was done with small, black 2 mm letters. A fictional unit badge, depicting a running greyhound, was added under the cockpit. It actually belongs to a German tank unit.

The “KN” part of the code, including the Ks on the nose, came from an Airfix Ju 87 B sheet. As an aircraft belonging to the 5th squadron within the unit’s 2nd group, the 4th letter in the code became “N”, while the 3rd letter “K” denotes the individual aircraft. The color code associated with a 5th squadron was red, incorporated on the aircraft as a thin red outline around the individual aircraft letter (another late-war low-contrast measure). To provide a little visual excitement, small red Ks were added to the nose, too, to make thew aircraft easy to identify when parked at the flight line.

Since this aircraft would operate over the Western front from German home ground, no further ID/theatre markings like fuselage or wing bands or wingtips in yellow or white, etc. were added. This, together with the lack of visible red as squadron code, results in a rather dry look, but that’s intentional.

After some exhaust and oil stains with graphite and Tamiya “Smoke”, a coat of acrylic matt varnish finally sealed the model and a wire antenna, made from heated sprue material, was added.

  

Well, an exotic what-if idea, but I really like how this conversion turned out, even though the livery evolved in a different way from what I had initially in mind. The Ki-46 was already an elegant aircraft, especially the Ki-46-III with its teardrop-shaped nose section. But, with the smaller, streamlined inline engines instead of the radials, this iteration looks even better and faster. It reminds a little of the D.H. Hornet? The gun barbettes are a nice “German” detail, and the makeshift high-altitude paint scheme adds to the obscure impression of the model. A really nice sister ship for the Go 146 A-0 build from 2015.

Niagara Gorge is an 11 km (6.8 mi) long canyon carved by the Niagara River along the Canada–United States border, between the U.S. state of New York and the Canadian province of Ontario. It begins at the base of Niagara Falls and ends downriver at the edge of the geological formation known as the Niagara Escarpment near Queenston, Ontario, where the falls originated about 12,500 years ago. The position of the falls has receded upstream toward Lake Erie because of the falling waters' slow erosion of the riverbed's hard Lockport dolomite (a form of limestone that is the surface rock of the escarpment), combined with rapid erosion of the relatively soft layers beneath it. This erosion has created the gorge.

 

The force of the river current in the gorge is one of the most powerful in the world; because of the dangers this presents, kayaking the gorge has generally been prohibited. On multiple occasions, the rapids of the gorge have claimed the lives of people attempting to run them. However, on isolated occasions, world-class experts have been permitted to navigate the stretch. Tourists can traverse the rapids of the Niagara Gorge on commercial tours in rugged jetboats, which are based at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, at Lewiston, New York, at Youngstown, New York, and in midsummer at Niagara Glen Nature Centre on the Niagara Parkway in Ontario.

 

Matthew Webb, the first person to swim the English Channel, drowned trying to swim the rapids of the gorge as part of a publicity stunt in 1883.

 

The 1980 movie Superman II includes a scene in the gorge, where Lois Lane tries to force Clark Kent to reveal that he is Superman by "accidentally" falling in the river so he will have to save her.

 

New York, sometimes called New York State, is a state in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders New Jersey and Pennsylvania to its south, New England and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec to its north, and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. With almost 19.6 million residents, it is the fourth-most populous state in the United States and eighth-most densely populated as of 2023. New York is the 27th-largest U.S. state by area, with a total area of 54,556 square miles (141,300 km2).

 

New York has a varied geography. The southeastern part of the state, known as Downstate, encompasses New York City, the most populous city in the United States, Long Island, the most populous island in the United States, and the lower Hudson Valley. These areas are the center of the New York metropolitan area, a sprawling urban landmass, and account for approximately two-thirds of the state's population. The much larger Upstate area spreads from the Great Lakes to Lake Champlain, and includes the Adirondack Mountains and the Catskill Mountains (part of the wider Appalachian Mountains). The east–west Mohawk River Valley bisects the more mountainous regions of Upstate, and flows into the north–south Hudson River valley near the state capital of Albany. Western New York, home to the cities of Buffalo and Rochester, is part of the Great Lakes region and borders Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Central New York is anchored by the city of Syracuse; between the central and western parts of the state, New York is dominated by the Finger Lakes, a popular tourist destination. To the south, along the state border with Pennsylvania, the Southern Tier sits atop the Allegheny Plateau, representing the northernmost reaches of Appalachia.

 

New York was one of the original Thirteen Colonies that went on to form the United States. The area of present-day New York had been inhabited by tribes of the Algonquians and the Iroquois Confederacy Native Americans for several thousand years by the time the earliest Europeans arrived. Stemming from Henry Hudson's expedition in 1609, the Dutch established the multiethnic colony of New Netherland in 1621. England seized the colony from the Dutch in 1664, renaming it the Province of New York. During the American Revolutionary War, a group of colonists eventually succeeded in establishing independence, and the former colony was officially admitted into the United States in 1788. From the early 19th century, New York's development of its interior, beginning with the construction of the Erie Canal, gave it incomparable advantages over other regions of the United States. The state built its political, cultural, and economic ascendancy over the next century, earning it the nickname of the "Empire State." Although deindustrialization eroded a significant portion of the state's economy in the second half of the 20th century, New York in the 21st century continues to be considered as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, and environmental sustainability.

 

The state attracts visitors from all over the globe, with the highest count of any U.S. state in 2022. Many of its landmarks are well known, including four of the world's ten most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, Niagara Falls and Grand Central Terminal. New York is home to approximately 200 colleges and universities, including two Ivy League universities, Columbia University and Cornell University, and the expansive State University of New York, which is among the largest university systems in the nation. New York City is home to the headquarters of the United Nations, and it is sometimes described as the world's most important city, the cultural, financial, and media epicenter, and the capital of the world.

 

The history of New York begins around 10,000 B.C. when the first people arrived. By 1100 A.D. two main cultures had become dominant as the Iroquoian and Algonquian developed. European discovery of New York was led by the Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 followed by the first land claim in 1609 by the Dutch. As part of New Netherland, the colony was important in the fur trade and eventually became an agricultural resource thanks to the patroon system. In 1626, the Dutch thought they had bought the island of Manhattan from Native Americans.[1] In 1664, England renamed the colony New York, after the Duke of York and Albany, brother of King Charles II. New York City gained prominence in the 18th century as a major trading port in the Thirteen Colonies.

 

New York played a pivotal role during the American Revolution and subsequent war. The Stamp Act Congress in 1765 brought together representatives from across the Thirteen Colonies to form a unified response to British policies. The Sons of Liberty were active in New York City to challenge British authority. After a major loss at the Battle of Long Island, the Continental Army suffered a series of additional defeats that forced a retreat from the New York City area, leaving the strategic port and harbor to the British army and navy as their North American base of operations for the rest of the war. The Battle of Saratoga was the turning point of the war in favor of the Americans, convincing France to formally ally with them. New York's constitution was adopted in 1777, and strongly influenced the United States Constitution. New York City was the national capital at various times between 1788 and 1790, where the Bill of Rights was drafted. Albany became the permanent state capital in 1797. In 1787, New York became the eleventh state to ratify the United States Constitution.

 

New York hosted significant transportation advancements in the 19th century, including the first steamboat line in 1807, the Erie Canal in 1825, and America's first regularly scheduled rail service in 1831. These advancements led to the expanded settlement of western New York and trade ties to the Midwest settlements around the Great Lakes.

 

Due to New York City's trade ties to the South, there were numerous southern sympathizers in the early days of the American Civil War and the mayor proposed secession. Far from any of the battles, New York ultimately sent the most soldiers and money to support the Union cause. Thereafter, the state helped create the industrial age and consequently was home to some of the first labor unions.

 

During the 19th century, New York City became the main entry point for European immigrants to the United States, beginning with a wave of Irish during their Great Famine. Millions came through Castle Clinton in Battery Park before Ellis Island opened in 1892 to welcome millions more, increasingly from eastern and southern Europe. The Statue of Liberty opened in 1886 and became a symbol of hope. New York boomed during the Roaring Twenties, before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and skyscrapers expressed the energy of the city. New York City was the site of successive tallest buildings in the world from 1913 to 1974.

 

The buildup of defense industries for World War II turned around the state's economy from the Great Depression, as hundreds of thousands worked to defeat the Axis powers. Following the war, the state experienced significant suburbanization around all the major cities, and most central cities shrank. The Thruway system opened in 1956, signaling another era of transportation advances.

 

Following a period of near-bankruptcy in the late 1970s, New York City renewed its stature as a cultural center, attracted more immigration, and hosted the development of new music styles. The city developed from publishing to become a media capital over the second half of the 20th century, hosting most national news channels and broadcasts. Some of its newspapers became nationally and globally renowned. The state's manufacturing base eroded with the restructuring of industry, and the state transitioned into service industries.

 

The first peoples of New York are estimated to have arrived around 10,000 BC. Around AD 800, Iroquois ancestors moved into the area from the Appalachian region. The people of the Point Peninsula complex were the predecessors of the Algonquian peoples of New York. By around 1100, the distinct Iroquoian-speaking and Algonquian-speaking cultures that would eventually be encountered by Europeans had developed. The five nations of the Iroquois League developed a powerful confederacy about the 15th century that controlled territory throughout present-day New York, into Pennsylvania around the Great Lakes. For centuries, the Mohawk cultivated maize fields in the lowlands of the Mohawk River, which were later taken over by Dutch settlers at Schenectady, New York when they bought this territory. The Iroquois nations to the west also had well-cultivated areas and orchards.

 

The Iroquois established dominance over the fur trade throughout their territory, bargaining with European colonists. Other New York tribes were more subject to either European destruction or assimilation within the Iroquoian confederacy. Situated at major Native trade routes in the Northeast and positioned between French and English zones of settlement, the Iroquois were intensely caught up with the onrush of Europeans, which is also to say that the settlers, whether Dutch, French or English, were caught up with the Iroquois as well. Algonquian tribes were less united among their tribes; they typically lived along rivers, streams, or the Atlantic Coast. But, both groups of natives were well-established peoples with highly sophisticated cultural systems; these were little understood or appreciated by the European colonists who encountered them. The natives had "a complex and elaborate native economy that included hunting, gathering, manufacturing, and farming...[and were] a mosaic of Native American tribes, nations, languages, and political associations." The Iroquois usually met at an Onondaga in Northern New York, which changed every century or so, where they would coordinate policies on how to deal with Europeans and strengthen the bond between the Five Nations.

 

Tribes who have managed to call New York home have been the Iroquois, Mohawk, Mohican, Susquehannock, Petun, Chonnonton, Ontario and Nanticoke.

 

In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer in the service of the French crown, explored the Atlantic coast of North America between the Carolinas and Newfoundland, including New York Harbor and Narragansett Bay. On April 17, 1524, Verrazzano entered New York Bay, by way of the Strait now called the Narrows. He described "a vast coastline with a deep delta in which every kind of ship could pass" and he adds: "that it extends inland for a league and opens up to form a beautiful lake. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats". He landed on the tip of Manhattan and perhaps on the furthest point of Long Island.

 

In 1535, Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, became the first European to describe and map the Saint Lawrence River from the Atlantic Ocean, sailing as far upriver as the site of Montreal.

 

On April 4, 1609, Henry Hudson, in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, departed Amsterdam in command of the ship Halve Maen (Half Moon). On September 3 he reached the estuary of the Hudson River. He sailed up the Hudson River to about Albany near the confluence of the Mohawk River and the Hudson. His voyage was used to establish Dutch claims to the region and to the fur trade that prospered there after a trading post was established at Albany in 1614.

 

In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Christiaensen, built Fort Nassau (now Albany) the first Dutch settlement in North America and the first European settlement in what would become New York. It was replaced by nearby Fort Orange in 1623. In 1625, Fort Amsterdam was built on the southern tip of Manhattan Island to defend the Hudson River. This settlement grew to become the city New Amsterdam.

 

The British conquered New Netherland in 1664; Lenient terms of surrender most likely kept local resistance to a minimum. The colony and New Amsterdam were both renamed New York (and "Beverwijck" was renamed Albany) after its new proprietor, James II later King of England, Ireland and Scotland, who was at the time Duke of York and Duke of Albany The population of New Netherland at the time of English takeover was 7,000–8,000.

 

Thousands of poor German farmers, chiefly from the Palatine region of Germany, migrated to upstate districts after 1700. They kept to themselves, married their own, spoke German, attended Lutheran churches, and retained their own customs and foods. They emphasized farm ownership. Some mastered English to become conversant with local legal and business opportunities. They ignored the Indians and tolerated slavery (although few were rich enough to own a slave).

 

Large manors were developed along the Hudson River by elite colonists during the 18th century, including Livingston, Cortlandt, Philipsburg, and Rensselaerswyck. The manors represented more than half of the colony's undeveloped land. The Province of New York thrived during this time, its economy strengthened by Long Island and Hudson Valley agriculture, in conjunction with trade and artisanal activity at the Port of New York; the colony was a breadbasket and lumberyard for the British sugar colonies in the Caribbean. New York's population grew substantially during this century: from the first colonial census (1698) to the last (1771), the province grew ninefold, from 18,067 to 168,007.

 

New York in the American Revolution

Further information: John Peter Zenger, Stamp Act Congress, Invasion of Canada (1775), New York and New Jersey campaign, Prisoners of war in the American Revolutionary War, and Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War

 

New York played a pivotal role in the Revolutionary War. The colony verged on revolt following the Stamp Act of 1765, advancing the New York City–based Sons of Liberty to the forefront of New York politics. The Act exacerbated the depression the province experienced after unsuccessfully invading Canada in 1760. Even though New York City merchants lost out on lucrative military contracts, the group sought common ground between the King and the people; however, compromise became impossible as of April 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord. In that aftermath the New York Provincial Congress on June 9, 1775, for five pounds sterling for each hundredweight of gunpowder delivered to each county's committee.

 

Two powerful families had for decades assembled colony-wide coalitions of supporters. With few exceptions, members long associated with the DeLancey faction went along when its leadership decided to support the crown, while members of the Livingston faction became Patriots.

 

New York's strategic central location and port made it key to controlling the colonies. The British assembled the century's largest fleet: at one point 30,000 British sailors and soldiers anchored off Staten Island. General George Washington barely escaped New York City with his army in November 1776; General Sir William Howe was successful in driving Washington out, but erred by expanding into New Jersey. By January 1777, he retained only a few outposts near New York City. The British held the city for the duration, using it as a base for expeditions against other targets.

 

In October 1777, American General Horatio Gates won the Battle of Saratoga, later regarded as the war's turning point. Had Gates not held, the rebellion might well have broken down: losing Saratoga would have cost the entire Hudson–Champlain corridor, which would have separated New England from the rest of the colonies and split the future union.

 

Upon war's end, New York's borders became well–defined: the counties east of Lake Champlain became Vermont and the state's western borders were settled by 1786.

 

Many Iroquois supported the British (typically fearing future American ambitions). Many were killed during the war; others went into exile with the British. Those remaining lived on twelve reservations; by 1826 only eight reservations remained, all of which survived into the 21st century.

 

The state adopted its constitution in April 1777, creating a strong executive and strict separation of powers. It strongly influenced the federal constitution a decade later. Debate over the federal constitution in 1787 led to formation of the groups known as Federalists—mainly "downstaters" (those who lived in or near New York City) who supported a strong national government—and Antifederalists—mainly upstaters (those who lived to the city's north and west) who opposed large national institutions. In 1787, Alexander Hamilton, a leading Federalist from New York and signatory to the Constitution, wrote the first essay of the Federalist Papers. He published and wrote most of the series in New York City newspapers in support of the proposed United States Constitution. Antifederalists were not swayed by the arguments, but the state ratified it in 1788.

 

In 1785, New York City became the national capital and continued as such on and off until 1790; George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States in front of Federal Hall in 1789. The United States Bill of Rights was drafted there, and the United States Supreme Court sat for the first time. From statehood to 1797, the Legislature frequently moved the state capital between Albany, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, and New York City. Thereafter, Albany retained that role.

 

In the early 19th century, New York became a center for advancement in transportation. In 1807, Robert Fulton initiated a steamboat line from New York to Albany, the first successful enterprise of its kind. By 1815, Albany was the state's turnpike center, which established the city as the hub for pioneers migrating west to Buffalo and the Michigan Territory.

 

In 1825 the Erie Canal opened, securing the state's economic dominance. Its impact was enormous: one source stated, "Linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes, the canal was an act of political will that joined the regions of the state, created a vast economic hinterland for New York City, and established a ready market for agricultural products from the state's interior." In that year western New York transitioned from "frontier" to settled area. By this time, all counties and most municipalities had incorporated, approximately matching the state's is organized today. In 1831, the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad started the country's first successful regularly–scheduled steam railroad service.

 

Advancing transportation quickly led to settlement of the fertile Mohawk and Gennessee valleys and the Niagara Frontier. Buffalo and Rochester became boomtowns. Significant migration of New England "Yankees" (mainly of English descent) to the central and western parts of the state led to minor conflicts with the more settled "Yorkers" (mainly of German, Dutch, and Scottish descent). More than 15% of the state's 1850 population had been born in New England[citation needed]. The western part of the state grew fastest at this time. By 1840, New York was home to seven of the nation's thirty largest cities.

 

During this period, towns established academies for education, including for girls. The western area of the state was a center of progressive causes, including support of abolitionism, temperance, and women's rights. Religious enthusiasms flourished and the Latter Day Saint movement was founded in the area by Joseph Smith and his vision. Some supporters of abolition participated in the Underground Railroad, helping fugitive slaves reach freedom in Canada or in New York.

 

In addition, in the early 1840s the state legislature and Governor William H. Seward expanded rights for free blacks and fugitive slaves in New York: in 1840 the legislature passed laws protecting the rights of African Americans against Southern slave-catchers. One guaranteed alleged fugitive slaves the right of a jury trial in New York to establish whether they were slaves, and another pledged the aid of the state to recover free blacks kidnapped into slavery, (as happened to Solomon Northup of Saratoga Springs in 1841, who did not regain freedom until 1853.) In 1841 Seward signed legislation to repeal a "nine-month law" that allowed slaveholders to bring their slaves into the state for a period of nine months before they were considered free. After this, slaves brought to the state were immediately considered freed, as was the case in some other free states. Seward also signed legislation to establish public education for all children, leaving it up to local jurisdictions as to how that would be supplied (some had segregated schools).

 

New York culture bloomed in the first half of the 19th century: in 1809 Washington Irving wrote the satirical A History of New York under the pen name Diedrich Knickerbocker, and in 1819 he based Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in Hudson Valley towns. Thomas Cole's Hudson River School was established in the 1830s by showcasing dramatic landscapes of the Hudson Valley. The first baseball teams formed in New York City in the 1840s, including the New York Knickerbockers. Professional baseball later located its Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Saratoga Race Course, an annual summer attraction in Saratoga Springs, opened in 1847.

 

A civil war was not in the best interest of business, because New York had strong ties to the Deep South, both through the port of New York and manufacture of cotton goods in upstate textile mills. Half of New York City's exports were related to cotton before the war. Southern businessmen so frequently traveled to the city that they established favorite hotels and restaurants. Trade was based on moving Southern goods. The city's large Democrat community feared the impact of Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 and the mayor urged secession of New York.

 

By the time of the 1861 Battle of Fort Sumter, such political differences decreased and the state quickly met Lincoln's request for soldiers and supplies. More soldiers fought from New York than any other Northern state. While no battles were waged in New York, the state was not immune to Confederate conspiracies, including one to burn various New York cities and another to invade the state via Canada.

 

In January 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in states that were still in rebellion against the union. In March 1863, the federal draft law was changed so that male citizens between 20 and 35 and unmarried citizens to age 45 were subject to conscription. Those who could afford to hire a substitute or pay $300 were exempt. Antiwar newspaper editors attacked the law, and many immigrants and their descendants resented being drafted in place of people who could buy their way out. Democratic Party leaders raised the specter of a deluge of freed southern blacks competing with the white working class, then dominated by ethnic Irish and immigrants. On the lottery's first day, July 11, 1863, the first lottery draw was held. On Monday, July 13, 1863, five days of large-scale riots began, which were dominated by ethnic Irish, who targeted blacks in the city, their neighborhoods, and known abolitionist sympathizers. As a result, many blacks left Manhattan permanently, moving to Brooklyn or other areas.

 

In the following decades, New York strengthened its dominance of the financial and banking industries. Manufacturing continued to rise: Eastman Kodak founded in 1888 in Rochester, General Electric in Schenectady, and Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company in the Triple Cities are some of the well-known companies founded during this period. Buffalo and Niagara Falls attracted numerous factories following the advent of hydroelectric power in the area. With industry blooming, workers began to unite in New York as early as the 1820s. By 1882, the Knights of Labor in New York City had 60,000 members. Trade unions used political influence to limit working hours as early as 1867. At the same time, New York's agricultural output peaked. Focus changed from crop-based to dairy-based agriculture. The cheese industry became established in the Mohawk Valley. By 1881, the state had more than 241,000 farms. In the same period, the area around New York harbor became the world's oyster capital, retaining that title into the early twentieth century.

 

Immigration increased throughout the latter half of the 19th century. Starting with refugees from the Great Famine of Ireland in the 1840s, New York became a prominent entry point for those seeking a new life in the United States. Between 1855 and 1890, an estimated 8 million immigrants passed through Castle Clinton at Battery Park in Manhattan. Early in this period, most immigrants came from Ireland and Germany. Ellis Island opened in 1892, and between 1880 and 1920, most immigrants were German and Eastern European Jews, Poles, and other Eastern and Southern Europeans, including many Italians. By 1925, New York City's population outnumbered that of London, making it the most populous city in the world. Arguably New York's most identifiable symbol, Liberty Enlightening the World (the Statue of Liberty), a gift from France for the American centennial, was completed in 1886. By the early 20th century, the statue was regarded as the "Mother of Exiles"—a symbol of hope to immigrants.

 

New York's political pattern changed little after the mid–19th century. New York City and its metropolitan area was already heavily Democrat; Upstate was aligned with the Republican Party and was a center of abolitionist activists. In the 1850s, Democratic Tammany Hall became one of the most powerful and durable political machines in United States history. Boss William Tweed brought the organization to the forefront of city and then state politics in the 1860s. Based on its command of a large population, Tammany maintained influence until at least the 1930s. Outside the city, Republicans were able to influence the redistricting process enough to constrain New York City and capture control of the Legislature in 1894. Both parties have seen national political success: in the 39 presidential elections between 1856 and 2010, Republicans won 19 times and Democrats 20 times.

 

By 1901, New York was the richest and most populous state. Two years prior, the five boroughs of New York City became one city. Within decades, the city's emblem had become the skyscraper: the Woolworth Building was the tallest building in the world from 1913, surpassed by 40 Wall Street in April 1930, the Chrysler Building in 1930, the Empire State Building in 1931, and the World Trade Center in 1972 before losing the title in 1974.

 

The state was serviced by over a dozen major railroads and at the start of the 20th century and electric Interurban rail networks began to spring up around Syracuse, Rochester and other cities in New York during this period.

 

In the late 1890s governor Theodore Roosevelt and fellow Republicans such as Charles Evans Hughes worked with many Democrats such as Al Smith to promote Progressivism. They battled trusts and monopolies (especially in the insurance industry), promoted efficiency, fought waste, and called for more democracy in politics. Democrats focused more on the benefits of progressivism for their own ethnic working class base and for labor unions.

 

Democratic political machines, especially Tammany Hall in Manhattan, opposed woman suffrage because they feared that the addition of female voters would dilute the control they had established over groups of male voters. By the time of the New York State referendum on women's suffrage in 1917, however, some wives and daughters of Tammany Hall leaders were working for suffrage, leading it to take a neutral position that was crucial to the referendum's passage.

 

Following a sharp but short-lived Depression at the beginning of the decade, New York enjoyed a booming economy during the Roaring Twenties. New York suffered during the Great Depression, which began with the Wall Street crash on Black Tuesday in 1929. The Securities and Exchange Commission opened in 1934 to regulate the stock market. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected governor in 1928, and the state faced upwards of 25% unemployment. His Temporary Emergency Relief Agency, established in 1931, was the first work relief program in the nation and influenced the national Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Roosevelt was elected President in 1932 in part because of his promises to extend New York–style relief programs across the country via his New Deal. In 1932, Lake Placid was host to the III Olympic Winter Games.

 

As the largest state, New York again supplied the most resources during World War II. New York manufactured 11 percent of total United States military armaments produced during the war and suffered 31,215 casualties. The war affected the state both socially and economically. For example, to overcome discriminatory labor practices, Governor Herbert H. Lehman created the Committee on Discrimination in Employment in 1941 and Governor Thomas E. Dewey signed the Ives-Quinn Act in 1945, banning employment discrimination. The G.I. Bill of 1944, which offered returning soldiers the opportunity of affordable higher education, forced New York to create a public university system since its private universities could not handle the influx; the State University of New York was created by Governor Dewey in 1948.

 

World War II constituted New York's last great industrial era. At its conclusion, the defense industry shrank and the economy shifted towards producing services rather than goods. Returning soldiers disproportionately displaced female and minority workers who had entered the industrial workforce only when the war left employers no other choice. Companies moved to the south and west, seeking lower taxes and a less costly, non–union workforce. Many workers followed the jobs. The middle class expanded and created suburbs such as the one on Long Island. The automobile accelerated this decentralization; planned communities like Levittown offered affordable middle-class housing.

 

Larger cities stopped growing around 1950. Growth resumed only in New York City, in the 1980s. Buffalo's population fell by half between 1950 and 2000. Reduced immigration and worker migration led New York State's population to decline for the first time between 1970 and 1980. California and Texas both surpassed it in population.

 

New York entered its third era of massive transportation projects by building highways, notably the New York State Thruway. The project was unpopular with New York City Democrats, who referred to it as "Dewey's ditch" and the "enemy of schools", because the Thruway disproportionately benefited upstate. The highway was based on the German Autobahn and was unlike anything seen at that point in the United States. It was within 30 miles (50 km) of 90% of the population at its conception. Costing $600 million, the full 427-mile (687 km) project opened in 1956.

 

Nelson Rockefeller was governor from 1959 to 1973 and changed New York politics. He began as a liberal, but grew more conservative: he limited SUNY's growth, responded aggressively to the Attica Prison riot, and promulgated the uniquely severe Rockefeller Drug Laws. The World Trade Center and other profligate projects nearly drove New York City into bankruptcy in 1975. The state took substantial budgetary control, which eventually led to improved fiscal prudence.

 

The Executive Mansion was retaken by Democrats in 1974 and remained under Democratic control for 20 years under Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo. Late–century Democrats became more centrist, including US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1977–2001) and New York City Mayor Ed Koch (1978–1989), while state Republicans began to align themselves with the more conservative national party. They gained power through the elections of Senator Alfonse D'Amato in 1980, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1993, and Governor George Pataki in 1994. New York remained one of the most liberal states. In 1984, Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to carry the state, although Republican Michael Bloomberg served as New York City mayor in the early 21st century.

 

In the late 20th century, telecommunication and high technology industries employed many New Yorkers. New York City was especially successful at this transition. Entrepreneurs created many small companies, as industrial firms such as Polaroid withered. This success drew many young professionals into the still–dwindling cities. New York City was the exception and has continued to draw new residents. The energy of the city created attractions and new businesses. Some people believe that changes in policing created a less threatening environment; crime rates dropped, and urban development reduced urban decay.

 

This in turn led to a surge in culture. New York City became, once again, "the center for all things chic and trendy". Hip-hop and rap music, led by New York City, became the most popular pop genre. Immigration to both the city and state rose. New York City, with a large gay and lesbian community, suffered many deaths from AIDS beginning in the 1980s.

 

New York City increased its already large share of television programming, home to the network news broadcasts, as well as two of the three major cable news networks. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times became two of the three "national" newspapers, read throughout the country. New York also increased its dominance of the financial services industry centered on Wall Street, led by banking expansion, a rising stock market, innovations in investment banking, including junk bond trading and accelerated by the savings and loan crisis that decimated competitors elsewhere in New York.

 

Upstate did not fare as well as downstate; the major industries that began to reinvigorate New York City did not typically spread to other regions. The number of farms in the state had fallen to 30,000 by 1997. City populations continued to decline while suburbs grew in area, but did not increase proportionately in population. High-tech industry grew in cities such as Corning and Rochester. Overall New York entered the new millennium "in a position of economic strength and optimism".

 

In 2001, New York entered a new era following the 9/11 attacks, the worst terrorist attack ever to take place on American soil. Two of the four hijacked passenger jets crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, destroying them, and killing almost 3,000 people. One flew into the Pentagon demolishing the walls. The final one was almost taken back over by the passengers aboard and crashed into an open grassland with 296 out of the 500 people dead. Thousands of New Yorkers volunteered their time to search the ruin for survivors and remains in the following weeks.

 

Following the attacks, plans were announced to rebuild the World Trade Center site. 7 World Trade Center became the first World Trade Center skyscraper to be rebuilt in five years after the attacks. One World Trade Center, four more office towers, and a memorial to the casualties of the September 11 attacks are under construction as of 2011. One World Trade Center opened on November 3, 2014.

 

On October 29 and 30, 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused extensive destruction of the state's shorelines, ravaging portions of New York City, Long Island, and southern Westchester with record-high storm surge, with severe flooding and high winds causing power outages for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, and leading to gasoline shortages and disruption of mass transit systems. The storm and its profound effects have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of New York City and Long Island to minimize the risk from another such future event. Such risk is considered highly probable due to global warming and rising sea levels.

See the wiki article on the Olympus Ace.

 

LIke the Aires V, the behind-the-lens leaf shutter constrains lens designs; in the long run systems like the Ace's did not gain much of a foothold.

Canon A1 / FL 55mm 1.2 / ilford HP5 @1600

The turtleneck was purchased two falls ago at Kohl's; the skirt at a thrift store earlier this year, as I recall. It is very tight, even with the corset, and constrains my stride almost like a hobble skirt. Combined with the spike heels, it turns my walk into a lady-like mince.

 

Accessories are the red rose headband, black-and-white jewelry, black belt, light hose, and the aforementioned blue patent pumps with spike heels. Props are a book and a handbag.

 

THIS SHORE LIGHTHOUSE GUARDS THE EAST SIDE OF THE ENTRANCE TO LOCH RYAN FROM A POINT JUST SOUTH EAST OF IT. IT STANDS ON CAIRN POINT WHICH PROJECTS INTO LOCH RYAN FROM A NARROW SHELF IN FRONT OF THE MAIN (A77) ROAD; A SOLID PORTION ON THE EAST SIDE OF THE LANTERN CONSTRAINS THE LIGHT TO SEAWARD. THE LIGHTHOUSE WAS BUILT BY ALAN STEVENSON AND FIRST LIT IN 1847. IT WAS CONVERTED TO OIL BURNING IN 1847, AND AUTOMATED (ELECTRIFIED AND MADE 'UNATTENDED') IN 1964.

East window of the north aisle by Florence Camm, 1932, depicting the Virgin & Child alongside Christ as Light of the World. The subject matter in this case does not sit easily since the donor clearly insisted upon constraining the artist by copying the very popular painting by Holman Hunt for the latter figure (something that occurred frequently in Victorian glass), a close imitation which thus sits a little awkwardly alongside Camm's original design for the Madonna & Child. The result is meticulously executed as always, but I can't help feeling it's a pity that an artist of Florence Camm's high calibre should be compromised in this way.

 

St Barbara's church at Ashton under Hill is sits on high ground set back from the main road through the village and thus doesn't immediately show itself to the casual visitor. To find it one has to look out for the lychgate set between houses and ascend the steep pathway beyond it where the building is picturesquely revealed in its lovely setting behind trees.

 

The building appears at first sight to be of mostly 15th century date stylistically, but this is misleading as some parts are considerably older and others surprisingly younger, for example the entire chancel appears to have been rebuilt in 1624 (marked by an inscription on the south side) and sits well with the medieval nave and tower, being a good example of rare Gothic Survival architecture (some of the stonework of the side windows may be reused medieval work). The east window tracery incorporates curious carvings of fish.

 

The church is entered via the south porch which shelters a Norman doorway, betraying the church's earlier 12th century origins. Within the nave and north aisle are spacious and light (thanks to clear glass and rendered walls) whilst the chancel beyond has late glass be the studio of Frank Holt and its floor level is unusually a step down from the nave (the reverse of the norm and a symptom of the hillside site). There is a handsome late medieval font in the north aisle with a fine window by Florence Camm behind it.

 

St Barbara's church is kept open and welcoming under normal circumstances, however like many has spent much of the Covid lockdown inaccessible. My visit was the exception, being part of the team repairing (fortunately minor) vandal damage to the east window.

www.worcesteranddudleyhistoricchurches.org.uk/index.php?p...

Today was the Annual Classic Car Show at Pencoed, near Bridgend. As I haven't been for a few years I felt it was time to make a visit. The plan was simple, arrive early so I could photograph exhibits as they arrive and before the ground became too crowded. In practise, this was fine for commercial vehicles but the car sections were so close together it was almost impossible to be creative, especially with a wide angle bolted on the front!

 

I was attracted to this car by the clump of daisies just in front, and by getting really low could hide all the rally stickers in the windscreen and most of the persons milling around in the background. The red car to the right has been desaturated and darkened to hide it. I took a few shots of various chromed cars from this angle, one Vauxhall owner was most perturbed "You won't get a decent photo from down there" he remarked!

 

The weather was extremely hot and by lunch time I'd had enough, 700 cars and other attractions crammed into a site little larger than a football field is a little constraining photographically!

Blooooooody orange.

I really should have included a knife and some fake blood in this photo to make it more fun. Maybe next time.

This one was more of a test really.

It was taken in my DIY light tent with 2 flashes, left and right of the box.

 

Oh by the way, I took this shot with a new lens that I borrowed, a Canon 135mm f2.0 L! It gives really really sharp photos. It goes all the way from f2.0 to f32 so it's quite flexible. Mounted on a non full-frame DSLR, it makes quite a tele-photo lens and since it's a fixed focal, it's quite constraining, but the sharpness of the images and the f2.0 aperture make it a great lens.

(Updated May 13, 2024)

 

Looking northeastward at the church's facade.

 

One of the Cream City's most renowned architectural landmarks, St. Paul's is also an exemplar of the Richardsonian Romanesque style expressed through the medium of Lake Superior Brownstone (henceforth LSB). This site is prominently featured in my recently released book Milwaukee in Stone and Clay (NIU imprint of Cornell University Press).

 

LSB was quarried for building stone in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries along the Lake Superior littoral in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, in the vicinity of Duluth, Minnesota, and, as in the case of the rock shown here, in northernmost Wisconsin. In Midwestern markets especially it competed very successfully with the more famous Portland Sandstone of New England's Connecticut River Valley.

 

Geologically speaking, this church's somber maroon cladding belongs to the Chequamegon Sandstone, extracted from Basswood Island in the Apostle Islands. In common with the other LSB varieties, the Chequamegon is one of the iron-rich clastic sedimentary units that was deposited over the massive mafic-lava outflows of the late-Mesoproterozoic Midcontinent Rift.

 

While geochronologists can derive reliable dates from those underlying igneous rocks, the LSB beds themselves have for decades been much more difficult to constrain due to the lack of index fossils and other helpful clues. Fortunately, a relatively new technique that analyzes detrital zircons in the rock has established a maximum depositional age for the Chequamegon of 1.035 Ga. This means that in all likelihood the formation is either latest Mesoproterozoic or early Neoproterozoic.

 

The Chequamegon is still well represented in Milwaukee's built landscape, and, as I hope to eventually show, it was also used in some of the city's most notable stately homes and cemetery structures. Close-ups of St. Paul's stone will follow more directly.

 

This site and many others in Milwaukee County are discussed at greater length in my recently released book Milwaukee in Stone and Clay (NIU Imprint of Cornell University Press).

 

And to see the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit

The Brownstone Chronicles album.

 

Ross's Geese, Dusk Sky. San Joaquin Valley, California. January 21, 2013. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell - all rights reserved.

 

A row of Ross's geese stretches into a line as they fly in front of dusk sky on a winter evening above California's San Joaquin Valley.

 

The post-sunset twilight period is one of the most special of the day in these Central Valley wildlife refuges. There is a transformation at this point that fascinates me, even after seeing it a number of times. During the day, it often seems that not much is going on. The larger flocks of birds are mostly settled in somewhere, with only small numbers flying from place to place, albeit with an occasional momentary eruption of geese. As sunset approaches, the geese become more active, taking flight and moving from location to location. On this evening, the process was mostly one of leaving rather than arriving, as the flock nearest to us gradually left the pond where they had been settled and then flew off to more distant points. As the sun sets the wildlife seems like it is going to settle down. But then, as darkness comes on, special things happen. In this particular location, just as things quiet, the cranes return. Unlike the geese, who flap and squawk, the cranes have a distinctive and less raucous cry and then float in with much less flapping of wings. And at close to this same time, I often begin to notice that geese are flying in smaller groups all throughout the sky. At this San Joaquin Valley location, it can seem that they stretch all the way to the Diablo Range to the west. Simultaneous with this, if there are clouds in the sky, they take on the rich post-sunset colors that can perhaps be seen better by the camera than the eye.

 

The idea of this photograph was simple. I wanted to find and photograph a line of geese in front of a colorful section of the dusk sky. To make this work, I have to become aware of cloud patterns and where the most colorful portions of the sky are, and both clouds and colors are in a constant state of change. As groups of birds fly into view I try to guess which of them might follow a path across these areas of the sky, at which point I pick up a group in the viewfinder and follow it as it crosses into the scene. I am probably less attentive to the birds than to the non-bird portions of the scene that slide across my viewfinder, and I wait until the birds appear against a particular pattern or color of sky and clouds to make exposures. Obviously, little of this is in my control beyond the timing of my attempts to take advantage of whatever the sky and the birds happen to provide to me! In some ways, it still amazes me that it is possible to capture a simple scene like this one. Both technique and equipment play an important role here. In order to work with birds that may be a good distance away and in order to constrain my field of view to small sections of the sky, I work with a 400mm focal length. I must hand hold the camera rather than using the tripod, adding an additional challenge. By this time the light is so low that I find myself shooting at ISO 3200, something that would have been darned near impossible even a few years ago. And somehow, in light that is rapidly fading toward darkness, it is possible to photograph a moving flock of birds against a dusk sky.

 

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Gotha 146 was a fast reconnaissance aircraft that was used throughout WWII by the German Luftwaffe, and one of the results of a mutual technology exchange program with Japan. The Go 146 was actually a license-built, but modified variant of the excellent Mitsubishi Ki-46. The latter type's career started in late 1937, when the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force issued a specification to Mitsubishi for a long-range strategic reconnaissance aircraft to replace the Mitsubishi Ki-15. The specification demanded an endurance of six hours and sufficient speed to evade interception by any fighter in existence or development at that time, but otherwise did not constrain the design by a team led by Tomio Kubo.

 

The resulting design was a twin-engine, low-winged monoplane with a retractable tailwheel undercarriage. It had a small diameter oval fuselage with the pilot and observer situated in individual cockpits separated by a large fuel tank. The engines, two Mitsubishi Ha-26 radials, were housed in close-fitting cowlings to reduce drag and improve pilot view.

 

The first prototype aircraft, flew in November 1939 from the Mitsubishi factory at Kakamigahara, Gifu. Tests showed that the Ki-46 was underpowered and slower than required, only reaching 540 km/h (336 mph) rather than the specified 600 km/h (373 mph), but, otherwise, the aircraft tests were successful. As the type was still faster than the Army's latest fighter, the Nakajima Ki-43, as well as the Navy's new A6M2, an initial production batch was ordered. To solve the performance problems, Mitsubishi switched to Ha-102 engines, which were Ha-26s fitted with a two-stage supercharger, while increasing fuel capacity and reducing empty weight. This became the Ki-46-II, and this type was also demonstrated to German officials who immediately noticed its potential.

 

Knowing that the German Luftwaffe lacked this specialized, fast type of aircraft (German reconnaissance aircraft of that time were either slow artillery observation types, or variants of bombers or heavy fighters), the RLM immediately asked for a batch of airframe kits to adapt it to the European theatre and test its capabilities. Seven engine-less airframe kits were delivered to Germany in early 1940. In the meantime, with the help of blueprints and other documentations, an alternative engine installation had been devised: the “Germanized” aircraft was to be powered by liquid-cooled DB 601 engines, which delivered more power than the Ha-102 and offered improved aerodynamics, despite the necessity to add radiators under the outer wings. Many stock parts from the contemporary Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter were incorporated, so that the development time was very short, and the commonality of mechanical parts eased logistics and maintenance.

 

In May 1940 the first batch of the Gotha 146 A-0 pre-production aircraft (which had officially been described as a further development of a four seat, twin-engine transport aircraft from the 1930s to cloud its origins and mission) was ready. They were immediately transferred to the Western Front for field tests, and the specialized Go 146 became quickly popular among its crews. It was fast, agile and easy to fly – almost on par with state-of-the-art fighters like the Bf 109. During the test phase in summer 1940 the Go 146 proved to be slightly faster than its Japanese Ki-46 ancestor, and with a top speed of more than 375 mph (600 km/h) it was hard to intercept by any British or French fighter of the time. The results were so convincing that the type was ordered into serial production, and from October 1940 on the Go 146 A-1 was produced in limited numbers at the Gothaer Waggonfabrik in Thuringia. Even though production only ran at small scale, it was continuous, and the Go 146 was steadily developed further, including the change of the nose section that came with the Ki-46-III, stronger engines and an improved defensive armament.

 

This evolution led to the Go 146 B, which had the traditional stepped windshield replaced with a smooth, curved, glazed panel extended over the pilot's seat. It not only gave a more aerodynamic nose profile, the re-shaped nose also offered room for an extra fuel tank. The space between the two crewmen, connected with a crawl tunnel, held another fuel tank, the radio equipment (a Sprechfunkgerät FuG 16 ZY and a FuG 25a „Erstling“ IFF beacon), as well as a compartment for up to three cameras with several ventral windows, which could take Rb (“Reihenbildner” = serial picture device) 20/30, 50/30 and 75/30 devices that could be mounted in different combinations and angles as needed.

Power came now from a pair of new Daimler-Benz DB 603A liquid-cooled piston engines, which offered 1,290 kW (1,750 hp) each for take-off. Since the engine mounts had to be re-designed for the DB603s (the Go 146 A had used adapters to attach its shorter DB 601s to the original Ha-102 radials’ hardpoints), German engineers used the opportunity to redesign the complete engine nacelles. As a result, their diameter and “wet” surface was reduced, so much that the landing gear had to be modified, too. It now rotated 90° upon retraction, so that the main wheels were lying in shallow wells within the wing structure. Beyond better aerodynamics, structural measures saved almost 250 kg (550 lb).

 

Instead of the Go 146 A’s single 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine gun in the observer's cabin, facing rearwards, the defensive armament was improved and consisted of a pair of 13 mm (0.51 in) MG 131 machine guns, firing rearward from FDSL 131/1B remotely-operated barbettes, one per side. This rather complex installation had become possible (and in part necessary) due to a center of gravity shift from the modified engines and their empennage. The weapons were aimed by the rear crewman through a periscope that covered both the upper and lower rear hemisphere. The control unit had a rotating transverse crossbar with a sideways-pivoting handgun-style grip and trigger at its center, "forked" at its forward pivoting end to fit around the crossbar, with the upper fork extended beyond the rotating crossbar to mount the gunsight. This unique aiming and control scheme rotated the crossbar axially, when the handgrip was elevated or depressed, to aim the guns vertically by rotating both turrets together, and a sideways movement of the handgrip would pivot either one of the guns outwards from the fuselage-mounted turrets for diagonal firing. The guns were electrically fired, and an electrical contact breaker prevented the gunner from shooting off the aircraft’s tailplane. When not in use, the guns would return to a neutral position that would allow to fire directly backwards with both guns.

Furthermore, plumbed hardpoints were added to the inner wings, just inside of the engines. These could carry a 300 l drop tank each for an extended range and loiter time. Single bombs of up to 250 kg or racks with four 50 kg bombs each were theoretically possible too, but the aircraft lacked any bomb aiming support. Crew protection was slightly improved, too, but the airframe was overall kept as light as possible. Despite these efforts, however, MTOW rose to 6,500 kg (14,317 lb), but this was still relatively light in comparison with the similar contemporary Me 410 multi-purpose aircraft, which weighed more than 9 tons and was powered by similar engines. Consequently, and thanks to its clean lines, the G 146 B had a top speed of almost 700 km/h (434 mph) at ideal altitude and the aircraft retained its excellent handling, even though its structure was rather fragile and could not take much stress and punishment.

 

Two versions of the Go 146 B were produced, steadily but only at a low rate because the aircraft received, due to its highly specialized role and limited offensive capabilities, only a low priority. The B-1 was the main variant and kept the A version’s standard wing, a total of 54 were produced between 1943 and 1945. Additionally, the B-2 was produced between late 1943 and early 1944 as a dedicated high altitude photo reconnaissance aircraft. This sub-variant had an extended wingspan of 16.00 m (52 ft 5 in) instead of the standard 14.70 m (48 ft 2¾ in) and an improved oxygen system, even though the cabin was not pressurized. Its maximum service ceiling was almost 12.000 m (39.305 ft), with a maximum speed of 415 mph (668 km/h), a cruise speed of 250 mph (400 km/h) and a range of 3,200 km (1,987 nmi). Only twelve of these machines were produced and put into service, primarily for flights over Southern Great Britain. When the Arado Ar 234 became available from September 1944 on, though, this new, jet-powered type immediately replaced the Go 146 B-2 because it offered even better performance. Therefore, the B-3, a planned version with a fully pressurized cabin and an even bigger wingspan of 19.00 m, never left the drawing board.

 

Furthermore, the RLM had idea to convert the fast Go 146 into a fighter amd even a night fighter in mid-1944 as the “C” series. But these plans were not executed because the light airframe could hardly be adapted to heavy weapons or equipment like a radar set, and it was unsuited for vigorous dogfighting. The type’s poor climbing rate made it ineffective as an interceptor, too. There were, nevertheless, tests with at least one Go 146 B-1 that carried four Werfer-Granate 21 rocket launchers under the outer wings, as a fast bomber interceptor esp. against the high-flying B-29, which was expected to appear over continental Europe soon. But this kind of weaponry never reached frontline units and the Go 146 was never operated as a fighter of any kind.

There were, however, other uses: in 1944 the Go 146 was enlisted as a fast liaison aircraft for the RLM (Ministry of Aviation) in Berlin. Stripped off of any armament and cameras and outfitted with two passenger seats in the rear cabin, at least one Go 146 B (with the confirmed registration “ST+ZA”, others in similar configuration may have existed, too) was operated by the RLM’s Zentralabteilung (central command) from Tempelhof airfield for top brass officials between Luftwaffe locations on German terrain. ST+ZA’s fate after January 1945 is uncertain, though.

  

Specifications:

Crew: two (pilot and observer)

Length: 11.00 m (36 ft 1 in)

Wingspan: 14.70 m (48 ft 2¾ in)

Height: 3.88 m (12 ft 8¾ in)

Wing area: 32.0 m² (344 ft²)

Empty weight: 3,830 kg (8,436 lb)

Loaded weight: 5,661 kg (12,480 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 6,500 kg (14,317 lb)

 

Powerplant:

2× Daimler-Benz DB 603A V-12 inverted liquid-cooled piston engines, rated at:

- 1,290 kW (1,750 hp) each for take-off

- 1,360 kW (1,850 PS) at 2,100 m (6,890 ft)

- 1,195 kW (1,625 PS) at 5,700 m (18,700 ft)

- 1,162 kW (1580 PS) combat power at 2500 rpm at sea level

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 695 km/h (377 knots, 430 mph) at 5,800 m (19,000 ft)

Cruise speed: 450 km/h (245 knots, 280 mph)

Range: 2,800 km (1,522 nmi, 1,740 mi) with internal fuel

Service ceiling: 11,250 m (36,850 ft)

Wing loading: 157.8 kg/m² (32.3 lb/ft²)

Climb rate: 14.7 m/sec (2,900 feet per minute)

Climb to 8,000 m (26,250 ft): 15 min 20 sec

 

Armament:

2× 13 mm (0.51 in) defensive MG 131 machine guns with 500 RPG,

each firing rearward from FDSL 131/1B remote-operated turret, one per side

2× underwing hardpoints under the inner wings for 250 kg (550 lb) each,

typically occupied by 300 l drop tanks

  

The kit and its assembly:

This is a déjà vu build: I already did a “Germanized” Ki-46 in 2015, it was an Airfix Ki-46-II outfitted with DB 601s from a Bf 110 as a pre-series Gotha Go 146 A-0, an aircraft that (naturally) never existed but appeared plausible, since German military hardware including aircraft had been evaluated by Japanese forces. And why should this exchange not have worked the other way around, too? However, as I built this modified Dinah for the first time, I already thought that the basic idea had more potential than just one model, and the streamlined Ki-46-III just lent itself for an updated, later version.

 

This B-2 variant of the Go 146 was based on the LS Models/ARII Ki-46-III. Like the Airfix kit (its molds are from 1965, and that’s just what the kit feels, looks and builds like…), it’s a rather vintage offering, but it is in many aspects markedly ahead, with fine surfaces, recessed details, 3D engines and clear parts that actually fit into their intended places. The LS Models kit’s 10 years less of age are recognizable, and there are three boxings around with different versions of the aircraft (a Ki-46-II, a -III and a trainer with a raised tutor cockpit), differing in small extra sprues for the respective fuselage parts, but they all share a common sprue with the clear parts for all three versions.

 

The Ki-46-III kit was taken OOB, with just some minor mods. The most obvious change concerns the engines: they were transplanted from a Bilek Me 210, together with the underwing radiators outside of the nacelles. The Me 210, even though it’s from 1997, is a rather mediocre model with some dubious solutions, therefore earmarked for a conversion and ready to donor some body parts… The engine switch was insofar easy because the Ki-46 kit comes with completely separate parts for the engines and their fairings which also contain the main landing gear wells.

Because of this “clean” basis I decided to cut the nacelles out from the Me 210 and attach them to the Ki-46 wings, so that the DB 603 engines would have perfect attachment points. While this was a bigger overall surgery stunt than on the earlier Airfix Dinah, this was easier than expected and resulted in a cleaner solution that also underlines the Ki-46’s clean and slender shape. The modified nacelles were much smaller than the Dinah’s, though. The main wheels were replaced with slightly smaller and narrower ones from the scrap box.

 

Inside of the cockpit, I implanted a dashboard. In the rear cabin the seat was reversed and moved further forward. In the cabin’s rear a scratched targeting scope/weapon control column for the FDSL 131 installation was added. Since I left the single-part canopies (which are quite thick but very clear) closed I outfitted the model with a crew. The Ki-46 III kit comes with a pair of figures, but they are very small (H0 scale, at best!) and look goofy, so that I exchanged them with Matchbox WWII pilots, which had their legs bent and their bottoms cut away to make them fit into the tight fuselage and under the canopies.

 

Unfortunately, the Me 210 kit had already donated its machine gun barbettes (they had gone onto an upgraded Heinkel He 115 floatplane), so that I scratched them for the Go 146. WWII bombs became the fairings, some leftover landing gear struts were used as gun barrels, and round styrene bases were used as mounts that also lift the fairings slightly off the hull. The barbettes as such look a little superficial on the slender Dinah, but they are a nice, typically German detail, über-complicated for this type of fast aircraft that probably would have more benefited from leaving them away altogether to save weight and drag.

The (typically German) 300 l drop tanks come from Hobby Boss Bf 109s and each received four short attachment struts, made from styrene profile material, so that they could be stuck under the inner wings.

  

Painting and markings:

This was more complicated than expected. I wanted to apply a plausible, late German WWII livery with typical colors, but finding something that would be suited for high-altitude operations and not copy anything I had already done turned out to be challenging.

 

The paint scheme would be very light, with only low-contrast camouflage added on top. Therefore, the basis became an overall coat with RLM 76 (I used Tamiya XF-23, Light Blue, which is an excellent option). Inspired by He 177 bombers I found in literature, large blotches of a rather obscure and uncommon tone, RLM 77 “Hellgrau” were added to the flanks of fuselage, fin and engine nacelles. RLM 77 is/was a very light grey, and it was primarily used for markings like code letters on night fighters and not for camouflage. AFAIK it would later become the RAL 7035 (Lichtgrau) tone that still exists today. Humbrol 196 would have been an authentic option, but to keep the contrast to the underlying RLM 76 low I rather used XF-19 (Sky Grey) and extended the blotches under the fuselage and the nacelles, for a semi-wraparound scheme.

 

Then came the upper surfaces, everything was painted with brushes and without masks, with an intentional uneven finish. The wings and stabilizers were to receive a slightly darker camouflage in the form of RLM 02 and 75 splotches (with Tamiya XF-22 and XF-XX as proxies) over the uniform RLM 76 base, so that the aircraft’s outlines would be broken up from above. However, after first tests I found this did not look convincing, the RLM 76 was very prominent and bluish, so that I rather gave the upper wings and the spine a semi-translucent but continuous coat of paint, with the underlying RLM 76 just showing through here and there – much better. At this stage I added the decals (see below), but now found the upper surfaces to look too uniform and somewhat dark, so that, as a final measure, I added a meander pattern with RLM 77 (again XF-19) to the wings. This not only looked good and very “German”, it lightened the cammo and also helped to break the aircraft’s lines up. Some light panel shading to the uniform undersides, black ink and grinded graphite were used for weathering, but the effects are very soft.

 

Interior surfaces (cockpit and landing gear wells) became late-war style RAL 7021 Schwarzgrau (Humbrol 67), the landing gear struts were painted in RLM 02, this time Revell 45 was used. The propeller blades were painted in a very dark mix of green and black, the spinners became black with simple white spirals – the only detail with a high contrast on this aircraft.

 

The markings of this aircraft are minimal. Balkenkreuz markings only consisting of outlines were used, another typical late-war practice and for a low-visibility look/effect. They were taken from an Academy Fw 190 D. On the fuselage, the gun barbettes caused some headaches, because they take up a lot of space and made the application of a standard Luftwaffe code almost impossible. Consequently, the fuselage Balkenkreuze were placed ahead of the barbettes, partly disrupted by the observer’s lower side windows, while the tactical code became separated by the guns. At starboard the code even had to be reversed - not correct, but a pragmatic solution.

The model/aircraft belongs to a fictional unit, its code “P3” in front of the fuselage Balkenkreuz has no real-world reference and was executed in small letters, a typical late WWII measure. This part of the code was done with small, black 2 mm letters. A fictional unit badge, depicting a running greyhound, was added under the cockpit. It actually belongs to a German tank unit.

The “KN” part of the code, including the Ks on the nose, came from an Airfix Ju 87 B sheet. As an aircraft belonging to the 5th squadron within the unit’s 2nd group, the 4th letter in the code became “N”, while the 3rd letter “K” denotes the individual aircraft. The color code associated with a 5th squadron was red, incorporated on the aircraft as a thin red outline around the individual aircraft letter (another late-war low-contrast measure). To provide a little visual excitement, small red Ks were added to the nose, too, to make thew aircraft easy to identify when parked at the flight line.

Since this aircraft would operate over the Western front from German home ground, no further ID/theatre markings like fuselage or wing bands or wingtips in yellow or white, etc. were added. This, together with the lack of visible red as squadron code, results in a rather dry look, but that’s intentional.

After some exhaust and oil stains with graphite and Tamiya “Smoke”, a coat of acrylic matt varnish finally sealed the model and a wire antenna, made from heated sprue material, was added.

  

Well, an exotic what-if idea, but I really like how this conversion turned out, even though the livery evolved in a different way from what I had initially in mind. The Ki-46 was already an elegant aircraft, especially the Ki-46-III with its teardrop-shaped nose section. But, with the smaller, streamlined inline engines instead of the radials, this iteration looks even better and faster. It reminds a little of the D.H. Hornet? The gun barbettes are a nice “German” detail, and the makeshift high-altitude paint scheme adds to the obscure impression of the model. A really nice sister ship for the Go 146 A-0 build from 2015.

This is my final AstroRaspberryPi assembly. The computer and camera together are the size of a lightweight point and shoot camera. The ribbon cable to the RPi camera module constrains the camera board and the computer to being mounted together. Here the camera board is mounted in a Questar camera adapter extension tube and the RPi computer mounted to the end of the camera adapter with a T-ring as a retaining nut. The foam gasket allowed the ribbon cable to be routed through the GPIO opening in the case to protect it and hide it from view. The cord serves as a strain relief for the USB power cable from the battery. For telescopes without a camera port, slight variations on the adapter tube chain would allow it to be mounted in a standard 1.25 or 2" eyepiece focuser.

To Infinity and Beyond: This Is the Afterlife ~

 

Turning inside out, the young shaman falls though a long swirling tunnel formed of his inverted self, his unbodied mouth and eyes agape in a primal rush toward extinction.

 

He accelerates t

hrough a tightly wound vortex that shifts and bends to accommodate his course, always centred in the swirling tube which never touches his falling, disembodied perspective. The tunnel is made of light, and of his own bloodstream, and of all the memories and unremembered details of materiality and personality that made up his life – yet not merely ‘his’ life.

 

Every human, fish, bird, animal, insect, cell and blood corpuscle that has ever lived is there with him, all at once – the dying shaman can feel their bright fear and ecstasy pouring through him as they all rush toward an unseen destination around the curving, translucent bends of the primal vortex. Even though every being dies alone – no matter if a multitude of witnesses is present – the moment of death itself is one great screaming orgasm experienced simultaneously by every one, every single thing that has ever lived – all our eyes and mouths and ganglia agape at the same simultaneous culmination of our material existence.

 

The tunnel is an eternally vivid living record of past events and future dreams, all memories and visions embroidered into the seamless fabric of its swirl – and Ram’yana’s private past and the panoply of his personal memories are displayed most prominently to him, brightly livid episodes which emerge from the tubular walls as he passes. His strongest experiences – the most impressive ones, that imprinted themselves most brightly into the palimpsest of his being – leap out at him in high relief as he turns and twists and falls and flies, a singular eye of consciousness accelerating toward the endless end of the convoluted time tunnel that’s leading him home.

 

As the world we experience slips past us at the periphery of our sensoria, an ongoing tunnel vision moves with us at the extremity of our perceptions, whether dying, dead or alive. Journeying out of the physical plane, outside the material matrix of the world, Ram’yana is beyond time and the ken of time-bound beings; as he leaves four dimensional Timespace and approaches the speed of light everything twists into a tunnel which lengthens fore and aft.

 

He sees his grandfather and grandmother, Mickey Mouse and Pluto, all the dogs and cats and mice and goldfish that shared his boyhood years, the smells of his houses and the flavours of his lovers. He hears the laughter of his kindergarten friends, their bright faces visible all around him singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, while pretty little Abigail jumps over a spinning rope twirled by Gina and Hannah, her long blonde pink-ribboned pigtails rotating around the sides of her head.

 

He holds his mother’s huge hand, grasping her finger through the wooden bars of his bassinet while she sings to him in the sultry evening air. He witnesses the expression of semi-resigned shock on his father’s face during the Cuban missile crisis and again when Kennedy was shot, sees the squashed remains of mosquitoes on the wall above his crib, watches the strange lights moving in the sky while all the neighbours point and speculate, sinks again with a collapsing sandbank on Bondi Beach, swept away with hundreds of panicking faces being pulled out to the deep sea along with him, while hundreds of man-eating sharks are driven off by the beating, splashing oars of desperate lifesavers.

 

He sees his mother’s eyes for the first time all over again and screams at the hard slap on his bottom as he hangs before Doctor Traub’s thick-lensed glasses in the bright, antiseptic birth theatre. His paternal grandmother smiles at him as she leans over and obscures his view of the magnificent giant yellow flowers of the magnolia tree while she wheels him in his pram; he can still smell the cloying fragrance of the flowers. His mother’s mother screams as he holds a dingo puppy up for her inspection and she tumbles over backward in her bedroom, breaking her hip while his eight year old eyes wash the scene away with tears that burn through the illusory years.

 

The Cat in the Hat and the Mighty Thor; the smell and Hungarian accent of alcoholic Uncle Tony, putting him off beer for years with his first taste of bitter ale at the age of six, and the bright laughing face of his babysitter Wendy by the blazing wood fire; the spray of blood when he cut his wrist falling onto a broken bottle at the age of three and the dizzying view from the emergency surgeon’s high private balcony; the first time he kissed a girl and the first time he dreamed of kissing a girl, all bound up together; flying through the sky in a propeller-driven passenger plane, watching circular rainbows following him in the clouds below.

 

White sulphur-crested cockatoos and sparrows circle his yard while kookaburras laugh in the gum trees; the first terrifying time his father holds him up high in the air to place him in the fork of a tree; his first night after he ran away from home, reclining on a beanbag in a Kings Cross commune reading Philip Jose Farmer’s pertinent To Your Scattered Bodies Go – everything is there, each scene and sensation embedded within and revealing a multitude of others. Everything. His dying mind seeks out everything he’s ever experienced, seeking a way back into the womb of living as he falls through something else entirely, riding a rollercoaster beyond the imagination of the most topologically tormented tycoon.

 

As Ram’yana falls he flashes before the eyes of his whole life – as others fall with him, many others, all others, sharing the time tunnel with his self-judging awareness. In the eternity of the Fall everything hidden or repressed is exposed in the Divine Light of clear sight and each being is their own Judge, emerging from the blindfold of their material existence to weigh their own soul on the ineradicable scales of justice and mercy. Conscience is the soul and the soul is immortally, inescapably honest with itself when released from the fetters of self-deceit and delusion.

 

Beyond time, at the singular moment of the great primal rush that is the birth and death canal leading from one world to the next, everyone experiences the same thingat the same time. We all come and go together in a mind-blowing orgasm; dreaming or screaming, laughing or crying, all emotion quails and pales before the rush of unstoppable motion that dwarfs any and every trivial concern.

 

No thought of gods or devils, life or death in the primal scream toward the Light at the end of the tunnel – the only thing that matters is holding onto your headless hat and the wordless regrets felt toward all the people, animals and conscious entities you ever knew deeply, or ever loved – and still love, deeply, tenderly, with a perspective of forgiveness, understanding and compassion never vouchsafed to your flesh-bound, in-coiled, emotion-embroiled mortal personality.

 

Ram is every human who ever lived and died, every fish ever caught in a current to swirl down into lightless depths beyond its control, every bird caught in a whirlwind that flings it to flinders, every animal diving for cover into cloaking vegetation from an inescapable predator, every individual blood corpuscle flinging itself on the way to the crushing pressure at the heart of its warm, pulsating cosmos. As he pours through the end of the world the tunnel twists and whirls, always hiding the point of it all, the point of no return, the heart of the matter, the source of every thing and being – and his mind expands to simultaneously see his spiraling course as a single thread in a vast interwoven image.

 

The tunnel is one thread among myriad drab and colourful strands in a great uncharitable tapestry, an inextricable part of its intricate pattern. The dying shaman follows the course of his life along its undulating strand and sees that his thread rises and falls above and beneath uncountable other interlocking threads, a spectrum of hues and textures in the enormously unfathomable tapestry. As his thread rises above another he is ‘conscious’, while the thread it occludes is ‘dreaming’; where his strand is covered by another thread, his mortal body sleeps and dreams while the other strand lives their waking life. Everyone and everything is there, all at once, simultaneously, lain out and displayed before him with no need for the flow of time to elucidate the infinite multiplicity of being.

 

Turn the tapestry around. The thought comes unbidden and the cloth reverses itself around him in a loopy topological twist; the implicately shared complementary nature of consciousness becomes apparent to his blown mind as he sees himself dreaming the lives of others, and others dreaming through his waking eyes and flesh. The intermingling pathways wind around the curving delineaments of their divine co-creation, which turns into itself like a Moebius strip until the beginning of one thread seamlessly winds into the end of another. The falcon is the hunter is the arrow is the feather is the truth. All is alive and whole; nothing is partial or frayed.

 

The tapestry is vast, but he’s able to follow his individuated thread through the colourful patterns and sees that the enormous conglomeration of dreams and lives is incomplete – not completed by the path of the single thread that is his experience of existence, rising from the tapestry to enter him as him. At the same timeless moment, Ram’yana approaches the plexus of light that is the destiny of all nations, women and men – the future and past of all that are born to fall along with him, minds blown in the blinding light of the immortal portal.

 

An immaculate blazing white-hot sun glows at the end of the tunnel. He can see it ever more clearly through the transparing walls of the vortex, thinning and fading in the face of the overwhelmingly brilliant source and core of existence. Ram sees the arcs of a trans-finite net spreading outward from the source, sees an infinitude of other vortices approaching its plexus from more angles than he can wrap his bodiless head around. They pass through each other in ways that defy and tease his mortal three-dimensionally entrained mind – but the arrangement makes subtle sense to a higher form of his being, trembling on the edge of an unchartable metamorphosis into something so much greater as to be intrinsically unimaginable. Simultaneously, on another level, the individual personality of the shaman approaches its ultimate rebirth and transformation in his flight toward the blinding light of the central sun.

 

The source of all is the hot, bright core and central axis of the centreless multiverse, the eternal end of every tunnel; the maw of a transdimensional creature about to swallow him up, the Infinite Light of God and his own silent heart gently glowing in timeless repose. He flies around a final bend in the dissolving tunnel, surging toward the arcane net that veils the core – which flares into him as the tunnel widens, opening into the final straight.

 

Ram’yana flashes toward the weave that’s flung to the ends of the cosmos, spreading himself to embrace the Light – and as he reaches it, he encounters the safety net. A web-like sieve is strung across the open maw of All, and as Ram’yana passes though it a great, resounding BOUMMB fills the boundless universe – the sound of one heartbeat, as loud as the boom that eternally creates the unborn, ever-living universe; the sound of Shiva’s eye opening and of one hand clapping.

 

Before your time, he hears and feels, not ready, not yet – unfinished – and he feels himself shrinking toward an infinitesimally small spot in the multitude of multiverses – back into the weave, where plan net X marks the spot where all things meet in his current-bound primate life.

 

Boumb… Boom…. Boom!

  

That’s why I’m here, writing this to you ‘now’ – the same ‘now’ that you are reading it in, really. I and eye remember it all vividly, not as something to slowly forget or avoid in the unfocused mind’s eye, but as an ongoing experience that is with me now, always, dynamically imprinted. It is with me as it is with you, when you close your eyes and open your memory to see truly through the waters of forgetfulness, to the infinite waters of eternal life.

 

Life and death, sensory wakefulness and supersensory dreaming are the same thing, appearing as the warp and weft of the reversible tapestry of existence. And everyone, each of us, is the whole tapestry, inextricably interwoven – everyone is everyone, and that’s about as close as this constraining corsetry of early third millennium Inglesh needs to get at this point in infinite time – xcept, perhaps, for the most important thing of all -

 

Every one you truly touch and are touched by, in every way, leaves the deepest and most prominent engravings in your heart, mind and soul. What we do unto others is what we do to ourselves – and other living beings are more than mere memory mirrors or handy usable tools. That’s what draws us back for more, and more again – the need to do better by our selves – over and over, until we do it right. Then we get another choice – or another chance to ride the carousel Wheel of Fortune again, if we so choose.

 

The multiple layers of ascendant consciousness are a self-filtering system of co-evolution – a system of slowly developing focus and perspective that leads our awareness to other dimensions, already inextricably interwoven with the relatively ‘familiar’ bounds of our largely unknown but ever-present reality. There’s no dim-witted hierarchy of order-givers or sword-wielding guardians barring the doors of higher perception – the gateway to Heaven on Earth. There’s just you – and me, and all of us, together. We all have our time to shine, and that time is always now.

 

Yet Death is not Dying. In the Bardo spaces between thy flowering carnations of existence, all the bright religious hopes and turgid superstitious terrors await the untrained monkey mind in its ongoing fall toward dissolution or reintegration. The Bardo Realms are entire worlds or pocket universes as apparently solid as the full-blown reality ye imagine around thee, right where thou art sitting, right now. How do ye know thou art alive, not dreaming this experience, right here and now? Do ye think that’s air you’re breathing?

   

A true story

 

By Ram Ayana @ hermetic.blog.com/2012/03/13/to-infinity-and-beyond-this-...

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Gotha 146 was a fast reconnaissance aircraft that was used throughout WWII by the German Luftwaffe, and one of the results of a mutual technology exchange program with Japan. The Go 146 was actually a license-built, but modified variant of the excellent Mitsubishi Ki-46. The latter type's career started in late 1937, when the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force issued a specification to Mitsubishi for a long-range strategic reconnaissance aircraft to replace the Mitsubishi Ki-15. The specification demanded an endurance of six hours and sufficient speed to evade interception by any fighter in existence or development at that time, but otherwise did not constrain the design by a team led by Tomio Kubo.

 

The resulting design was a twin-engine, low-winged monoplane with a retractable tailwheel undercarriage. It had a small diameter oval fuselage with the pilot and observer situated in individual cockpits separated by a large fuel tank. The engines, two Mitsubishi Ha-26 radials, were housed in close-fitting cowlings to reduce drag and improve pilot view.

 

The first prototype aircraft, flew in November 1939 from the Mitsubishi factory at Kakamigahara, Gifu. Tests showed that the Ki-46 was underpowered and slower than required, only reaching 540 km/h (336 mph) rather than the specified 600 km/h (373 mph), but, otherwise, the aircraft tests were successful. As the type was still faster than the Army's latest fighter, the Nakajima Ki-43, as well as the Navy's new A6M2, an initial production batch was ordered. To solve the performance problems, Mitsubishi switched to Ha-102 engines, which were Ha-26s fitted with a two-stage supercharger, while increasing fuel capacity and reducing empty weight. This became the Ki-46-II, and this type was also demonstrated to German officials who immediately noticed its potential.

 

Knowing that the German Luftwaffe lacked this specialized, fast type of aircraft (German reconnaissance aircraft of that time were either slow artillery observation types, or variants of bombers or heavy fighters), the RLM immediately asked for a batch of airframe kits to adapt it to the European theatre and test its capabilities. Seven engine-less airframe kits were delivered to Germany in early 1940. In the meantime, with the help of blueprints and other documentations, an alternative engine installation had been devised: the “Germanized” aircraft was to be powered by liquid-cooled DB 601 engines, which delivered more power than the Ha-102 and offered improved aerodynamics, despite the necessity to add radiators under the outer wings. Many stock parts from the contemporary Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter were incorporated, so that the development time was very short, and the commonality of mechanical parts eased logistics and maintenance.

 

In May 1940 the first batch of the Gotha 146 A-0 pre-production aircraft (which had officially been described as a further development of a four seat, twin-engine transport aircraft from the 1930s to cloud its origins and mission) was ready. They were immediately transferred to the Western Front for field tests, and the specialized Go 146 became quickly popular among its crews. It was fast, agile and easy to fly – almost on par with state-of-the-art fighters like the Bf 109. During the test phase in summer 1940 the Go 146 proved to be slightly faster than its Japanese Ki-46 ancestor, and with a top speed of more than 375 mph (600 km/h) it was hard to intercept by any British or French fighter of the time. The results were so convincing that the type was ordered into serial production, and from October 1940 on the Go 146 A-1 was produced in limited numbers at the Gothaer Waggonfabrik in Thuringia. Even though production only ran at small scale, it was continuous, and the Go 146 was steadily developed further, including the change of the nose section that came with the Ki-46-III, stronger engines and an improved defensive armament.

 

This evolution led to the Go 146 B, which had the traditional stepped windshield replaced with a smooth, curved, glazed panel extended over the pilot's seat. It not only gave a more aerodynamic nose profile, the re-shaped nose also offered room for an extra fuel tank. The space between the two crewmen, connected with a crawl tunnel, held another fuel tank, the radio equipment (a Sprechfunkgerät FuG 16 ZY and a FuG 25a „Erstling“ IFF beacon), as well as a compartment for up to three cameras with several ventral windows, which could take Rb (“Reihenbildner” = serial picture device) 20/30, 50/30 and 75/30 devices that could be mounted in different combinations and angles as needed.

Power came now from a pair of new Daimler-Benz DB 603A liquid-cooled piston engines, which offered 1,290 kW (1,750 hp) each for take-off. Since the engine mounts had to be re-designed for the DB603s (the Go 146 A had used adapters to attach its shorter DB 601s to the original Ha-102 radials’ hardpoints), German engineers used the opportunity to redesign the complete engine nacelles. As a result, their diameter and “wet” surface was reduced, so much that the landing gear had to be modified, too. It now rotated 90° upon retraction, so that the main wheels were lying in shallow wells within the wing structure. Beyond better aerodynamics, structural measures saved almost 250 kg (550 lb).

 

Instead of the Go 146 A’s single 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine gun in the observer's cabin, facing rearwards, the defensive armament was improved and consisted of a pair of 13 mm (0.51 in) MG 131 machine guns, firing rearward from FDSL 131/1B remotely-operated barbettes, one per side. This rather complex installation had become possible (and in part necessary) due to a center of gravity shift from the modified engines and their empennage. The weapons were aimed by the rear crewman through a periscope that covered both the upper and lower rear hemisphere. The control unit had a rotating transverse crossbar with a sideways-pivoting handgun-style grip and trigger at its center, "forked" at its forward pivoting end to fit around the crossbar, with the upper fork extended beyond the rotating crossbar to mount the gunsight. This unique aiming and control scheme rotated the crossbar axially, when the handgrip was elevated or depressed, to aim the guns vertically by rotating both turrets together, and a sideways movement of the handgrip would pivot either one of the guns outwards from the fuselage-mounted turrets for diagonal firing. The guns were electrically fired, and an electrical contact breaker prevented the gunner from shooting off the aircraft’s tailplane. When not in use, the guns would return to a neutral position that would allow to fire directly backwards with both guns.

Furthermore, plumbed hardpoints were added to the inner wings, just inside of the engines. These could carry a 300 l drop tank each for an extended range and loiter time. Single bombs of up to 250 kg or racks with four 50 kg bombs each were theoretically possible too, but the aircraft lacked any bomb aiming support. Crew protection was slightly improved, too, but the airframe was overall kept as light as possible. Despite these efforts, however, MTOW rose to 6,500 kg (14,317 lb), but this was still relatively light in comparison with the similar contemporary Me 410 multi-purpose aircraft, which weighed more than 9 tons and was powered by similar engines. Consequently, and thanks to its clean lines, the G 146 B had a top speed of almost 700 km/h (434 mph) at ideal altitude and the aircraft retained its excellent handling, even though its structure was rather fragile and could not take much stress and punishment.

 

Two versions of the Go 146 B were produced, steadily but only at a low rate because the aircraft received, due to its highly specialized role and limited offensive capabilities, only a low priority. The B-1 was the main variant and kept the A version’s standard wing, a total of 54 were produced between 1943 and 1945. Additionally, the B-2 was produced between late 1943 and early 1944 as a dedicated high altitude photo reconnaissance aircraft. This sub-variant had an extended wingspan of 16.00 m (52 ft 5 in) instead of the standard 14.70 m (48 ft 2¾ in) and an improved oxygen system, even though the cabin was not pressurized. Its maximum service ceiling was almost 12.000 m (39.305 ft), with a maximum speed of 415 mph (668 km/h), a cruise speed of 250 mph (400 km/h) and a range of 3,200 km (1,987 nmi). Only twelve of these machines were produced and put into service, primarily for flights over Southern Great Britain. When the Arado Ar 234 became available from September 1944 on, though, this new, jet-powered type immediately replaced the Go 146 B-2 because it offered even better performance. Therefore, the B-3, a planned version with a fully pressurized cabin and an even bigger wingspan of 19.00 m, never left the drawing board.

 

Furthermore, the RLM had idea to convert the fast Go 146 into a fighter amd even a night fighter in mid-1944 as the “C” series. But these plans were not executed because the light airframe could hardly be adapted to heavy weapons or equipment like a radar set, and it was unsuited for vigorous dogfighting. The type’s poor climbing rate made it ineffective as an interceptor, too. There were, nevertheless, tests with at least one Go 146 B-1 that carried four Werfer-Granate 21 rocket launchers under the outer wings, as a fast bomber interceptor esp. against the high-flying B-29, which was expected to appear over continental Europe soon. But this kind of weaponry never reached frontline units and the Go 146 was never operated as a fighter of any kind.

There were, however, other uses: in 1944 the Go 146 was enlisted as a fast liaison aircraft for the RLM (Ministry of Aviation) in Berlin. Stripped off of any armament and cameras and outfitted with two passenger seats in the rear cabin, at least one Go 146 B (with the confirmed registration “ST+ZA”, others in similar configuration may have existed, too) was operated by the RLM’s Zentralabteilung (central command) from Tempelhof airfield for top brass officials between Luftwaffe locations on German terrain. ST+ZA’s fate after January 1945 is uncertain, though.

  

Specifications:

Crew: two (pilot and observer)

Length: 11.00 m (36 ft 1 in)

Wingspan: 14.70 m (48 ft 2¾ in)

Height: 3.88 m (12 ft 8¾ in)

Wing area: 32.0 m² (344 ft²)

Empty weight: 3,830 kg (8,436 lb)

Loaded weight: 5,661 kg (12,480 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 6,500 kg (14,317 lb)

 

Powerplant:

2× Daimler-Benz DB 603A V-12 inverted liquid-cooled piston engines, rated at:

- 1,290 kW (1,750 hp) each for take-off

- 1,360 kW (1,850 PS) at 2,100 m (6,890 ft)

- 1,195 kW (1,625 PS) at 5,700 m (18,700 ft)

- 1,162 kW (1580 PS) combat power at 2500 rpm at sea level

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 695 km/h (377 knots, 430 mph) at 5,800 m (19,000 ft)

Cruise speed: 450 km/h (245 knots, 280 mph)

Range: 2,800 km (1,522 nmi, 1,740 mi) with internal fuel

Service ceiling: 11,250 m (36,850 ft)

Wing loading: 157.8 kg/m² (32.3 lb/ft²)

Climb rate: 14.7 m/sec (2,900 feet per minute)

Climb to 8,000 m (26,250 ft): 15 min 20 sec

 

Armament:

2× 13 mm (0.51 in) defensive MG 131 machine guns with 500 RPG,

each firing rearward from FDSL 131/1B remote-operated turret, one per side

2× underwing hardpoints under the inner wings for 250 kg (550 lb) each,

typically occupied by 300 l drop tanks

  

The kit and its assembly:

This is a déjà vu build: I already did a “Germanized” Ki-46 in 2015, it was an Airfix Ki-46-II outfitted with DB 601s from a Bf 110 as a pre-series Gotha Go 146 A-0, an aircraft that (naturally) never existed but appeared plausible, since German military hardware including aircraft had been evaluated by Japanese forces. And why should this exchange not have worked the other way around, too? However, as I built this modified Dinah for the first time, I already thought that the basic idea had more potential than just one model, and the streamlined Ki-46-III just lent itself for an updated, later version.

 

This B-2 variant of the Go 146 was based on the LS Models/ARII Ki-46-III. Like the Airfix kit (its molds are from 1965, and that’s just what the kit feels, looks and builds like…), it’s a rather vintage offering, but it is in many aspects markedly ahead, with fine surfaces, recessed details, 3D engines and clear parts that actually fit into their intended places. The LS Models kit’s 10 years less of age are recognizable, and there are three boxings around with different versions of the aircraft (a Ki-46-II, a -III and a trainer with a raised tutor cockpit), differing in small extra sprues for the respective fuselage parts, but they all share a common sprue with the clear parts for all three versions.

 

The Ki-46-III kit was taken OOB, with just some minor mods. The most obvious change concerns the engines: they were transplanted from a Bilek Me 210, together with the underwing radiators outside of the nacelles. The Me 210, even though it’s from 1997, is a rather mediocre model with some dubious solutions, therefore earmarked for a conversion and ready to donor some body parts… The engine switch was insofar easy because the Ki-46 kit comes with completely separate parts for the engines and their fairings which also contain the main landing gear wells.

Because of this “clean” basis I decided to cut the nacelles out from the Me 210 and attach them to the Ki-46 wings, so that the DB 603 engines would have perfect attachment points. While this was a bigger overall surgery stunt than on the earlier Airfix Dinah, this was easier than expected and resulted in a cleaner solution that also underlines the Ki-46’s clean and slender shape. The modified nacelles were much smaller than the Dinah’s, though. The main wheels were replaced with slightly smaller and narrower ones from the scrap box.

 

Inside of the cockpit, I implanted a dashboard. In the rear cabin the seat was reversed and moved further forward. In the cabin’s rear a scratched targeting scope/weapon control column for the FDSL 131 installation was added. Since I left the single-part canopies (which are quite thick but very clear) closed I outfitted the model with a crew. The Ki-46 III kit comes with a pair of figures, but they are very small (H0 scale, at best!) and look goofy, so that I exchanged them with Matchbox WWII pilots, which had their legs bent and their bottoms cut away to make them fit into the tight fuselage and under the canopies.

 

Unfortunately, the Me 210 kit had already donated its machine gun barbettes (they had gone onto an upgraded Heinkel He 115 floatplane), so that I scratched them for the Go 146. WWII bombs became the fairings, some leftover landing gear struts were used as gun barrels, and round styrene bases were used as mounts that also lift the fairings slightly off the hull. The barbettes as such look a little superficial on the slender Dinah, but they are a nice, typically German detail, über-complicated for this type of fast aircraft that probably would have more benefited from leaving them away altogether to save weight and drag.

The (typically German) 300 l drop tanks come from Hobby Boss Bf 109s and each received four short attachment struts, made from styrene profile material, so that they could be stuck under the inner wings.

  

Painting and markings:

This was more complicated than expected. I wanted to apply a plausible, late German WWII livery with typical colors, but finding something that would be suited for high-altitude operations and not copy anything I had already done turned out to be challenging.

 

The paint scheme would be very light, with only low-contrast camouflage added on top. Therefore, the basis became an overall coat with RLM 76 (I used Tamiya XF-23, Light Blue, which is an excellent option). Inspired by He 177 bombers I found in literature, large blotches of a rather obscure and uncommon tone, RLM 77 “Hellgrau” were added to the flanks of fuselage, fin and engine nacelles. RLM 77 is/was a very light grey, and it was primarily used for markings like code letters on night fighters and not for camouflage. AFAIK it would later become the RAL 7035 (Lichtgrau) tone that still exists today. Humbrol 196 would have been an authentic option, but to keep the contrast to the underlying RLM 76 low I rather used XF-19 (Sky Grey) and extended the blotches under the fuselage and the nacelles, for a semi-wraparound scheme.

 

Then came the upper surfaces, everything was painted with brushes and without masks, with an intentional uneven finish. The wings and stabilizers were to receive a slightly darker camouflage in the form of RLM 02 and 75 splotches (with Tamiya XF-22 and XF-XX as proxies) over the uniform RLM 76 base, so that the aircraft’s outlines would be broken up from above. However, after first tests I found this did not look convincing, the RLM 76 was very prominent and bluish, so that I rather gave the upper wings and the spine a semi-translucent but continuous coat of paint, with the underlying RLM 76 just showing through here and there – much better. At this stage I added the decals (see below), but now found the upper surfaces to look too uniform and somewhat dark, so that, as a final measure, I added a meander pattern with RLM 77 (again XF-19) to the wings. This not only looked good and very “German”, it lightened the cammo and also helped to break the aircraft’s lines up. Some light panel shading to the uniform undersides, black ink and grinded graphite were used for weathering, but the effects are very soft.

 

Interior surfaces (cockpit and landing gear wells) became late-war style RAL 7021 Schwarzgrau (Humbrol 67), the landing gear struts were painted in RLM 02, this time Revell 45 was used. The propeller blades were painted in a very dark mix of green and black, the spinners became black with simple white spirals – the only detail with a high contrast on this aircraft.

 

The markings of this aircraft are minimal. Balkenkreuz markings only consisting of outlines were used, another typical late-war practice and for a low-visibility look/effect. They were taken from an Academy Fw 190 D. On the fuselage, the gun barbettes caused some headaches, because they take up a lot of space and made the application of a standard Luftwaffe code almost impossible. Consequently, the fuselage Balkenkreuze were placed ahead of the barbettes, partly disrupted by the observer’s lower side windows, while the tactical code became separated by the guns. At starboard the code even had to be reversed - not correct, but a pragmatic solution.

The model/aircraft belongs to a fictional unit, its code “P3” in front of the fuselage Balkenkreuz has no real-world reference and was executed in small letters, a typical late WWII measure. This part of the code was done with small, black 2 mm letters. A fictional unit badge, depicting a running greyhound, was added under the cockpit. It actually belongs to a German tank unit.

The “KN” part of the code, including the Ks on the nose, came from an Airfix Ju 87 B sheet. As an aircraft belonging to the 5th squadron within the unit’s 2nd group, the 4th letter in the code became “N”, while the 3rd letter “K” denotes the individual aircraft. The color code associated with a 5th squadron was red, incorporated on the aircraft as a thin red outline around the individual aircraft letter (another late-war low-contrast measure). To provide a little visual excitement, small red Ks were added to the nose, too, to make thew aircraft easy to identify when parked at the flight line.

Since this aircraft would operate over the Western front from German home ground, no further ID/theatre markings like fuselage or wing bands or wingtips in yellow or white, etc. were added. This, together with the lack of visible red as squadron code, results in a rather dry look, but that’s intentional.

After some exhaust and oil stains with graphite and Tamiya “Smoke”, a coat of acrylic matt varnish finally sealed the model and a wire antenna, made from heated sprue material, was added.

  

Well, an exotic what-if idea, but I really like how this conversion turned out, even though the livery evolved in a different way from what I had initially in mind. The Ki-46 was already an elegant aircraft, especially the Ki-46-III with its teardrop-shaped nose section. But, with the smaller, streamlined inline engines instead of the radials, this iteration looks even better and faster. It reminds a little of the D.H. Hornet? The gun barbettes are a nice “German” detail, and the makeshift high-altitude paint scheme adds to the obscure impression of the model. A really nice sister ship for the Go 146 A-0 build from 2015.

NZG Liebherr LTM 11200-9.1 model shown lifting a waste container of the same scale.

The numerous hand rails, ladders and an exhaust pipe have now been fitted to the superstructure.

 

The boom guying system is not deployed and the outriggers have been short jacked due to space constrains. Stability of the model is not compromised in this configuration and boom position.

SHO (Hubble Palette) color composite of emission regions in NGC 4861, a very odd looking galaxy in Canes Venatici.

 

Filters used:

SII: WFC3 - F673N

Ha: WFC3 - F656N

OIII: WFC3 - F502N

  

Data sourced from HST proposal 12497:

"Constraining Stellar Feedback : A Census of Shock-ionized Gas in Nearby Starbursts Galaxies."

archive.stsci.edu/proposal_search.php?id=12497&missio...

  

Notes: North is 69.1 degrees CW from up

 

Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/Hypatia Alexandria

St Mary the Virgin is a church located in the town of Pembroke in Pembrokeshire, west Wales. The church is in the Diocese of St David's within the Church in Wales, and members of the Anglican Communion. Since 2004, it has been a part of the Monkton Rectorial Benefice.

 

The present day church dates back to the 13th century, although it is speculated that there might have existed an earlier church of St Mary. The building is constructed from stone, with a slate roof. Two original windows remain in the south wall of the building, the remainder are 19th century replacements.

 

The tower located to the north east of the building dates from the middle of the 14th century, and currently contains a ring of eight bells. The original bells were installed in 1763, two were added in 1765 and a further two added in 1897.

 

The font at the church dates back to late Norman times. King Henry VII, born at nearby Pembroke Castle, he was probably baptised at the church, though no evidence of the event exists.

 

The modern entrance to the church is through a porch on the west side of the building, erected in 1926, accessed from the corner of Northgate Street and Main Street. The historical entrance was through the south side of the church, this doorway now leads to the choir vestry.

 

The church had fallen into a state of disrepair towards the end of the 19th century and closed in 1875. Four years later, major renovation work was carried out under the supervision of John Loughborough Pearson before the church reopened. The current pulpit was donated to the church a year later. The church was Grade I listed in 1951, being of exceptional architectural and historical interest. In addition, the north, east and west walls of the churchyard and the walls from the north of the churchyard to Barnard's Tower were Grade II listed in 1981,[8][9] and the gates at the south-west entrance along with the railings to the south and west sides of the churchyard were Grade II listed in 2005.

 

Pembroke Millpond is a good place to visit at any time of year. Swans are resident all year round, and cormorants and heron can usually be seen at the top end of the pond nearest to Barnards Tower. Little dab chicks bob and dive, coot dabble and moorhen weave elusively through the reeds. Otters are seen feeding here in daylight on occasion – if you watch patiently in twilight you may be lucky. If not then you will at least be rewarded by an aerial display from the bats which frequent the walk at dusk from early spring to late autumn. Daubenton’s bats fly low over the water to scoop up insects, pipistrelles nimbly fly through the trees overhanging the old town walls, and noctules fly high above.

 

Pembroke Upper Millpond was created in the 1860s when a large embankment was created to carry the new Tenby to Pembroke Dock railway line, and was completed in 1863.

 

Over time the waters above the embankment have slowly silted up; but this has resulted in a wide range of creature habitats within a very small area of land. Between the stream (called the Pembroke River) at the end of Kingsbridge cottages and the embankment itself can be found alder carr, scrub, reedbed and open water. The area is most important for otters, while Cetti’s warbler and Reed warbler nest in the reedbed, and waders visit the pond when the water levels are right. At present it is difficult to see the pond itself except from a distance but this situation will be resolved in time.

 

Pembroke River is a short waterway near Pembroke, Pembrokeshire, West Wales.

 

Rising at Hogeston Hill, near Manorbier Newton, the river meanders through Lamphey and flows past Pembroke Castle to its confluence with Milford Haven Waterway at Pennar Mouth.

 

When the river reaches the town of Pembroke, there are three pools, the first of which is Mill Pond, then downstream is Middle Mill Pond, followed by Castle Pond below the castle. The river is navigable to small craft from Pennar to Mill Pond, but is normally closed at Castle Pond. A rally is held once a year to allow small craft into Castle Pond, and since 1994 an annual canoe race has been held in the river.

 

Pennarmouth is the opening of that branch of the Haven upon which Pembroke town lies, where the Custom house of Milford is kept. The entrance or breadth between rock and rock, is but 200 yards at-high water, and 112 yards at low water, and from nine to twelve feet deep. The navigation up this river to Pembroke town is much impeded by the rubbish of the lime-stone quarries being thrown into the river, which ought to be prevented, or the place, in process of time, will be stopped up. Within Pennarmouth a dock might be made which would contain all the vessels in England, and which would be, perhaps, the greatest thing in the world of that kind.

 

A dockyard was built soon afterwards, not on the Pembroke River, but on the River Cleddau just to the north, which became Pembroke Dockyard, developing into the town of Pembroke Dock. Writing in 1810, Richard Fenton notes that there is a Pembroke Ferry, although he does not name the river, which may have been across the Cleddau. The River Pembroke, though, was clearly still an important waterway, as Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of 1833 describes:

The town is beautifully situated on an elevated ridge projecting into the head of the Pennar Mouth Pill, forming the largest southern creek of Milford Haven, and which it divides into two branches, by which, at high water, it is nearly insulated and over each of which is a neat bridge of stone...the inhabitants consisting of persons of small independent fortune, shop keepers, publicans, and a few whose business is at the dock.

 

Lewis also refers to the river as "a branch of Milford Harbour (which) terminates at the town". Further, it says:

The entrance from Milford Haven to the creek at the head of which the town of Pembroke is situated, at low water, is little more than a hundred yards wide, and from nine to twelve feet deep; but proceeding upwards it immediately expands into a wide oozy reach, called Crow Pool, containing an abundance of excellent oysters.

 

In February 1889 the river was the scene of a tragedy when the Bentlass ferry boat capsized and sank, drowning all 16 passengers and crew.

 

Pembroke is a town and community in Pembrokeshire, Wales, with a population of 7,552. The names of both the town and the county (of which the county town is Haverfordwest) have a common origin; both are derived from the Cantref of Penfro: Pen, "head" or "end", and bro, "region", "country", "land", which has been interpreted to mean either "Land's End" or "headland".

 

Pembroke features a number of historic buildings, town walls, complexes and Pembroke Castle which was the birthplace of Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII of England.

 

Pembroke Castle, the substantial remains of a stone medieval fortress founded by the Normans in 1093, stands at the western tip of a peninsula surrounded by water on three sides. The castle was the seat of the powerful Earls of Pembroke and the birthplace of King Henry VII of England. Gerald de Windsor was the first recorded Constable of Pembroke. Pembroke town and castle and its surroundings are linked with the early Christian church. Following the final extension of the castle about 1254 the town was extended and defensive perimeter walls erected around the edge of the town. The walls survive on their medieval foundations, although much rebuilt over the centuries. A great many of the town's original medieval burgage plots survive and are divided by early stone walls that are of significant national importance.

 

Monkton Priory, sited on a hill across the river from the castle, founded in 1098 by Arnulf de Montgomery and granted by him to the Benedictine order, has very early foundations and retains much of the Norman walls of the nave. The choir and sanctuary were renovated in the nineteenth century. Monkton Hall, close by the Priory church, is regarded as the oldest domestic building in Pembrokeshire and possibly Wales and is thought to have been the guesthouse for visitors to the Priory.

 

The first stone building in the town was a defensive tower, now known as the Medieval Chapel, at 69a Main Street and built on a cliff edge. There are the remains of a great hall to the north and recently filled-in arched cellars. The building was thought to have been later used as an early church as the layout is the same as St. Govan's Chapel and was used by John Wesley in 1764 to preach Methodism. In 1866 it became the brewery for the York Tavern which was briefly Oliver Cromwell's headquarters at the end of the Siege of Pembroke during the English Civil War.

 

The town's main bridge across the River Pembroke, which also acts as a dam, crosses and constrains the millpond. The first bridge was constructed to house a tide mill, originally granted to the Knight's Templar in 1199. The last mill building was destroyed by fire in 1956.

 

On both banks of the Pembroke River to the west of the castle are many remains of early activities. The North Shore Quarries are relatively complete as are the remains of medieval and Elizabethan slipways where wooden vessels were built before the industrial dockyard and admiralty town was built on the grid pattern of Pembroke Dock. There is a very early complete graving dock in what was Hancock's Yard.

 

During the English Civil War, the strategic maritime shire was primarily in the control of the parliamentary forces which aspired to prevent communication to Ireland.

 

At Pennar Flats there was an early submarine base used for experiments in submarine warfare. Three of the houses on the then foreshore, part of the shipyard before the Admiralty Dock Yard was built, are still standing but are heavily altered.[citation needed]

 

The ferry port of Pembroke Dock is 3 miles (4.8 km) to the northwest of Pembroke. It was established in 1814.

 

Pembroke town stands on the South Pembrokeshire limestone peninsula by the estuary of the River Cleddau, flanked on all sides by woodland and arable farmland. The town is 8 miles (13 km) south of the county town of Haverfordwest.

 

The town is centred on Main Street, which is the only street that is inside the original Pembroke town walls. Outside the walls, residential estates have been built to the north towards Pembroke Dock, to the east towards Lamphey, and to the south. To the west of the town lies the village of Monkton, which is included as part of the community of Pembroke. At the 2001 census, the community had a population of 7,214.

 

The conurbation of Pembroke Dock and Pembroke has a combined population of 15,890 and as such is one of the major population centres of West Wales.

 

There are two tiers of local government covering Pembroke, at community (town) and county level: Pembroke Town Council and Pembrokeshire County Council. Pembroke Town Council is based at Pembroke Town Hall. The community of Pembroke covers an area of 4.58 square miles (1,190 ha) and includes the Pembroke St Mary North, St Mary South, St Michael and Monkton wards.

 

For representation on the county council, the four wards comprising Pembroke community each elect one councillor.

 

Pembroke is part of the Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire Senedd constituency and UK Parliamentary constituency.

 

The local Member of Parliament (MP) is Simon Hart, a Conservative.

 

Pembroke was an ancient borough, with evidence of borough charters dating back to at least 1168. The borough covered the two parishes of Pembroke St Mary and Pembroke St Michael plus part of the parish of Monkton (also known as Pembroke St Nicholas). The borough was reformed to become a municipal borough in 1836. The borough included a sizeable rural area within its boundaries as well as the built up area of Pembroke itself. The town of Pembroke Dock, which developed from the early nineteenth century as a separate urban area was nevertheless within the borough boundaries of Pembroke, falling within the parish of Pembroke St Mary. The part of the parish of Monkton outside the borough boundaries became a separate parish called Hundleton in 1894.

 

As Pembroke Dock grew through the nineteenth century it began to rival the old town of Pembroke for position as the main settlement within the borough. By 1895 Pembroke Borough Council had adopted the practice of holding its meetings alternately at Pembroke Town Hall and at Pembroke Dock, where the council had established its main administrative offices at 37 Bush Street (renumbered 71 Bush Street in 1906). The council remained based at 71 Bush Street (and later also expanded into neighbouring 73 Bush Street) until the early 1970s when it acquired Llanion Park, part of the Llanion Barracks at Pembroke Dock, to serve as its headquarters.

 

Pembroke Borough Council was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, with the area becoming part of the new district of South Pembrokeshire within the county of Dyfed on 1 April 1974. A community was established to cover the area of the former borough, with its council taking the name Pembroke Town Council. South Pembrokeshire District Council took over Llanion Park at Pembroke Dock to serve as its headquarters.

 

On 1 April 1986 the community of Pembroke was split into a Pembroke Dock community and a reduced Pembroke community, with Pembroke Town Council thereafter just covering the old town of Pembroke itself.

 

South Pembrokeshire was abolished in 1996, with the area becoming part of a re-established Pembrokeshire.

 

Primary and pre-school (ages 3–11) education in Pembroke is served by two state schools. In Pembroke town, Golden Grove CP School is a dual stream school established in 2002 following the amalgamation of Golden Manor Infants School and Grove Junior School. In Monkton, pupils can attend Monkton Priory CP School.

 

Secondary education is provided by Pembroke School (in Welsh: Ysgol Benfro), a mixed 11–18 comprehensive school of 1,600 pupils with a sixth form of about 200. The school was formed in 1972 as a result of the amalgamation of the former grammar school and secondary modern school. The school takes pupils from the Pembroke family of schools, which as well as Golden Grove and Monkton Priory includes community primary schools in Lamphey, Orielton, Pennar and Pembroke Dock, voluntary controlled primary schools in Angle, Cosheston and Stackpole, and St. Mary's Catholic Primary School in Pembroke Dock.

 

Pembroke 21C community association was founded in 2004, and is based out of the Foundry House building on the Commons, which they operate as a community centre. Activities carried out by 21C include organising the annual Pembroke Festival, running the town's fortnightly farmers' market and producing a quarterly newsletter which is distributed to all households in the town. Pembroke Rugby Club organises the town's annual carnival, which is usually held in June. Pembroke Library shares a building with the Tourist Information Centre on Commons Road and offers a full lending service and internet access.

 

Pembroke has been twinned with the towns of Bergen, Lower Saxony, Germany, since 1977 and Pembroke, Malta, since 2002.

 

Notable people

King Henry VII (1457–1509), King of England, born in Pembroke Castle.

William Lort Mansel (1753–1820), an English churchman and Cambridge fellow.

Frank Goodden (1889–1917), a pioneering British aviator and test pilot

Mervyn Johns (1899–1992), a Welsh stage, film and TV character actor.

W. F. Grimes CBE (1905–1988), a Welsh archaeologist, studied the prehistory of Wales.

Daniel Jones, OBE (1912–1993), a Welsh composer of classical music.

John Cooke CB, OBE (1922–2011), a British doctor and senior Royal Air force officer.

Peter Bishop (1953–2022), an English painter of mountain landscape of north Wales and an art historian.

 

Sport

William Bowen (1862–1925), a Welsh international rugby union player, capped 13 times for Wales.

Henry Davies (1865–1934), a Welsh horse racing jockey and first-class cricketer.

W. J. A. Davies OBE (1890–1967), a Welsh rugby union footballer, capped 22 times for England

Reg Thomas (1907–1946), a Welsh middle-distance runner, he competed at the 1928 and 1932 Summer Olympics

David Gwynne-James (1937−2011), a Welsh first-class cricketer, British Army officer and military historian.

Scott Gammer (born 1976), a Welsh former professional boxer, British heavyweight title-holder from 2006 to 2007

Jonathan Thomas (born 1982), a Welsh rugby union coach and former player, capped 67 times for Wales.

 

Pembroke Rugby Club is on Upper Lamphey Road. The ground is called Crickmarren. The club plays in WRU Division Five West. Pembroke's main game of the season is often the local derby with rivals the Pembroke Dock Harlequins. Pembroke produced Ospreys and Welsh international Jonathan Thomas, Welsh international Dominic Day and Scotland international Luke Hamilton.

 

Other sporting clubs in the area include the football team Monkton Swifts.

 

The town is home to Pembroke Cricket Club. The cricket club plays its home games at its Treleet ground on Upper Lamphey Road, opposite the rugby club. The club currently has a 1st and a 2nd team playing in divisions 2 and 4 of the Pembrokeshire league. The club colours are green and gold.

 

In February 2012, it was revealed that Pembroke was the UK's second-slowest broadband town. The average internet download speed in Pembroke was just over 1.6 Mbit/s (1600 kbit/s) compared to the UK average of 12.0 Mbit/s (12000 kbit/s) at the time.

 

BT's telephone exchange, which serves Pembroke and Pembroke Dock, was upgraded in 2014 under the Superfast Cymru programme and new cabinets were built to provide FTTC technology. Additional exchanges across Pembrokeshire are also being upgraded under the programme, with a goal of bringing superfast broadband to 96% of Wales by spring 2016.

 

Pembrokeshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and is otherwise surrounded by the sea. Haverfordwest is the largest town and administrative headquarters of Pembrokeshire County Council.

 

The county is generally sparsely populated and rural, with an area of 200 square miles (520 km2) and a population of 123,400. After Haverfordwest, the largest settlements are Milford Haven (13,907), Pembroke Dock (9,753), and Pembroke (7,552). St Davids (1,841) is a city, the smallest by population in the UK. Welsh is spoken by 17.2 percent of the population, and for historic reasons is more widely spoken in the north of the county than in the south.

 

Pembrokeshire's coast is its most dramatic geographic feature, created by the complex geology of the area. It is a varied landscape which includes high sea cliffs, wide sandy beaches, the large natural harbour of Milford Haven, and several offshore islands which are home to seabird colonies. Most of it is protected by Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, and can be hiked on the 190-mile (310 km) Pembrokeshire Coast Path. The interior of Pembrokeshire is relatively flat and gently undulating, with the exception of the Preseli Mountains in the north.

 

There are many prehistoric sites in Pembrokeshire, particularly in the Preseli Mountains. During the Middle Ages several castles were built by the Normans, such as Pembroke and Cilgerran, and St David's Cathedral became an important pilgrimage site. During the Industrial Revolution the county remained relatively rural, with the exception of Milford Haven, which was developed as a port and Royal Navy dockyard. It is now the UK's third-largest port, primarily because of its two liquefied natural gas terminals. The economy of the county is now focused on agriculture, oil and gas, and tourism.

 

Human habitation of the region that is now Pembrokeshire extends back to between 125,000 and 70,000 years  and there are numerous prehistoric sites such as Pentre Ifan, and neolithic remains (12,000 to 6,500 years ago), more of which were revealed in an aerial survey during the 2018 heatwave; in the same year, a 1st-century Celtic chariot burial was discovered, the first such find in Wales. There may have been dairy farming in Neolithic times.

 

There is little evidence of Roman occupation in what is now Pembrokeshire. Ptolemy's Geography, written c. 150, mentioned some coastal places, two of which have been identified as the River Teifi and what is now St Davids Head, but most Roman writers did not mention the area; there may have been a Roman settlement near St Davids and a road from Bath, but this comes from a 14th-century writer. Any evidence for villas or Roman building materials reported by mediaeval or later writers has not been verified, though some remains near Dale were tentatively identified as Roman in character by topographer Richard Fenton in his Historical Tour of 1810. Fenton stated that he had "...reason to be of opinion that they had not colonized Pembrokeshire till near the decline of their empire in Britain".

 

Part of a possible Roman road is noted by CADW near Llanddewi Velfrey, and another near Wiston. Wiston is also the location of the first Roman fort discovered in Pembrokeshire, investigated in 2013.

 

Some artefacts, including coins and weapons, have been found, but it is not clear whether these belonged to Romans or to a Romanised population. Welsh tradition has it that Magnus Maximus founded Haverfordwest, and took a large force of local men on campaign in Gaul in 383 which, together with the reduction of Roman forces in south Wales, left a defensive vacuum which was filled by incomers from Ireland.

 

Between 350 and 400, an Irish tribe known as the Déisi settled in the region known to the Romans as Demetae.  The Déisi merged with the local Welsh, with the regional name underlying Demetae evolving into Dyfed, which existed as an independent petty kingdom from the 5th century.  In 904, Hywel Dda married Elen (died 943), daughter of the king of Dyfed Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, and merged Dyfed with his own maternal inheritance of Seisyllwg, forming the new realm of Deheubarth ("southern district"). Between the Roman and Norman periods, the region was subjected to raids from Vikings, who established settlements and trading posts at Haverfordwest, Fishguard, Caldey Island and elsewhere.

 

Dyfed remained an integral province of Deheubarth, but this was contested by invading Normans and Flemings who arrived between 1067 and 1111.  The region became known as Pembroke (sometimes archaic "Penbroke":), after the Norman castle built in the cantref of Penfro. In 1136, Prince Owain Gwynedd at Crug Mawr near Cardigan met and destroyed a 3,000-strong Norman/Flemish army and incorporated Deheubarth into Gwynedd.  Norman/Flemish influence never fully recovered in West Wales.  In 1138, the county of Pembrokeshire was named as a county palatine. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the son of Owain Gwynedd's daughter Gwenllian, re-established Welsh control over much of the region and threatened to retake all of Pembrokeshire, but died in 1197. After Deheubarth was split by a dynastic feud, Llywelyn the Great almost succeeded in retaking the region of Pembroke between 1216 and his death in 1240.  In 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted to introduce the English common law system to Wales, heralding 100 years of peace, but had little effect on those areas already established under the Marcher Lords, such as Cemais in the north of the county.

 

Henry Tudor, born at Pembroke Castle in 1457, landed an army in Pembrokeshire in 1485 and marched to Cardigan.  Rallying support, he continued to Leicestershire and defeated the larger army of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As Henry VII, he became the first monarch of the House of Tudor, which ruled England until 1603.

 

The Laws in Wales Act 1535 effectively abolished the powers of the Marcher Lords and divided the county into seven hundreds, roughly corresponding to the seven pre-Norman cantrefi of Dyfed. The hundreds were (clockwise from the northeast): Cilgerran, Cemais, Dewisland, Roose, Castlemartin, Narberth and Dungleddy and each was divided into civil parishes; a 1578 map in the British Library is the earliest known to show parishes and chapelries in Pembrokeshire. The Elizabethan era brought renewed prosperity to the county through an opening up of rural industries, including agriculture, mining and fishing, with exports to England and Ireland, though the formerly staple woollen industry had all but disappeared. 

 

During the First English Civil War (1642–1646) the county gave strong support to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), in contrast to the rest of Wales, which was staunchly Royalist. In spite of this, an incident in Pembrokeshire triggered the opening shots of the Second English Civil War when local units of the New Model Army mutinied. Oliver Cromwell defeated the uprising at the Siege of Pembroke in July 1648.  On 13 August 1649, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland began when New Model Army forces sailed from Milford Haven.

 

In 1720, Emmanuel Bowen described Pembrokeshire as having five market towns, 45 parishes and about 4,329 houses, with an area of 420,000 acres (1,700 km2). In 1791 a petition was presented to the House of Commons concerning the poor state of many of the county's roads, pointing out that repairs could not be made compulsory by the law as it stood. The petition was referred to committee.  People applying for poor relief were often put to work mending roads. Workhouses were poorly documented. Under the Poor Laws, costs and provisions were kept to a minimum, but the emphasis was often on helping people to be self-employed. While the Poor Laws provided a significant means of support, there were many charitable and benefit societies. After the Battle of Fishguard, the failed French invasion of 1797, 500 French prisoners were held at Golden Hill Farm, Pembroke. From 1820 to 1878 one of the county's prisons, with a capacity of 86, was in the grounds of Haverfordwest Castle. In 1831, the area of the county was calculated to be 345,600 acres (1,399 km2) with a population of 81,424.

 

It was not until nearly the end of the 19th century that mains water was provided to rural south Pembrokeshire by means of a reservoir at Rosebush and cast iron water pipes throughout the district.

 

Throughout much of the 20th century (1911 to 1961) the population density in the county remained stable while it rose in England and Wales as a whole. There was considerable military activity in Pembrokeshire and offshore in the 20th century: a naval base at Milford Haven because German U-boats were active off the coast in World War I and, in World War II, military exercises in the Preseli Mountains and a number of military airfields. The wartime increase in air activity saw a number of aircraft accidents and fatalities, often due to unfamiliarity with the terrain. From 1943 to 1944, 5,000 soldiers from the United States Army's 110th Infantry Regiment were based in the county, preparing for D-Day. Military and industrial targets in the county were subjected to bombing during World War II. After the end of the war, German prisoners of war were accommodated in Pembrokeshire, the largest prison being at Haverfordwest, housing 600. The County of Pembroke War Memorial in Haverfordwest carries the names of 1,200 of those that perished in World War I.

 

In 1972, a second reservoir for south Pembrokeshire, at Llys y Fran, was completed.

 

Pembrokeshire's tourism portal is Visit Pembrokeshire, run by Pembrokeshire County Council. In 2015 4.3 million tourists visited the county, staying for an average of 5.24 days, spending £585 million; the tourism industry supported 11,834 jobs. Many of Pembrokeshire's beaches have won awards, including Poppit Sands and Newport Sands. In 2018, Pembrokeshire received the most coast awards in Wales, with 56 Blue Flag, Green Coast or Seaside Awards. In the 2019 Wales Coast Awards, 39 Pembrokeshire beaches were recognised, including 11 awarded Blue Flag status.

 

The Pembrokeshire coastline is a major draw to tourists; in 2011 National Geographic Traveller magazine voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the second best in the world and in 2015 the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park was listed among the top five parks in the world by a travel writer for the Huffington Post. Countryfile Magazine readers voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the top UK holiday destination in 2018, and in 2019 Consumers' Association members placed Tenby and St Davids in the top three best value beach destinations in Britain. With few large urban areas, Pembrokeshire is a "dark sky" destination. The many wrecks off the Pembrokeshire coast attract divers. The decade from 2012 saw significant, increasing numbers of Atlantic bluefin tuna, not seen since the 1960s, and now seen by some as an opportunity to encourage tourist sport fishing.

 

The county has a number of theme and animal parks (examples are Folly Farm Adventure Park and Zoo, Manor House Wildlife Park, Blue Lagoon Water Park and Oakwood Theme Park), museums and other visitor attractions including Castell Henllys reconstructed Iron Age fort, Tenby Lifeboat Station and Milford Haven's Torch Theatre. There are 21 marked cycle trails around the county.

 

Pembrokeshire Destination Management Plan for 2020 to 2025 sets out the scope and priorities to grow tourism in Pembrokeshire by increasing its value by 10 per cent in the five years, and to make Pembrokeshire a top five UK destination.

 

As the national sport of Wales, rugby union is widely played throughout the county at both town and village level. Haverfordwest RFC, founded in 1875, is a feeder club for Llanelli Scarlets. Village team Crymych RFC in 2014 plays in WRU Division One West. There are numerous football clubs in the county, playing in five leagues with Haverfordwest County A.F.C. competing in the Cymru Premier.

 

Triathlon event Ironman Wales has been held in Pembrokeshire since 2011, contributing £3.7 million to the local economy, and the county committed in 2017 to host the event for a further five years. Ras Beca, a mixed road, fell and cross country race attracting UK-wide competitors, has been held in the Preselis annually since 1977. The record of 32 minutes 5 seconds has stood since 1995. Pembrokeshire Harriers athletics club was formed in 2001 by the amalgamation of Cleddau Athletic Club (established 1970) and Preseli Harriers (1989) and is based in Haverfordwest.

 

The annual Tour of Pembrokeshire road-cycling event takes place over routes of optional length. The 4th Tour, in April 2015, attracted 1,600 riders including Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman and there were 1,500 entrants to the 2016 event. Part of Route 47 of the Celtic Trail cycle route is in Pembrokeshire. The Llys y Fran Hillclimb is an annual event run by Swansea Motor Club, and there are several other county motoring events held each year.

 

Abereiddy's Blue Lagoon was the venue for a round of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in 2012, 2013, and 2016; the Welsh Surfing Federation has held the Welsh National Surfing Championships at Freshwater West for several years, and Llys y Fran Country Park hosted the Welsh Dragonboat Championships from 2014 to 2017.

 

While not at major league level, cricket is played throughout the county and many villages such as Lamphey, Creselly, Llangwm, Llechryd and Crymych field teams in minor leagues under the umbrella of the Cricket Board of Wales.

 

Notable people

From mediaeval times, Rhys ap Gruffydd (c. 1132-1197), ruler of the kingdom of Deheubarth, was buried in St Davids Cathedral. and Gerald of Wales was born c. 1146 at Manorbier Castle. Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) was born in 1457 at Pembroke Castle.

 

The pirate Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart) (Welsh: Barti Ddu) was born in Casnewydd Bach, between Fishguard and Haverfordwest in 1682.

 

In later military history, Jemima Nicholas, heroine of the so-called "last invasion of Britain" in 1797, was from Fishguard, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton GCB, born in Haverfordwest, was killed at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and Private Thomas Collins is believed to be the only Pembrokeshire man that fought in the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.

 

In the arts, siblings Gwen and Augustus John were both born in Pembrokeshire, as was the novelist Sarah Waters; singer Connie Fisher grew up in Pembrokeshire. The actor Christian Bale was born in Haverfordwest.

 

Stephen Crabb, a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Wales, was brought up in Pembrokeshire and is one of the county's two Members of Parliament, the other being Simon Hart,[90] who served as Secretary of State for Wales from 2019 to 2022.

© Avanika Pradeep Yammiyavar

"Amidst the pandemic, while we crave being outside, we feel caged like in a prison. But this young girl in a small town in south India has hope in her eyes as she looks into the lens smiling. She finds a way to be open with her emotions to the outside, no matter what constrains her. This is my inspiration of being open - freedom of the mind."

 

If you would like to use this image, please credit the creator as follows:

 

'Young girl smiling' by Avanika Pradeep Yammiyavar is released under CC BY-NC-ND

 

and link to both this location and the relevant license.

Located close to Jhimpir town of Thatta district in about 100 kilometers (km) northeast of Karachi, Zorlu Enerji Power Project is the first privately owned and financed wind power project in Pakistan constructed under the Renewable Energy Policy, 2006. The Asian Development Bank provided a loan of $36 million to M/s. Zorlu Enerji Pakistan Limited through its private sector operations department.

 

The project will supply power to the national grid under a 20-year take-or-pay energy purchase agreement under a tariff approved by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority.

 

The project involves construction, erection, and operation of a 56.4 megawatt (MW) wind power farm at Jhimpir spread over about 5 square kilometers.The project’s civil works include turbine (tower) foundations, substation and transformer foundations, and related works. Power evacuation from the project to the national grid will be through a 132 kilovolt (kV) line, built and operated by the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC), the national grid operator.

 

The Project’s objectives are to; (i) increase incremental supply of energy to reduce a growing energy deficit which is seriously constraining economic growth, (ii) increase access to energy for households, business and industry, (iii) make efficient use of an energy resource which is domestic and renewable, this reduces the reliance on expensive oil imports; and (iv) reduce emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases.

 

The project will also contribute to the creation of employment opportunities and stimulation of

economic growth in southern Sindh.

 

The Project is expected to become operational within next two months.

 

Picture taken during a Mission for Updating ADB's Development Effectiveness Brief 2009-2012.

  

This picture has been used by Wikipedia.........at

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jhimpir_Wind_Farm_2012.jpg

It's good to know and remember the whys and wherefores of our original fight for independence, especially since many of the complaints voiced in this declaration exist today in one form or another.

 

The Declaration of Independence

 

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

 

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

 

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

 

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

 

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

 

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

 

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

  

Feeling pressured.

Like the air in bubblewrap.

Like a constraining force on the mind or will...

 

Overview

Minolta is a company with long experience in the world of film, and extensive digital expertise that has so far been applied primarily in the areas of office electronics and imaging (copiers & printers). Recently though, they've been making significant waves in the digital camera and scanner markets, with their highly capable (and expandable!) Dimage EX 1500 Zoom digital camera, and a whole line of film scanners covering everything from APS to 35mm, to medium-format photography. We'll be reviewing the full range of the Dimage scanners, beginning with the Dimage Scan Speed that's the subject of this review.

The Minolta Dimage Scan Speed film scanner is quite a bit more capable than some of the "personal" film scanners we've reviewed in the past, positioned at the upper end of the "enthusiast" market with a list price as of this writing of $1,299. In many respects, its capabilities reach into the lower end of the "professional" market. We see it fitting the needs of users ranging from well-heeled photo enthusiasts, to businesses and professional photographers looking for top performance on a budget. In support of this market, we found the Dimage software did a particularly good job of providing the power demanded by pros, while remaining very approachable for the amateur.

  

"High Points" Overview

 

* 12-bit digitization, 3.6 Dmax

* 2820 dpi resolution

* User interface accommodates both beginners and experienced users

* "Preview" function can pre-scan entire APS film roll

* Cold-cathode light source for long bulb life

  

EZ-Print Page

In response to reader requests, we now provide copies of all reviews stripped of all their formatting, to faciliate printing. Click here to go to the EZ-Print page.

The Basics

The Dimage Scan Speed is a desktop device about the size of a hefty novel standing on edge. (The long side down.) It measures 3.6 x 6.3 x 10.7 inches (90.5 x 160.5 x 272 mm), and weighs about 4.4 pounds (2 kg). Interface to the host computer is via a high-speed SCSI-2 interface, meaning you'll need to have such a port installed in your computer to use it. (Macs typically come equipped with SCSI connections: On a Windows machine, you'll need to have an interface card installed. Appropriate cards range from $100 to $300 in price. The manual lists a number of Adaptec SCSI cards from the 1500 and 2900 series that are suitable. The only restriction seems to be that the 1500-series boards don't work with NEC PC98xx computers.) The standard unit can scan 35mm negatives or slides, in either black and white or color. An optional APS adapter is available for scanning that film type.

The software CD shipped with the unit supports both Mac and Windows platforms. Standalone scanning applications are provided for both platforms, as well as a Photoshop acquire plug-in for the Mac, and TWAIN drivers for the PC. (NOTE: Minolta specifies that the scanner requires either Windows '95 release 2 (OSR2), or Windows '98. If you're running Windows '95, be sure to check the revision level you have installed.)

Scanning resolution can be as high as 2820 dpi (a 2700-element CCD covering the width of a 35mm slide or negative). This produces maximum image sizes of 2688x4032 pixels for 35mm (32.5 megabytes), or 1920x3328 for APS (19.2 megabytes).

A note about scanner resolution, as compared to that of digital cameras: The 10.8 megapixel resolution of the Dimage Scan Speed is even higher than you might expect, when compared to the resolution of a digital camera. Because the scanner's CCD samples each pixel in all three red, green, and blue color channels, it's really equivalent to a digital camera with a 32 megapixel sensor and "striped" color filters. Thus, the first thing most people notice about images scanned from negatives and slides is the extraordinary level of detail captured. That said, the Dimage Scan Speed's scan resolution of 2820 dpi is at the top of the field for 35mm/APS scanners.

Another important scanning parameter is "bit depth," a measure of both color accuracy and the maximum density range the scanner can recognize. (8 bits per channel is good, 10 better, and 12 the best you'll commonly find in desktop scanners.) The Dimage Scan Speed captures a full 12 bits per pixel.

Scanner Optics & Light Path

Film scanners tend to take one of two approaches in their optical design, providing either fixed or adjustable focus. The Dimage Scan Speed employs fixed-focus optics. Given the extreme resolution of most film scanners, we're surprised that the lenses can be designed with enough depth of field to insure sharp focus in the face of minor variations in the film plane position. We're surprised, but the fixed-focus approach nonetheless seems to work quite well, as evidenced by the performance of the Dimage Scan Speed. The upside of fixed-focus designs of course, is that you don't have to worry about focusing, either in the form of twiddling a thumbwheel, or by waiting while the scanner adjusts its focus for every scan. In our testing, the Dimage Scan Speed produced sharp images every time, the sole exclusion being one orientation of our unusual "USAF 1951" resolution target, which is a glass slide with the pattern deposited on one side of it. With the pattern facing one way, we got sharp results, but decidedly blurry ones with it facing the other. We saw no evident focus deficiencies while scanning normal slides or negatives.

The Dimage Scan Speed uses a special fluorescent light source, producing strong spectral peaks in the red, green, and blue portions of the spectrum. We observed that this diffuse illumination source produced somewhat "softer" scans than some other scanners. The resulting scans had less of a razors-edge on fine detail, but were also much more forgiving of film defects and film grain. A good analogy (for those old darkroom aficionados out there) would be the difference between condenser and diffusion enlargers: The condenser optics tend to produce sharper images, but at the cost of greatly enhanced grain, while diffusion enlargers create a softer look. Note in this though, that while the scans produced by the Dimage Scan Speed have a somewhat "softer" appearance to them, they in fact appear to carry an extremely high level of detail, as evidenced by the results from our WG-18 (ISO-12233) resolution target scans.

Film Handling

The Dimage Scan Speed uses plastic slide- and filmstrip-holders to carry the film to the scanner: You first place the media to be scanned into the holder, then insert the holder into the scanner. The holders have detent notches on them that provide repeatable film positioning, and yet allow for manual advance of the film between frames. During scanning, the holder and film is moved past a fixed CCD array. The filmstrip holder can accommodate strips of 35mm film up to six frames in length, and the slide holder up to four slides. Both holders are reversible, a necessary feature for their use: Inserted into the scanner, you can access half of the total film frames by sliding the adapter in or out. To reach the remaining frames, you remove the adapter, flip it end for end, and reinsert it.

We found both the slide and film holders to be quite effective and easy to use. The film adapter is hinged, but only to the extent that a plate flips up to expose the recess into which the film is laid. (Unlike many "clamshell" designs, the slot holding the film is a fixed structure.) The back pressure plate then hinges back down and latches, clamping the film flat. This arrangement did a particularly good job of handling curled or damaged film, regardless of whether the film was curled side-to-side, or along its length. The film-holding slot is about a half-millimeter wider than the film itself, doing a good job of constraining the film position, yet still allowing minor adjustments to be made for fine alignment relative to the limits of the scanning area. We did find that the filmstrip holder crops the 35mm frame very slightly, about 3% in both vertical and horizontal directions by our reckoning. (For some reason, this appears to be a common characteristic of strip-film holders.)

The slide holder is also constructed of plastic, with four slots along the top edge into which the slides may be loaded. The edges of each slot set absolute limits for the horizontal position of the slide mount, but there's a bit more play (about a full millimeter side-to-side) with slides than is present in the filmstrip adapter. This is probably a good thing, as it allows you to correct for film misaligned in its mount: You can manually tweak the slides to achieve about two degrees of rotation in either direction, as needed. (Despite this looseness, we had no difficulty aligning slides square to the holder, as the edges of the "windows" in the holder provided good reference surfaces to align to, and simply "bottoming out" the slide in the slot yielded good alignment if the film was properly positioned in the slide mount.) The slide holder is also a little unusual in the way that the slides "float" between two sets of spring-loaded fingers. This seemed to do a good job of keeping the film plane well-centered about the point of optimum focus. The centering fingers gripped a particularly thick plastic-and-glass slide mount quite a bit more firmly than they did standard cardboard ones, but handled a wide range of mounts well. System Interface and Included Software

The Dimage Scan Speed uses a SCSI-2 connection to the host computer, providing the high speed data transfer necessary to handle the large amounts of data the scanner can generate. No SCSI card is included with the unit, but Minolta lists several models of Adaptec cards that the unit can be used with. (Adaptec is pretty much the standard for SCSI cards: You can find cheaper ones, but the Adaptec models are more likely to be compatible with a wide range of equipment. Note in particular, that some scanners, CD-ROM drives, and other equipment ships with low-cost SCSI cards included. In many cases, these are "dedicated" cards, that will only run the particular device they're shipped with. If you're buying a card to support the Dimage Scan Speed, take our advice and get a "name brand" Adaptec unit. The hassle you'll save will be more than worth it!)

Once connected to the computer, the Dimage Scan Speed is controlled through an excellent software interface that we'll describe in greater detail below. As noted earlier, the scanner-control software takes the form of standalone applications on both the Mac and PC, as well as a Photoshop plug-in on the Mac, and a TWAIN component on the PC. A particular strength of the Dimage software is the extent to which it provides powerful controls for experienced users, while at the same time offering a simple interface for novices.

A nice touch in the Dimage Scan Speed package was the inclusion of Adobe's Photoshop LE, for both Mac and Windows. Photoshop LE is a slightly trimmed-down version of the full Photoshop package, the primary omissions being support for color spaces other than RGB (such as CMYK, for commercial offset printing), and less in the way of color management. At one time, it was quite common to find Photoshop LE or even a full version of Photoshop bundled with many scanning devices. The combination of policy changes at Adobe (implemented in the form of radically higher prices to their bundling partners), and ever-tightening margins and declining retail prices in the scanner market have all but eliminated Photoshop from the "bundle" market. We applaud Minolta's inclusion of this program with the Dimage Scan Speed though: We suspect that many potential purchasers of the Scan Speed will be upgrading their imaging capability with the acquisition, and won't already have a copy of Photoshop. While trimmed-down somewhat from the capabilities of the full version, Photoshop LE is a dramatic step up from the "dumbed-down" interface and capabilities of Adobe's PhotoDeluxe, a much more common software bundle component these days. Don't get us wrong, PhotoDeluxe is an excellent program, but is clearly targeted at the casual user. Even at that though, we've long felt that removing key features such as the "levels" control is no gift to the end-user. While it may make the program easier to use, such simplification ultimately leaves users at a dead end, with nowhere to go as their skills and abilities improve. Photoshop LE is adequate to the needs of most semi-pro users, and will provide the full range of capabilities that most users will need to achieve the best results. Flame off for now, but repeated kudos to Minolta for taking the cost hit and including Photoshop LE with the scanner. One parting shot: You can't buy Photoshop LE, only the full version of Photoshop, which routinely sells for well over $500. Given that the LE version will be enough for the majority of users, the argument could be made that its inclusion in the Dimage Scan Speed bundle will save many people $500 or more. This fact alone is a significant differentiator for the Minolta's product.

Speeds and Feeds

As its name suggests, the Dimage Scan Speed is intended to be a fast scanner. In our testing, we found that it did indeed zip along pretty quickly. This appeared to be due partly to the basic mechanism and electronics (which moves the film and digests the data rapidly), and partly to the fixed-focus optics: When you tell the unit to begin scanning, there's no delay for focus adjustment before the scan starts. The unit does make one pass over the negative or slide first though, to determine an autoexposure level, a process that takes 4-5 seconds. Scanning throughput was quite good with the unit, helped by the flexible, easy-to-use software, but also by the fast scan times themselves. (We haven't in the past explicitly measured preview and scan times, so won't have comparable numbers for many scanners we've previously tested. From this point on though, we'll begin measuring these throughput-related timings on a routine basis...) Running the Dimage Scan Speed from an Adaptec SCSI card on our 350 MHz Pentium-II Windows machine, we measured the following scan times:

  

Preview/Scan Times:

 

Preview w/autoexposure:

20 seconds

 

Preview w/o autoexposure:

16 seconds

 

Low res (~600dpi) full-frame scan:

21 seconds

 

Full res (2820 dpi) full-frame scan:

44 seconds

     

Operation and User Interface

Other than the actual scans themselves, most of the story to be told about a film scanner has to do with the software that drives it, and to what extent the combination of hardware and software makes it easy to produce good-quality scans. Accordingly, we'll devote a sizable of this review to talking about the software that drives Minolta's Dimage family of scanners, and the Dimage Scan Speed in particular.

As noted several times already, we feel that Minolta has done a particularly good job of balancing capability with ease-of-use. This is a difficult equation to optimize, as the needs of "beginners" and "experts" can vary so widely. At the same time, the goal should be to provide a smooth gradation of capability, not introducing any abrupt hurdles to overcome as the users advance in their sophistication. Minolta has accomplished this difficult design goal by providing very basic, visually-oriented contrast/brightness adjustments for neophytes, while at the same time offering fairly sophisticated histogram and tone curve controls for those comfortable with more complex adjustments, and who need the control they provide.

As we write this, we're still searching for our "formula" that works best for scanner reviews, but are generally settling on a format in which we step through the scanner controls in the approximate order that a user would encounter them. (For a more complete walk-through of scanner operation, check out Minolta's excellent web site for their scanners: They've put together a comprehensive "on-line demo" of how the software works.)

The Preview Screen and Command Window

The most basic options and functions of the Dimage Scan Speed scanner are controlled via the Command window, shown below. The Command window contains two list boxes, two status displays, and a total of ten buttons, which we describe below, moving from left to right, top to bottom in the screen shot: (NOTE: This and all screen shots following have been scaled-down to better fit the 'web page -- The actual screens are larger and much more readable!)

   

* Film Format (List Box) - Options are 35mm or APS

* Film Type (List Box) - Options are Slide Film, Color Negative, B/W Negative, B/W Positive

* Current Job Selection (Display window) - Displays currently-chosen "job type", combining both input and output resolutions. (Translating input resolution (at the film) to output resolution (in the file and on paper when printed) is a tough process to make understandable: Minolta's "Job Type" approach does as good a job of this as any approach we've seen thus far.)

* Job Selection Button - Click for a pop-up menu of currently-defined job types, or create your own.

* Status Bar (Display field) - Displays descriptions of controls as your mouse rolls over them, and gives status information during the scan process. (Very handy for interpreting the sometimes-cryptic button icons, before you get used to them.)

* Index Scan Button (APS Only) - Creates thumbnail-sized index scans of an entire APS film roll.

* Prescan Button (APS or 35mm) - Generates a preview scan of the current film frame or slide. Preview scan sizes can be set to large, small, or automatic. Auto fits the scan resolution to the size screen you're working on. Generally, you'll want the largest preview scan you can get, to help in accurately setting white and black points and in adjusting the tone curves.

* Scan Settings Button - Brings up the Scan Settings window (shown at right), where you can manually adjust the input and output scan resolutions and set the units you want to work in (pixels, inches, or cm). NOTE that you can't set the resolution values when your units are set to pixels, as in the screenshot at right.

* Save Index Scan Button - To save time on subsequent scans (as well as provide a useful index of images on your APS rolls), you can save APS index scans to disk.

* Save Job Button - If you've created a custom Scan Settings configuration, you can save it under its own "job type," for immediate recall later.

* Preferences Button - Brings up the Preferences window, described later.

* Rewind Button (APS Only) - Rewinds APS film back into its canister.

* Help - (If you need us to explain what this button does, you probably shouldn't buy the scanner! ;-)

 

Preferences Window

The preferences window (not shown) controls a number of overall settings governing scanner operation. Most people will rarely need to visit this screen, as the default settings will suffice for many applications. About the only control you're likely to need to change with any regularity is the one for Color Depth, and even then, the non-default settings are likely to be useful to only a small cadre of advanced users. Herewith the Preferences functions:

 

* Auto Expose for Slides - This appears to be an overall exposure compensation adjustment for scanning very dense transparencies. It made no perceptible difference with our "train" slide though, perhaps because that slide also includes some very light areas.

* Close Driver After Scanning - This will be most useful when using either a TWAIN or Photoshop acquire module for scanning. It will close the scanning window after each scan, returning you to the host application. (Or to the desktop, if you're running standalone.)

* Prescan Size (Options are Small, Large, or Auto) - You can preset the size of the prescan window, or allow the scanning software to size it to your screen automatically. The last is the easiest, the fixed sizes perhaps being useful if you want to be able to see other windows on your desktop while the scanning software is running.

* Color Depth (Options are 8-bit, 16-bit, and 16-bit linear) - As mentioned earlier, the Dimage Scan Speed is a 12-bit per channel scanner. Since computer displays and most programs can only accept 8 bits per channel, what happens to the rest? Normally (in 8-bit mode), the scanner and scanning software translate the 12-bit data down to the 8-bit final data size, in effect "choosing the best 8 bits." For most uses, this is the easiest and most direct thing to do. For difficult subjects with particularly wide dynamic ranges though, you may want to employ some unusual tonal mapping, to preserve both shadow and highlight detail, or experiment with different approaches after the scan is complete. For these situations, Minolta provides the ability to capture all 12 bits per channel, and store them in a file. Since the TIFF file format only recognizes either 8 or 16 bits per channel, the option which preserves the full 12 bits of original data is labeled "16-bit," even though only 12 bits per channel are actually being stored. It's a little harder to understand the need for the "16-bit linear" option, but perhaps it has some use in scientific applications. What it appears to do is to turn off the analog "gamma" adjustment that takes place prior to the digitization of the image data. The same raw data is being captured, but the distribution of bits across the tone curve is very different. (In general, dark areas look VERY dark with the 16-bit linear option enabled.) As we said, this doesn't appear to be terribly useful for general photographic applications, but could find some use in photogrammetry.

   

APS Settings - not having had the APS attachment to play with, we didn't have an opportunity to experiment with these, and the main manual offered no description. Below are our "best guesses" as to what they do:

 

o Index Scroll Direction (Options are Horizontal or Vertical) - APS pre-scans produce arrays of thumbnail images. This option simply selects whether the display is set to scroll horizontally or vertically as you move through the array of images.

o Index Scan Priority (Options are Speed or Quality) - With up to 40 frames on a roll, you may sometimes prefer a "quick and dirty" pre-scan in order to view all your images quickly. At other times, you may want a higher-quality prescan, to facilitate image adjustments prior to the high-resolution scans themselves. (Note that you don't have to pre-scan the entire roll, if you know which image you're interested in, based on your APS index print: The software apparently displays blank thumbnails as soon as the roll is loaded, allowing you to choose the image you're interested in, based on frame number.)

o Max # of Frames - We're not sure what this control is for, unless it's to restrict the pre-scan operation to the first few frames of a roll

o Auto Film Rewind - Apparently an option to rewind the film back into the cartridge after the scanning is completed.

o Rotate All Frames 180 degrees - Depending on how the APS cartridge loads into the camera, rolls from some models could come out "upside down." This checkbox avoids the need to laboriously flip every individual frame separately.

   

Prescan Window

This window (shown below) is "home base" for the scanning process. From here, you'll launch off into other functions within the software, to adjust color balance, contrast, or tonal range. Controls here also adjust preview orientation, data readout, and exposure parameters for sequential scans. See the text following the screen shot for a description of the individual buttons and controls.

Perlin Noise to Surface_Constrain module (find it on vvvv.org)

St Peter, Monks Eleigh, Suffolk

 

Here we are in the Brett Valley, the prettiest part of East Anglia, I think. Nearby Lavenham and Kersey attract all the tourists, but I wonder how many of them ever make it out into these deliciously lovely villages that huddle in the gentle hills between Hadleigh and Stowmarket? A mile or so from its little sister Brent Eleigh, this village has the grander church, but, perhaps, the less interesting one.It certainly has a splendid setting, for this was one of the great wool-producing villages of the Brett Valley in late medieval days, the busiest and richest part of England in the 15th century.

 

Up from the village high street, St Peter's powerful 15th century tower can be seen for miles around, and it is a pleasant foil to the mightily sombre St Peter and St Paul, Lavenham, a couple of miles beyond it. St Peter's tower is perhaps more typical of the churches of the nearby Stour Valley, with the stair turret climbing beyond the battlements. It certainly makes itself known - in this hilly country, every view is like a painting.

 

The tower sits close to the road, with a fascinating west doorway carved with little animals. There was a huge rebuilding here in the late 15th century, as you might expect. The top of the tower has deliciously decorated flushwork and a weather vane dated 1969. The graveyard constrains the building tightly to south and north, but then sprawls away to the east. Looking back, you can see that the long chancel is entirely 19th century.

 

You enter through the south porch. While this part of Suffolk is well-known for some deliciously atmospheric and historically significant interiors, this is something different. There was an overwhelming Victorian restoration here in the full flush of Anglican triumphalism, leaving a fairly urban and even slightly anonymous feeling, although this is obviously a well-loved and cared-for place. It would have been interesting to see this church in the 18th century, when it was full of box pews - the door of one of them survives in the south-west corner, labelled Free for Women. The elegant Early English tub font on pilasters, retaining its Perpendicular font cover, was originally at this end but has since been reset in front of the former north doorway.

 

The nave was rebuilt at the time of the tower, retaining an arcade from an earlier church, but otherwise being all of a Perpendicular piece. There is a massive set of Queen Anne royal arms above the chancel arch, almost of a size with those at Mildenhall. The chancel is wholly Victorian in construction and character, but it has some fascinating windows by the Ward & Hughes workshop, not a sentiment I hold very often. They depict scenes from the life of Christ - the summoning of the Disciples, the raising of Jairus's daughter - but if you look closely you will see that some of the figures in the scenes have 19th century faces, and are wearing 19th century clothes. These are memorial windows to the figures worked into the scenes, and the brass plaques that name them are also by Ward & Hughes. The best one is the astonishing consumptive figure of Jairus's daughter, who is represented by Winifred Frances Fisher, a 17 year old girl who was suddenly called home in 1892. Her plaque notes that she was perfected in a short time. She lies on her death bed, her silvery curls flowing across the pillow in a perfect moment of late Victorian sentiment. Rather odder is the figure of her father, in full 19th Century formal wear, who peers curiously from behind the backs of St Peter and St Andrew as they are called on the lake shore to give their lives to Christ.

刘贤斌：《走出东方专制主义藩篱》英文翻译

 

Indicted for subversion for writing essays like these, Liu Xianbin awaits trial in a Suining, Sichuan jail cell. He may be tried as early as the end of August 2010. Here is an English translation of Liu Xianbin's article on the necessity of China achieving constitutional democracy.

--------------------------

TRANSLATION

 

Constitutional Democracy for China: Escaping Eastern Autocracy

  

by Liu Xianbin

 

Over the past several thousand years, China has been an autocratic country.This can be attributed to its deeply rooted autocratic culture and the and servile culture derived that grew out of it.

 

Like other cultures in the world, Chinese culture involved a pursuit of goodness and an aspiration for an ideal society and contained a basic universal value of mankind. Fore example, in the ancient times, the concept of the "whole world being one community" could be found in Chinese culture. The system that a king abdicates and hands over the crown to another person in the times of Emperors Yao, Shun, and Yu was a concrete practice of the concept of the "whole world being one community." To use a common expression, the "whole world being one community" means that the world belongs to the people under heaven. To use a modern term, it means the people are the master of the country. This is the most important thing in the core concept of democracy in modern politics. Later, two major schools of Chinese culture, Confucianism and Taoism, inherited the concept of the "whole world being one community." In their minds, the most ideal rulers were those who were able to implement the concept of the "whole world being one community." Mencius once said: "There is a way to win a kingdom: win the people, and the kingdom is your's. There is a way to win the people: win their hearts, and the people are won." What Mencius meant is that those who win the hearts of the people can win the kingdom and those who lose the support of the people can lose the kingdom. The idea can also be applied to modern democracy.

 

Moreover, Pre-Qin Confucian scholars also entertained many ideas which are in line with modern democracy. For example, in the Analects of Confucius, there is a story talking about "Fan Chi asking what constitutes wisdom." In the story, Confucius said: "We should employ the upright and put aside all the crooked. In this way the crooked can be made to be upright." The expression of "employing the upright and putting aside all the crooked" means that it is necessary to select wise and able persons to lead and manage this society. Mencius also said: "We should give honor to men of talents and virtue and employ the able." What he meant is that we should let those people with high moral standard and great capability to administer the country. This idea is completely in line with the goal of modern democracy. In addition, Mencius also severely criticized those autocrats and traitors of the people. He said: "When the prince regards his ministers as his hands and feet, his ministers regard their prince as their belly and heart; when he regards them as his dogs and horses, they regard him as another compatriot; when the prince regards his ministers as the ground or grass to trample upon, then they regard him as an enemy." When the king Xuan of Qi asked him how he considered the matters related to the King Tang of Shang destroying the King Jie of Xia and the King Wu of Zhou destroying the King Zhou of Shang, Mencius said: "He robs a good man is called a robber; he who harms a righteous man is called a barbarian. These robbers and barbarians are outcasts. I have heard of the execution of these two kinds of outcasts, but never the putting a sovereign to death." When these ideas of Mencius was introduced to the West, some say they influenced the French Revolution. Mencius' ideas do not favor autocrats who want to maintain their rule. Therefore When Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty read these remarks by Mencius, he was very upset. He went so far as to order the removal of Mencius' statues from Confucius Temples and personally deleted these remarks. Therefore, democratic idea in a simple form did exist in pre-Qin Confucian thought. These democratic ideas are not totally opposite to modern democratic theories.

 

Why did Western culture develop a political system of freedom and democracy while China got bogged down deeper and deeper in the mire of despotic dictatorship? I believe that one of the important reasons is that China's traditional culture only puts forward moral restrictions on the rulers but fails to design corresponding institutional restrictions. China's traditional culture only hopes that the rulers will carry out on their own initiative the concept of the "whole world being one community" but does not have a corresponding system to ensure that the rulers must carry out the concept of the "whole world being one community." In the minds of Confucian scholars and Taoist scholars, the most ideal rulers are "sages" who know everything and can do anything. The Scripture of Ethics describes how a sage can rule the world. The Analects of Confucius describes how gentlemen can refine their moral character so as to assist the sage to rule the world. Therefore, over the past several thousands years, the concept of "intelligent rulers and virtuous ministers" has always represented the highest ideal of the Chinese people. Undoubtedly, it is reasonable to put forward moral restrictions on the rulers. But this is not enough because moral restrictions are very weak in the face of power. Once the rulers get an absolutely unrestrained power, they might become degenerated and harm the interests of the people for the sake of their selfish desires.

 

Over the past two thousand years and more, China has been ruled by autocratic sovereigns, true "intelligent rulers and virtuous ministers" were few and far between. Most of them were mediocre and incapable. Some even were tyrants who ruled the country cruelly. They were what Mencius described as autocrats and traitors of the people who were harmful to the country. With regard to these rulers, the Chinese culture has failed to create an institutional check-and-balance mechanism. As a result, these fatuous and self-indulgent rulers and these tyrants were able to do whatever they wanted to do while the people of the country suffered from agonies and hardships. This is a sad story of the Chinese traditional culture. In fact, during the Spring and Autumn Period [ 770-476 BC] and the Period of Warring States [ 475-221 BC] when the Chinese culture enjoyed great development, Confucius, Mencius, Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, and others should had a clear understanding of the rulers of all states of their times. In their minds, these rulers were not "sages and intelligent rulers" as what they expected and simply could not meet the moral requirements as put forward by Confucius, Mencius, Lao Zi, and Zhuang Zi. Under this situation, Confucius, Mencius, Lao Zi, and Zhuang Zi still did not think about the necessity of institutional restrictions. This is really unfortunate for the Chinese culture.

 

The Chinese culture's excessive emphasis on morality originates from the Confucian theory that claims human nature is good. Pre-Qin Confucian scholars believed the nature of a person is good and each person is born with a sense of kindness, a sense of shame, and a sense of shame right and wrong. They believed that people become bad because they are affected by the environment after their birth. Therefore, they believed that people can become a moral person with studies and personal refinement, as Mencius put it: "All men may be Yaos and Shuns." Because of this reason, they pinned their hopes of the realization of the ideal society on the moral refinement of each and every person. They urged people to unswervingly cultivate their moral characters. Particularly, they urged the rulers of the country to become sages or gentlemen with high moral standard through moral cultivation. This is completely different from the idea that human nature is bad as proposed by the Western culture. In Christian culture of the West, a person is considered as imperfect. Even a person with perfect personal character also has an original sin. Therefore, in Christian civilization, a person, however great he is, is considered as a person who is prone to make mistake or commit crimes. Therefore, when he is in power, people naturally will take precautions against him and restrict him. As a result, the theories of freedom, democracy, human rights, and constitutional government naturally emerge.

 

However, in the Period of Warring States of the Pre-Qin era, Xun Zi already questioned about the theory that claims human nature is good. In addition, he put forward a theory that claims human nature is bad. Later, Legalists [a school of thought in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, 770-221 BC] put forward various views on the basis of the theory that claims human nature is bad, urging that the rulers must always take precautions against their ministers and subjects and use a complete set of systems to control the thinking and action of their ministers and subjects. However, Legalists made a grave mistake. Instead of applying the theory that claims human nature is bad on the rulers, they put forward a series of proposals to deal with ministers and subjects. Not a single proposal is used to restrict the rulers. Therefore, the theories put forward by Legalists turned out to be an accomplice that helps establish and develop China's autocratic system. Since the Qin Dynasty, the rulers of successive dynasties in fact have madly clung to the advantages of the theories put forward by Legalists, although they superficially held Confucianism in esteem. This is what is called "exterior Confucianism and interior Legalism." They used beautifully worded Confucian terms to justify the legitimacy of their rule. Meanwhile, they used harsh law and severe punishment proposed by Legalists to suppress the ministers and the people. This is the major characteristic of eastern autocracy.

 

Therefore, no matter whether they were Confucianists, Taoists, or Legalists, they failed to put forward institutional restrictions on the rulers. This is a major shortcoming of the Chinese culture. In the pre-Qin era, there was still some freedom in Chinese society. Particularly, the class of literati and officialdom still had some rights of freedom. For example, Confucius once said: "A prince should employ his minister according to the rules of propriety; ministers should serve their prince with faithfulness." (Section 19, Ba Yi [eight rows of dancers at sacrifices], the Analects of Confucius) In other words, the loyalty of a subject to his king is conditional, which means that a king must respect his subject. If a king does not respect his subject, his subject has a right not to be loyal to his king. Therefore, when Confucius was elbowed out by others, he left the Kingdom of Lu. When Duke Zhuang of Qi was killed for vying for a woman, Yan Zi did not mourn for him. Mencius also once said: "When scholars are put to death without any crime, the great officers may leave the country. When the people are slaughtered without any crime, the scholars may remove." (Li Lou II) Therefore, in the pre-Qin era, there was not an inexorable relationship of dependence between the class of literati and officialdom on the one hand and the rulers on the other hand.

 

However, beginning from the Qin Dynasty when China's autocratic system of the imperial power was established, the class of literati and officialdom began to lose this freedom. They no longer had a free choice as to whom they want to be loyal to. Their rights, status, and even lives had lost the fundamental protection. According to the Ceremonies of Zhou, "the penal statutes do not go up to great officers." But in the autocratic society since the Qin Dynasty, autocratic monarchies held an absolute power to control the life and death of their subjects because the king "wants his subject to die, his subject has to die." Even the literati and officialdom with a higher social status lost their basic human rights. One can imagine the fate of commoners. Since then, each and every Chinese people had to subject themselves to the supreme imperial power, they lost the dignity, freedom, and rights as a human being. Every one became a slave who was used and trampled on by the despotic imperial power.

 

Under the role of the powerful despotic imperial power, the national character of the Chinese people also underwent a tremendous change. All people became timid, selfish, and sly. Sometimes, they even were distorted to the extent of abnormality. In order to protect oneself or to pursuit interests, everybody tried to attain his end by hook or by crook. Gentlemen with noble character had been decreasing in number. Villain culture and servile culture had become popular in this society. The moral teaching of Confucianism had become the moral empty talk which served to cheat oneself and others. It had become a decoration for the despotic imperial power. At the same time, the spread of the servile culture had encouraged the consolidation and development of despotism. Despotists were in urgent need of those who always did as they were told. In addition, they were very good at provoking and controlling the endless internal struggle between gentlemen and villains. It was through this internal struggle, they gradually consolidated their own autocratic rule. Therefore, the servile culture without dignity and freedom was an important condition for maintaining the despotism for a long period of time. All the calamities of our nation were not completely forced on us by the despotic rulers. Our national character and our culture also provided fertile soil for the growth and development of despotism.

 

Since despotic imperial power was not subject to restraint, the rulers could exploit the power in their hands without restrictions. Therefore, they unavoidably became corrupt and suppressed and plundered the people without any limit. When the people simply could not tolerate any longer, they would become reckless in desperation and rose up to resist, which resulted in severe social turmoil and recession. In this kind of turmoil, the economy, society, and culture would suffer from great destruction. Therefore, unrestricted autocracy is largely responsible for all the calamities of Chinese society has suffered over the past 2,000 years and more. In order to escape this cycle of calamity-destruction-reconstruction, it is necessary to establish a mechanism on the foundation of the culture which is skeptical of state power and which constrains state power, and clearly defines the distinction between the powers of the rulers and the rights of the people. From Western culture should be introduced the concept of constitutional democracy. China needs to absorb the essence of this principle and so protect the freedom and dignity of each person from the encroachment of state power. Only when the concept of constitutional democracy is internalized as an integral part of Chinese culture and becomes the basic concept of the nation, will we be able to remove conditions favorable to the growth of despotism. Only in this way can the happiness of our future generations be fundamentally guaranteed, and can Chinese society finally escape from eastern-style autocracy.

 

Written in "Baisheng Homeland" in Sichuan's Suining on 9 December 2009

Yesterday was Danica's birthday. She turned three years old and in celebration of her birthday we decided to take her to Playland, a theme park/water park in Rye, NY.

Before arriving at the park I had a strong feeling that it was going to rain at any moment. I guess my intuitions were right because immediately after we arrived, purchased our tickets, and ate our breakfast, it began to rain; and it was not just some light drizzle; it was a torrential down pour! Most of the rides got shut down and we didn't get the opportunity to ride on all of the one's we wanted to ride on.

 

Nevertheless, we decided to enjoy ourselves by running wild in the rain, and it was more entertaining than the money we spent on the the train ride, amusement rides, and the entrance to the swimming pool.

 

The shot of Danica you see here is one I took when we had to rap her up with Monica's scarf because the rain was a bit frigid, as you can see from her expression lol.

 

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Information from:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta

 

Atlanta (pronounced /ətˈlæntə/ or /ætˈlæntə/) is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia.

As of 2008, Atlanta is the thirty-third largest city in the United States, with an estimated population of 537,958. Its metropolitan area, officially named the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA MSA (commonly referred to as Metropolitan Atlanta) is the ninth largest metropolitan area in the country, inhabited by approximately 5.5 million people. Like most areas in the Sun Belt, the Atlanta region has seen explosive growth in the past decade, adding more than 1.13 million residents between 2000 and 2008. It is the fastest growing area of the United States behind the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.[3]

Considered a top business city and transportation hub,[4][5] Atlanta is the world headquarters of The Coca-Cola Company, AT&T Mobility, and Delta Air Lines. Atlanta has the country's fourth largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies inside city limits (although UPS, Home Depot, and Newell Rubbermaid are not in the city limits) and more than 75 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have a presence in the metro area. Also the Atlanta metro area has the 11th largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies headquarters. [6] Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which is located seven miles south of downtown Atlanta, is the world's busiest airport and the only major airport to serve the city.[7][8]

Atlanta is the county seat of Fulton County and the fifth location for the seat of government of the state of Georgia. A small portion of the city of Atlanta corporate limits extends into DeKalb County. Residents of the city are known as Atlantans.[9]

 

History

 

Main articles: History of Atlanta and Atlanta in the Civil War

The land constituting the city of Atlanta was once a Native American village called Standing Peachtree. The land that became the Atlanta area was taken from the Cherokee and Creeks by white settlers in 1822, with the first area settlement being Decatur.

On December 21, 1836, the Georgia General Assembly voted to build the Western and Atlantic Railroad to provide a trade route to the Midwestern United States.[10] Following the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation between 1838 and 1839 the newly depopulated area was opened for the construction of a railroad. The area around the eastern terminus to the line began to develop first, and so the settlement was named "Terminus" in 1837. It was nicknamed Thrasherville after John Thrasher, who built homes and a general store there.[11] By 1842, the settlement had six buildings and 30 residents and the town was renamed "Marthasville".[12] The Chief Engineer of the Georgia Railroad, J. Edgar Thomson, suggested that the area be renamed "Atlantica-Pacifica" after the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which was quickly shortened to "Atlanta".[12] The residents approved, and the town was incorporated as Atlanta on December 29, 1847.[13] By 1854, another railroad connected Atlanta to LaGrange, and the town grew to 9,554 by 1860.[14][15]

During the American Civil War, Atlanta served as an important railroad and military supply hub. In 1864, the city became the target of a major Union invasion. The area now covered by Atlanta was the scene of several battles, including the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Atlanta, and the Battle of Ezra Church. On September 1, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuated Atlanta after a four-month siege mounted by Union General William T. Sherman and ordered all public buildings and possible Confederate assets destroyed. The next day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered the city, and on September 7 Sherman ordered the civilian population to evacuate. He then ordered Atlanta burned to the ground on November 11 in preparation for his march south, though he spared the city's churches and hospitals.[16]

The rebuilding of the city was gradual. From 1867 until 1888, U.S. Army soldiers occupied McPherson Barracks in southwest Atlanta to ensure Reconstruction era reforms. To help the newly freed slaves, the Freedmen's Bureau worked in tandem with a number of freedmen's aid organizations, especially the American Missionary Association. In 1868, Atlanta became the fifth city to serve as the state capital.[17] The Confederate Soldiers' Home was built to house disabled and elderly Georgia veterans from 1901 to 1941.[18] Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, promoted the city to investors as a city of the "New South", one built on a modern economy, less reliant on agriculture. However, as Atlanta grew, ethnic and racial tensions mounted. The Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 left at least 27 dead[19] and over 70 injured.

On December 15, 1939, Atlanta hosted the premiere of Gone with the Wind, the movie based on Atlanta-born Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel of the same name. Stars Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and legendary producer David O. Selznick attended the gala, which was held at Loew's Grand Theatre, now destroyed. Leslie Howard had returned to England for the war.[20] The reception was held at the Georgian Terrace Hotel, which is still standing.

During World War II, manufacturing such as the Bell Aircraft factory in the suburb of Marietta helped boost the city's population and economy. Shortly after the war, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was founded in Atlanta.[21]

In the wake of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which helped usher in the Civil Rights Movement, racial tensions in Atlanta began to express themselves in acts of violence. On October 12, 1958, a Reform Jewish temple on Peachtree Street was bombed; the synagogue's rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, was an outspoken advocate of integration.[22] A group of anti-Semitic white supremacists calling themselves the "Confederate Underground" claimed responsibility.

In the 1960s, Atlanta was a major organizing center of the Civil Rights Movement, as Dr. Martin Luther King and students from Atlanta's historically black colleges and universities played major roles in the movement's leadership. Two of the most important civil rights organizations, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had their national headquarters in Atlanta. Despite some racial protests during the Civil Rights era, Atlanta's political and business leaders labored to foster Atlanta's image as "the city too busy to hate". In 1961, Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. became one of the few Southern white mayors to support desegregation of his city's public schools.[23]

African-American Atlantans demonstrated growing political influence with election of the first African-American mayor in 1973. They became a majority in the city during the late 20th century but suburbanization, rising prices, a booming economy and new migrants have decreased their percentage in the city from a high of 69 percent in 1980 to about 54 percent in 2004. The addition of new immigrants such as Latinos and Asians is also altering city demographics, along with an influx of white residents.[24]

In 1990, Atlanta was selected as the site for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Following the announcement, Atlanta undertook several major construction projects to improve the city's parks, sports facilities, and transportation. Atlanta became the third American city to host the Summer Olympics. The games themselves were marred by numerous organizational inefficiencies, as well as the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.[25]

Contemporary Atlanta is sometimes considered to be an archetype for cities experiencing rapid growth and urban sprawl.[26][27] Unlike most major cities, metropolitan Atlanta does not have any natural boundaries, such as an ocean, lakes, or mountains, that might constrain growth.

The city has recently been commended by bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency for its eco-friendly policies.[28] In 2009, Atlanta's Virginia-Highland became the first carbon-neutral zone in the United States. Verus Carbon Neutral developed the partnership that links 17 merchants of the historic Corner Virginia-Highland shopping and dining neighborhood retail district, through the Chicago Climate Exchange, to directly fund the Valley Wood Carbon Sequestration Project (thousands of acres of forest in rural Georgia).

 

#91 astrodeep200407aab10aa.png 4.12 MB 1244X1243 HUDF top center NASA original

 

This image is 6.3x6.3 arc-seconds, 3.965% of the area of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field,

 

which is 186 arc-seconds wide and high = 3.1 arc-minutes

 

= 1/10 width of the Full Moon or Sun, about 0.5 degrees,

 

so the HUDF is about 1% of the area of the square that holds the Full Moon or Sun,

 

short introduction re viewing lovely subtle earliest structures in HUDF: AstroDeep, Rich Murray 2009.02.23

 

I've found since 2005 myriad ubiquitous bright blue sources, always on a darker fractal 3D web, along with a variety of sizes of irregular early galaxies, in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, simply by increasing the gamma from 1.00 to 2.00 and saturating the colors, while minimizing the green band to simplify the complex overlays of complex fractal structures.

 

Dozens of these images, covering the entire HUDF in eight ~20 MB segments, are available for viewing at many scales [ To change the size of images on Windows PCs, use Control - and + ] on www.Flickr.com at the "rmforall" photostream. Try #86 for the central 16% of the HUDF.

 

ubiquitous bright blue 1-12 pixel sources on darker 3D fractal web in five 2007.09.06 IR and visible light HUDF images, Nor Pirzkal, Sangeeta Malhotra, James E Rhoads, Chun Xu, -- might be clusters of earliest hypernovae in recent cosmological simulations: Rich Murray 2008.08.17 2009.01.20

rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.htm

Sunday, August 17, 2008

groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/25

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/85

 

www.flickr.com/photos/rmforall/1349101458/in/photostream/

 

The 5 closeups are about 2.2x2.2 arc-seconds wide and high, about 70x70 pixels.

The HUDF is 315x315 arc-seconds, with N at top and E at left.

Each side has 10,500x10,500 pixels at 0.03 arc-second per pixel.

 

Click on All Sizes and select Original to view the highest resolution image of 3022x2496 pixels, which can be also be conveniently seen directly at their Zoomable image:

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/zoomable/heic0714a.html

 

Notable in the deep background of the five closeups are ubiquitous bright blue sources, presumably extremely hot ultraviolet before redshifting, 1 to a dozen or so pixels, as single or short lines of spots, and a few irregular tiny blobs, probably, as predicted in many recent simulations, the earliest massive, short-lived hypernovae, GRBs with jets at various angles to our line of sight, expanding bubbles, earliest molecular and dust clouds with light echoes and bursts of star formation, and first small dwarf galaxies, always associated with a subtle darker 3D random fractal mesh of filaments of H and He atomic gases.

 

As a scientific layman, I am grateful for specific cogent, civil feedback, based on the details readily visible in images in the public domain.

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/heic0714a.html

 

Hubble and Spitzer Uncover Smallest Galaxy Building Blocks

 

Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@comcast.net 505-501-2298

1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/messages

groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/messages

www.sfcomplex.org Santa Fe Complex

 

You are welcome to visit me and share your comments as I share these images at home on a 4X8 foot screen -- no fee.

 

Anyone may view and download for free 91 images, presenting the HUDF in eight 20 MB pieces at rmforall at www.FlickR.com -- #86 is about 20% of the HUDF in their red and blue colors, as leaving out the green greatly simplifies interpreting the overlapping layers of transparent fractal webs of gas with a wide range of sizes of rather distant sources, beyond z = 5.

_____________________________________________________________

  

astrodeep200407aab10ada.png 3.10 MB flickr.com rmforall #90 astrodeep200407aab10ada.png 3.68 MB 1244X1243 px HUDF center top left: Lillian J Kelly: Rich Murray 2008.12.30

 

The attachment is my image from my hard drive:

astrodeep200407aab10ada.png

 

www.flickr.com

 

www.flickr.com/photos/rmforall/3103426063/

#90 astrodeep200407aab10ada.png 3.68 MB 1244X1243 px HUDF center top left

 

Click on All Sizes to see and download the Original

or find it directly at

farm4.static.flickr.com/3161/3103426063_df229d2202_o.png

  

In Windows Vista, use CTRL +/= over and over to magnify images,

and CRTL _/- to reduce.

  

You can also go to Control Panel to Ease of Access

to Ease of Access Center

to Optimize visual display

to turn on Magnifier,

which creates a box of any size and location that magnifies

from 1 to 16 times in width and height,

whatever area the cursor is pointed at on any image on the screen.

You can even make "stereo" pairs side by side,

by setting Magnifier to 1X,

and putting its box to the left or right half of the screen,

and using the cursor to adjust

until the two images are matching and side by side.

Then if you can, gaze with crossed eyes at the two images

to get a third image in between,

which may well look 3D and have much more detail.

  

This image is 6.3x6.3 arc-seconds, 3.965% of the area of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field,

 

which is 186 arc-seconds wide and high = 3.1 arc-minutes

 

= 1/10 width of the Full Moon or Sun, about 0.5 degrees,

 

so the HUDF is about 1% of the area of the square that holds the Full Moon or Sun,

 

while the image is 4% of 1/1,000 of the area of the HUDF,

 

so the image is about 4/100,000 of the area of the square that holds the Full Moon or Sun.

 

The image is 6.3 are-seconds wide and high,

 

while the pixels are 0.03 arc-seconds wide in the original HUDF.

 

The background of many small blue spots are about 1-10 pixels in area.

 

I have used a simple, low-cost program, MGI PhotoSuite 4.0 to process these images:

 

double the Gamma to 2.00,

raise the color saturation,

shift colors a bit to accentuate the reds,

remove most of the Green band,

so the image is mostly made of Blue (coding for visible blue),

with Red codes for the invisible infrared just longer in wavelength than visible red.

 

Mixed Blue and Red make green, yellow, orange, red, and white.

 

However these colors are downshifted in frequency (lengthened in wavelength)

more and more the more they are distant in space (light travel time from us):

 

The "Little Feller", like the figure "8" in the top center

to the right of the red galaxy with a red swirl on the right,

has been measured to be at redshift distance z = 4.88,

so its light is changed by a factor of 4.88 --

its apparent reds, oranges, and yellows represent radiation in the hot ultraviolet,

and its age from us is about 13 billion years,

about a billion years after the Big Bang,

13.7 billion = 13,700 million years ago.

The Sun and solar system are 4.6 billion = 4,600 million years ago.

 

The myriad tiny background blue spots,

along with some green ones,

always on a dark 3D fractal mesh,

are probably the first stars,

made of pure hydrogen and helium,

about 100-100 solar masses in size,

extremely hot and short-lived,

exploding as hypernovae after 1-2 million years,

often with intense bipolar jets,

often leaving relic neutron stars and black holes,

flinging new elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen into space to become the substance of later generations of stars,

which are closer to us in space (nearer in time), smaller, more numerous, cooler, longer-lived,

collecting together by gravity to make clouds, clusters, dwarf galaxies, clump cluster galaxies, irregular galaxies, and mature galaxies,

flat slowly rotating spirals and rounded ellipticals,

which often collide, especially at first

before the constant expansion of space-time separated them more and more --

the expansion of space-time itself that originated from a minute region in a source reality

that had at least 10 dimensions of space and one of time -- the Big Bang.

 

So, we see far-away early gatherings of hot blue and green objects,

and closer (nearer to us in time) more numerous gatherings of cooler red objects,

which all seem exist as a 3D fractal network of twisted tubes,

rather transparent, as there was little dust in early time to darken light.

 

It is well known that for every mass of ordinary matter, gas, dust, stars,

there is about 6 times more mass of completely invisible dark matter,

which pulls itself together by gravity into a 3D fractal network, making

the scaffold that ordinary matter collects within.

Dark matter surrounds glalaxies and superclusters of galaxies,

bending light gently by gravity,

so that the dark matter appears as subtle transparent bubbles

against the complex background of deeper structures.

 

Additionally the cosmic zoo may include galaxy-wide strings of

condensed space-time geometry, formed during the Big Bang,

that are massive enough to bend light

and make double twin images of objects far behind them from us.

  

ubiquitous bright blue 1-12 pixel sources on darker 3D fractal web in five 2007.09.06 IR and visible light HUDF images, Nor Pirzkal, Sangeeta Malhotra, James E Rhoads, Chun Xu, -- might be clusters of earliest hypernovae in recent cosmological simulations: Rich Murray 2008.08.17

rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.htm

Sunday, August 17, 2008

groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/25

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/85

 

www.flickr.com/photos/rmforall/1349101458/in/photostream/

 

The 5 closeups are about 2.2x2.2 arc-seconds wide and high, about 70x70 pixels.

The HUDF is 315x315 arc-seconds, with N at top and E at left.

Each side has 10,500x10,500 pixels at 0.03 arc-second per pixel.

 

Click on All Sizes and select Original to view the highest resolution image of

3022x2496 pixels, which can be also be conveniently seen directly at their

Zoomable image:

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/zoomable/heic0714a.html

 

Notable in the deep background of the five closeups are ubiquitous bright blue

sources, presumably extremely hot ultraviolet before redshifting,

1 to a dozen or so pixels,

as single or short lines of spots, and a few irregular tiny blobs,

probably, as predicted in many recent simulations, the earliest massive,

short-lived hypernovae, GRBs with jets at various angles to our line of sight,

expanding bubbles, earliest molecular and dust clouds with light echoes and

bursts of star formation, and first small dwarf galaxies, always associated with

a subtle darker 3D random fractal mesh of filaments of H and He atomic gases.

 

As a scientific layman, I am grateful for specific cogent, civil feedback, based

on the details readily visible in images in the public domain.

  

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/heic0714a.html

 

Hubble and Spitzer Uncover Smallest Galaxy Building Blocks

 

In this image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, several objects are identified

as the faintest, most compact galaxies ever observed in the distant

Universe.

They are so far away that we see them as they looked less than one billion

years after the Big Bang.

Blazing with the brilliance of millions of stars, each of the newly

discovered galaxies is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than our Milky

Way Galaxy.

 

The bottom row of pictures shows several of these clumps (distance expressed

in redshift value).

Three of the galaxies appear to be slightly disrupted.

Rather than being shaped like rounded blobs, they appear stretched into

tadpole-like shapes.

This is a sign that they may be interacting and merging with neighboring

galaxies to form larger structures.

 

The detection required joint observations between Hubble and NASA's Spitzer

Space Telescope.

Blue light seen by Hubble shows the presence of young stars.

The absence of red light from Spitzer observations conclusively shows that

these are truly young galaxies without an earlier generation of stars.

 

Credit: NASA, ESA, and N. Pirzkal (European Space Agency/STScI)

 

Id: heic0714a

Object: HUDF, UDF, Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Type: Cosmology

Instrument: ACS

Width: 2750

Height: 3312

Downloads

Images

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/original/heic0714a.tif

Fullsize Original 17.085 MB

 

www.alternatiff.com/

view with free software AlternaTIFF

 

alternatiff-1_8_4.exe for Firefox browser

  

Large JPEG

3,422 KB

 

Screensize JPEG

387 KB

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/zoomable/heic0714a.html

Zoomable

 

Copyright-free material (more info).

  

www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMCGRMPQ5F_index_1.html

 

hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/31

 

hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/31/image/

 

www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

 

www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0714.html

 

www.spacetelescope.org/news/text/heic0714.txt

 

HEIC0714: EMBARGOED UNTIL 18:00 (CEST)/12:00 PM EDT 06 September, 2007

www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0714.html

 

News release:

Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes find "Lego-block" galaxies in early

Universe

 

06-September 2007 The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA

Spitzer Space Telescope have joined forces to discover nine of the

smallest, faintest, most compact galaxies ever observed in the distant

Universe. Blazing with the brilliance of millions of stars, each of the

newly discovered galaxies is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than

our Milky Way Galaxy.

 

The conventional model for galaxy evolution predicts that small galaxies

in the early Universe evolved into the massive galaxies of today by

coalescing. Nine Lego-like "building block" galaxies initially detected

by Hubble likely contributed to the construction of the Universe as we

know it. "These are among the lowest mass galaxies ever directly

observed in the early Universe" says Nor Pirzkal of the European Space

Agency/STScI.

 

Pirzkal was surprised to find that the galaxies' estimated masses were

so small. Hubble's cousin observatory, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope

was called upon to make precise determinations of their masses. The

Spitzer observations confirmed that these galaxies are some of the

smallest building blocks of the Universe.

 

These young galaxies offer important new insights into the Universe's

formative years, just one billion years after the Big Bang. Hubble

detected sapphire blue stars residing within the nine pristine galaxies.

The youthful stars are just a few million years old and are in the

process of turning Big Bang elements (hydrogen and helium) into heavier

elements. The stars have probably not yet begun to pollute the

surrounding space with elemental products forged within their cores.

 

"While blue light seen by Hubble shows the presence of young stars, it

is the absence of infrared light in the sensitive Spitzer images that

was conclusive in showing that these are truly young galaxies without an

earlier generation of stars," says Sangeeta Malhotra of Arizona State

University in Tempe, USA, one of the investigators.

 

The galaxies were first identified by James Rhoads of Arizona State

University, USA, and Chun Xu of the Shanghai Institute of Technical

Physics in Shanghai, China. Three of the galaxies appear to be slightly

disrupted -- rather than being shaped like rounded blobs, they appear

stretched into tadpole-like shapes. This is a sign that they may be

interacting and merging with neighbouring galaxies to form larger,

cohesive structures.

 

The galaxies were observed in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) with

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Near Infrared Camera and

Multi-Object Spectrometer as well as Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera and

the European Southern Observatory's Infrared Spectrometer and Array

Camera. Seeing and analysing such small galaxies at such a great

distance is at the very limit of the capabilities of the most powerful

telescopes. Images taken through different colour filters with the ACS

were supplemented with exposures taken through a so-called grism which

spreads the different colours emitted by the galaxies into short

"trails". The analysis of these trails allows the detection of emission

from glowing hydrogen gas, giving both the distance and an estimate of

the rate of star formation. These "grism spectra" -- taken with Hubble

and analysed with software developed at the Space Telescope-European

Coordinating Facility in Munich, Germany -- can be obtained for objects

that are significantly fainter than can be studied spectroscopically

with any other current telescope.

 

# # #

 

Notes for editors

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation

between ESA and NASA.

 

Pirzkal's main collaborators were Malhotra, Rhoads, Xu, and the GRism

ACS Program for Extragalactic Science (GRAPES) team.

 

Image credit: NASA, ESA and N. Pirzkal (European Space Agency/STScI)

 

If you wish to no longer receive these News and Photo Releases, please

send an email to distribution@spacetelescope.org with your name.

 

For more information, please contact:

Nor Pirzkal ;

European Space Agency/Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA

Tel: 410-338-4879

 

Lars Lindberg Christensen ;

Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany

Tel: +49-(0)89-3200-6306

Cellular: +49-(0)173-3872-621

 

Ray Villard ;

Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA

Tel: +1-410-338-4514

 

Whitney Clavin

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, USA

Tel: +1-818-354-4673

  

AST HUDF Spitzer IR 9 galaxies z 4-5.7, N Pirzdal, S Malhotra, JE Rhoads, C Xu,

2007.05.01 28p

 

www.spacetelescope.org/news/science_paper/0612513.pdf

  

arXiv:astro-ph/0612513v2 1 May 2007

Optical to mid-IR observations of Lyman-a galaxies at z about 5 in the HUDF: a

young and low mass population

N. Pirzkal 1,2,

S. Malhotra 3,

J. E. Rhoads 3,

C. Xu 4

 

ABSTRACT

 

High redshift galaxies selected on the basis of their strong Lyman-a emission

tend to be young ages and small physical sizes.

 

We show this by analyzing the spectral energy distribution (SED) of 9 Lyman-a

emitting (LAE) galaxies at 4.0 < z < 5.7 in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF).

 

Rest-frame UV to optical 700A < wavelength < 7500A luminosities, or upper

limits, are used to constrain old stellar populations.

 

We derive best fit, as well as maximally massive and maximally old, properties

of all 9 objects.

 

We show that these faint and distant objects are all very young, being most

likely only a few millions years old, and not massive, the mass in stars being

about 10E6 to 10E8 M sun.

 

Deep Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) observations of these objects,

even in cases where objects were not detected,

were crucial in constraining the masses of these objects.

 

The space density of these objects, about 1.25 x 10E-4 per cubic Mpc is

comparable to previously reported space density of LAEs at moderate to high

redshifts.

 

These Lyman-a galaxies show modest star formation rates of about 8 M sun per

year, which is nevertheless strong enough to have allowed these galaxies to

assemble their stellar mass in less than a few 10E6 years.

 

These sources appear to have small physical sizes, usually smaller than 1 Kpc,

and are also rather concentrated.

 

They are likely to be some of the least massive and youngest high redshift galaxies observed to date.

 

Subject headings: galaxies: evolution, galaxies: high redshift, galaxies:

formation, galaxies: structure, surveys, cosmology

 

1 Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

2 Affiliated with the Space Science Telescope Division of the European Space

Agency, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands

3 School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

4 Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, 500 Yutian Road, Shanghai, P.R. China 200083

____________________________________________________________

  

See similar images:

  

notable bright blue tiny sources on darker 3D fractal web in HUDF VLT ESO

28 images from 506 galaxies, z about 6 , RJ Bouwens, GD Illingworth,

JP Blakeslee, M Franx 2008.02.04 draft 36 page: Rich Murray 2008.08.17

rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.htm

Sunday, August 17, 2008

groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/26

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/86

  

bright blue 1-4 pixel sources on darker 3D fractal web in IR and visible light

HUDF images -- might be the clusters of earliest hypernovae in the

Naoki Yoshida and Lars Hernquist simulation: Rich Murray 2008.07.31

rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.htm

Thursday, July 31, 2008

groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/24

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/84

____________________________________________________________

  

Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@comcast.net

505-501-2298 1943 Otowi Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505

 

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/messages

 

groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/messages

____________________________________________________________

 

Information from:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta

 

Atlanta (pronounced /ətˈlæntə/ or /ætˈlæntə/) is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia.

As of 2008, Atlanta is the thirty-third largest city in the United States, with an estimated population of 537,958. Its metropolitan area, officially named the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA MSA (commonly referred to as Metropolitan Atlanta) is the ninth largest metropolitan area in the country, inhabited by approximately 5.5 million people. Like most areas in the Sun Belt, the Atlanta region has seen explosive growth in the past decade, adding more than 1.13 million residents between 2000 and 2008. It is the fastest growing area of the United States behind the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.[3]

Considered a top business city and transportation hub,[4][5] Atlanta is the world headquarters of The Coca-Cola Company, AT&T Mobility, and Delta Air Lines. Atlanta has the country's fourth largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies inside city limits (although UPS, Home Depot, and Newell Rubbermaid are not in the city limits) and more than 75 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have a presence in the metro area. Also the Atlanta metro area has the 11th largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies headquarters. [6] Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, which is located seven miles south of downtown Atlanta, is the world's busiest airport and the only major airport to serve the city.[7][8]

Atlanta is the county seat of Fulton County and the fifth location for the seat of government of the state of Georgia. A small portion of the city of Atlanta corporate limits extends into DeKalb County. Residents of the city are known as Atlantans.[9]

 

History

 

Main articles: History of Atlanta and Atlanta in the Civil War

The land constituting the city of Atlanta was once a Native American village called Standing Peachtree. The land that became the Atlanta area was taken from the Cherokee and Creeks by white settlers in 1822, with the first area settlement being Decatur.

On December 21, 1836, the Georgia General Assembly voted to build the Western and Atlantic Railroad to provide a trade route to the Midwestern United States.[10] Following the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation between 1838 and 1839 the newly depopulated area was opened for the construction of a railroad. The area around the eastern terminus to the line began to develop first, and so the settlement was named "Terminus" in 1837. It was nicknamed Thrasherville after John Thrasher, who built homes and a general store there.[11] By 1842, the settlement had six buildings and 30 residents and the town was renamed "Marthasville".[12] The Chief Engineer of the Georgia Railroad, J. Edgar Thomson, suggested that the area be renamed "Atlantica-Pacifica" after the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which was quickly shortened to "Atlanta".[12] The residents approved, and the town was incorporated as Atlanta on December 29, 1847.[13] By 1854, another railroad connected Atlanta to LaGrange, and the town grew to 9,554 by 1860.[14][15]

During the American Civil War, Atlanta served as an important railroad and military supply hub. In 1864, the city became the target of a major Union invasion. The area now covered by Atlanta was the scene of several battles, including the Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Atlanta, and the Battle of Ezra Church. On September 1, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuated Atlanta after a four-month siege mounted by Union General William T. Sherman and ordered all public buildings and possible Confederate assets destroyed. The next day, Mayor James Calhoun surrendered the city, and on September 7 Sherman ordered the civilian population to evacuate. He then ordered Atlanta burned to the ground on November 11 in preparation for his march south, though he spared the city's churches and hospitals.[16]

The rebuilding of the city was gradual. From 1867 until 1888, U.S. Army soldiers occupied McPherson Barracks in southwest Atlanta to ensure Reconstruction era reforms. To help the newly freed slaves, the Freedmen's Bureau worked in tandem with a number of freedmen's aid organizations, especially the American Missionary Association. In 1868, Atlanta became the fifth city to serve as the state capital.[17] The Confederate Soldiers' Home was built to house disabled and elderly Georgia veterans from 1901 to 1941.[18] Henry W. Grady, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, promoted the city to investors as a city of the "New South", one built on a modern economy, less reliant on agriculture. However, as Atlanta grew, ethnic and racial tensions mounted. The Atlanta Race Riot of 1906 left at least 27 dead[19] and over 70 injured.

On December 15, 1939, Atlanta hosted the premiere of Gone with the Wind, the movie based on Atlanta-born Margaret Mitchell's best-selling novel of the same name. Stars Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland and legendary producer David O. Selznick attended the gala, which was held at Loew's Grand Theatre, now destroyed. Leslie Howard had returned to England for the war.[20] The reception was held at the Georgian Terrace Hotel, which is still standing.

During World War II, manufacturing such as the Bell Aircraft factory in the suburb of Marietta helped boost the city's population and economy. Shortly after the war, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was founded in Atlanta.[21]

In the wake of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which helped usher in the Civil Rights Movement, racial tensions in Atlanta began to express themselves in acts of violence. On October 12, 1958, a Reform Jewish temple on Peachtree Street was bombed; the synagogue's rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, was an outspoken advocate of integration.[22] A group of anti-Semitic white supremacists calling themselves the "Confederate Underground" claimed responsibility.

In the 1960s, Atlanta was a major organizing center of the Civil Rights Movement, as Dr. Martin Luther King and students from Atlanta's historically black colleges and universities played major roles in the movement's leadership. Two of the most important civil rights organizations, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had their national headquarters in Atlanta. Despite some racial protests during the Civil Rights era, Atlanta's political and business leaders labored to foster Atlanta's image as "the city too busy to hate". In 1961, Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. became one of the few Southern white mayors to support desegregation of his city's public schools.[23]

African-American Atlantans demonstrated growing political influence with election of the first African-American mayor in 1973. They became a majority in the city during the late 20th century but suburbanization, rising prices, a booming economy and new migrants have decreased their percentage in the city from a high of 69 percent in 1980 to about 54 percent in 2004. The addition of new immigrants such as Latinos and Asians is also altering city demographics, along with an influx of white residents.[24]

In 1990, Atlanta was selected as the site for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Following the announcement, Atlanta undertook several major construction projects to improve the city's parks, sports facilities, and transportation. Atlanta became the third American city to host the Summer Olympics. The games themselves were marred by numerous organizational inefficiencies, as well as the Centennial Olympic Park bombing.[25]

Contemporary Atlanta is sometimes considered to be an archetype for cities experiencing rapid growth and urban sprawl.[26][27] Unlike most major cities, metropolitan Atlanta does not have any natural boundaries, such as an ocean, lakes, or mountains, that might constrain growth.

The city has recently been commended by bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency for its eco-friendly policies.[28] In 2009, Atlanta's Virginia-Highland became the first carbon-neutral zone in the United States. Verus Carbon Neutral developed the partnership that links 17 merchants of the historic Corner Virginia-Highland shopping and dining neighborhood retail district, through the Chicago Climate Exchange, to directly fund the Valley Wood Carbon Sequestration Project (thousands of acres of forest in rural Georgia).

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The Gotha 146 was a fast reconnaissance aircraft that was used throughout WWII by the German Luftwaffe, and one of the results of a mutual technology exchange program with Japan. The Go 146 was actually a license-built, but modified variant of the excellent Mitsubishi Ki-46. The latter type's career started in late 1937, when the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force issued a specification to Mitsubishi for a long-range strategic reconnaissance aircraft to replace the Mitsubishi Ki-15. The specification demanded an endurance of six hours and sufficient speed to evade interception by any fighter in existence or development at that time, but otherwise did not constrain the design by a team led by Tomio Kubo.

 

The resulting design was a twin-engine, low-winged monoplane with a retractable tailwheel undercarriage. It had a small diameter oval fuselage with the pilot and observer situated in individual cockpits separated by a large fuel tank. The engines, two Mitsubishi Ha-26 radials, were housed in close-fitting cowlings to reduce drag and improve pilot view.

 

The first prototype aircraft, flew in November 1939 from the Mitsubishi factory at Kakamigahara, Gifu. Tests showed that the Ki-46 was underpowered and slower than required, only reaching 540 km/h (336 mph) rather than the specified 600 km/h (373 mph), but, otherwise, the aircraft tests were successful. As the type was still faster than the Army's latest fighter, the Nakajima Ki-43, as well as the Navy's new A6M2, an initial production batch was ordered. To solve the performance problems, Mitsubishi switched to Ha-102 engines, which were Ha-26s fitted with a two-stage supercharger, while increasing fuel capacity and reducing empty weight. This became the Ki-46-II, and this type was also demonstrated to German officials who immediately noticed its potential.

 

Knowing that the German Luftwaffe lacked this specialized, fast type of aircraft (German reconnaissance aircraft of that time were either slow artillery observation types, or variants of bombers or heavy fighters), the RLM immediately asked for a batch of airframe kits to adapt it to the European theatre and test its capabilities. Seven engine-less airframe kits were delivered to Germany in early 1940. In the meantime, with the help of blueprints and other documentations, an alternative engine installation had been devised: the “Germanized” aircraft was to be powered by liquid-cooled DB 601 engines, which delivered more power than the Ha-102 and offered improved aerodynamics, despite the necessity to add radiators under the outer wings. Many stock parts from the contemporary Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter were incorporated, so that the development time was very short, and the commonality of mechanical parts eased logistics and maintenance.

 

In May 1940 the first batch of the Gotha 146 A-0 pre-production aircraft (which had officially been described as a further development of a four seat, twin-engine transport aircraft from the 1930s to cloud its origins and mission) was ready. They were immediately transferred to the Western Front for field tests, and the specialized Go 146 became quickly popular among its crews. It was fast, agile and easy to fly – almost on par with state-of-the-art fighters like the Bf 109. During the test phase in summer 1940 the Go 146 proved to be slightly faster than its Japanese Ki-46 ancestor, and with a top speed of more than 375 mph (600 km/h) it was hard to intercept by any British or French fighter of the time. The results were so convincing that the type was ordered into serial production, and from October 1940 on the Go 146 A-1 was produced in limited numbers at the Gothaer Waggonfabrik in Thuringia. Even though production only ran at small scale, it was continuous, and the Go 146 was steadily developed further, including the change of the nose section that came with the Ki-46-III, stronger engines and an improved defensive armament.

 

This evolution led to the Go 146 B, which had the traditional stepped windshield replaced with a smooth, curved, glazed panel extended over the pilot's seat. It not only gave a more aerodynamic nose profile, the re-shaped nose also offered room for an extra fuel tank. The space between the two crewmen, connected with a crawl tunnel, held another fuel tank, the radio equipment (a Sprechfunkgerät FuG 16 ZY and a FuG 25a „Erstling“ IFF beacon), as well as a compartment for up to three cameras with several ventral windows, which could take Rb (“Reihenbildner” = serial picture device) 20/30, 50/30 and 75/30 devices that could be mounted in different combinations and angles as needed.

Power came now from a pair of new Daimler-Benz DB 603A liquid-cooled piston engines, which offered 1,290 kW (1,750 hp) each for take-off. Since the engine mounts had to be re-designed for the DB603s (the Go 146 A had used adapters to attach its shorter DB 601s to the original Ha-102 radials’ hardpoints), German engineers used the opportunity to redesign the complete engine nacelles. As a result, their diameter and “wet” surface was reduced, so much that the landing gear had to be modified, too. It now rotated 90° upon retraction, so that the main wheels were lying in shallow wells within the wing structure. Beyond better aerodynamics, structural measures saved almost 250 kg (550 lb).

 

Instead of the Go 146 A’s single 7.92 mm (.312 in) MG 17 machine gun in the observer's cabin, facing rearwards, the defensive armament was improved and consisted of a pair of 13 mm (0.51 in) MG 131 machine guns, firing rearward from FDSL 131/1B remotely-operated barbettes, one per side. This rather complex installation had become possible (and in part necessary) due to a center of gravity shift from the modified engines and their empennage. The weapons were aimed by the rear crewman through a periscope that covered both the upper and lower rear hemisphere. The control unit had a rotating transverse crossbar with a sideways-pivoting handgun-style grip and trigger at its center, "forked" at its forward pivoting end to fit around the crossbar, with the upper fork extended beyond the rotating crossbar to mount the gunsight. This unique aiming and control scheme rotated the crossbar axially, when the handgrip was elevated or depressed, to aim the guns vertically by rotating both turrets together, and a sideways movement of the handgrip would pivot either one of the guns outwards from the fuselage-mounted turrets for diagonal firing. The guns were electrically fired, and an electrical contact breaker prevented the gunner from shooting off the aircraft’s tailplane. When not in use, the guns would return to a neutral position that would allow to fire directly backwards with both guns.

Furthermore, plumbed hardpoints were added to the inner wings, just inside of the engines. These could carry a 300 l drop tank each for an extended range and loiter time. Single bombs of up to 250 kg or racks with four 50 kg bombs each were theoretically possible too, but the aircraft lacked any bomb aiming support. Crew protection was slightly improved, too, but the airframe was overall kept as light as possible. Despite these efforts, however, MTOW rose to 6,500 kg (14,317 lb), but this was still relatively light in comparison with the similar contemporary Me 410 multi-purpose aircraft, which weighed more than 9 tons and was powered by similar engines. Consequently, and thanks to its clean lines, the G 146 B had a top speed of almost 700 km/h (434 mph) at ideal altitude and the aircraft retained its excellent handling, even though its structure was rather fragile and could not take much stress and punishment.

 

Two versions of the Go 146 B were produced, steadily but only at a low rate because the aircraft received, due to its highly specialized role and limited offensive capabilities, only a low priority. The B-1 was the main variant and kept the A version’s standard wing, a total of 54 were produced between 1943 and 1945. Additionally, the B-2 was produced between late 1943 and early 1944 as a dedicated high altitude photo reconnaissance aircraft. This sub-variant had an extended wingspan of 16.00 m (52 ft 5 in) instead of the standard 14.70 m (48 ft 2¾ in) and an improved oxygen system, even though the cabin was not pressurized. Its maximum service ceiling was almost 12.000 m (39.305 ft), with a maximum speed of 415 mph (668 km/h), a cruise speed of 250 mph (400 km/h) and a range of 3,200 km (1,987 nmi). Only twelve of these machines were produced and put into service, primarily for flights over Southern Great Britain. When the Arado Ar 234 became available from September 1944 on, though, this new, jet-powered type immediately replaced the Go 146 B-2 because it offered even better performance. Therefore, the B-3, a planned version with a fully pressurized cabin and an even bigger wingspan of 19.00 m, never left the drawing board.

 

Furthermore, the RLM had idea to convert the fast Go 146 into a fighter amd even a night fighter in mid-1944 as the “C” series. But these plans were not executed because the light airframe could hardly be adapted to heavy weapons or equipment like a radar set, and it was unsuited for vigorous dogfighting. The type’s poor climbing rate made it ineffective as an interceptor, too. There were, nevertheless, tests with at least one Go 146 B-1 that carried four Werfer-Granate 21 rocket launchers under the outer wings, as a fast bomber interceptor esp. against the high-flying B-29, which was expected to appear over continental Europe soon. But this kind of weaponry never reached frontline units and the Go 146 was never operated as a fighter of any kind.

There were, however, other uses: in 1944 the Go 146 was enlisted as a fast liaison aircraft for the RLM (Ministry of Aviation) in Berlin. Stripped off of any armament and cameras and outfitted with two passenger seats in the rear cabin, at least one Go 146 B (with the confirmed registration “ST+ZA”, others in similar configuration may have existed, too) was operated by the RLM’s Zentralabteilung (central command) from Tempelhof airfield for top brass officials between Luftwaffe locations on German terrain. ST+ZA’s fate after January 1945 is uncertain, though.

  

Specifications:

Crew: two (pilot and observer)

Length: 11.00 m (36 ft 1 in)

Wingspan: 14.70 m (48 ft 2¾ in)

Height: 3.88 m (12 ft 8¾ in)

Wing area: 32.0 m² (344 ft²)

Empty weight: 3,830 kg (8,436 lb)

Loaded weight: 5,661 kg (12,480 lb)

Max. takeoff weight: 6,500 kg (14,317 lb)

 

Powerplant:

2× Daimler-Benz DB 603A V-12 inverted liquid-cooled piston engines, rated at:

- 1,290 kW (1,750 hp) each for take-off

- 1,360 kW (1,850 PS) at 2,100 m (6,890 ft)

- 1,195 kW (1,625 PS) at 5,700 m (18,700 ft)

- 1,162 kW (1580 PS) combat power at 2500 rpm at sea level

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 695 km/h (377 knots, 430 mph) at 5,800 m (19,000 ft)

Cruise speed: 450 km/h (245 knots, 280 mph)

Range: 2,800 km (1,522 nmi, 1,740 mi) with internal fuel

Service ceiling: 11,250 m (36,850 ft)

Wing loading: 157.8 kg/m² (32.3 lb/ft²)

Climb rate: 14.7 m/sec (2,900 feet per minute)

Climb to 8,000 m (26,250 ft): 15 min 20 sec

 

Armament:

2× 13 mm (0.51 in) defensive MG 131 machine guns with 500 RPG,

each firing rearward from FDSL 131/1B remote-operated turret, one per side

2× underwing hardpoints under the inner wings for 250 kg (550 lb) each,

typically occupied by 300 l drop tanks

  

The kit and its assembly:

This is a déjà vu build: I already did a “Germanized” Ki-46 in 2015, it was an Airfix Ki-46-II outfitted with DB 601s from a Bf 110 as a pre-series Gotha Go 146 A-0, an aircraft that (naturally) never existed but appeared plausible, since German military hardware including aircraft had been evaluated by Japanese forces. And why should this exchange not have worked the other way around, too? However, as I built this modified Dinah for the first time, I already thought that the basic idea had more potential than just one model, and the streamlined Ki-46-III just lent itself for an updated, later version.

 

This B-2 variant of the Go 146 was based on the LS Models/ARII Ki-46-III. Like the Airfix kit (its molds are from 1965, and that’s just what the kit feels, looks and builds like…), it’s a rather vintage offering, but it is in many aspects markedly ahead, with fine surfaces, recessed details, 3D engines and clear parts that actually fit into their intended places. The LS Models kit’s 10 years less of age are recognizable, and there are three boxings around with different versions of the aircraft (a Ki-46-II, a -III and a trainer with a raised tutor cockpit), differing in small extra sprues for the respective fuselage parts, but they all share a common sprue with the clear parts for all three versions.

 

The Ki-46-III kit was taken OOB, with just some minor mods. The most obvious change concerns the engines: they were transplanted from a Bilek Me 210, together with the underwing radiators outside of the nacelles. The Me 210, even though it’s from 1997, is a rather mediocre model with some dubious solutions, therefore earmarked for a conversion and ready to donor some body parts… The engine switch was insofar easy because the Ki-46 kit comes with completely separate parts for the engines and their fairings which also contain the main landing gear wells.

Because of this “clean” basis I decided to cut the nacelles out from the Me 210 and attach them to the Ki-46 wings, so that the DB 603 engines would have perfect attachment points. While this was a bigger overall surgery stunt than on the earlier Airfix Dinah, this was easier than expected and resulted in a cleaner solution that also underlines the Ki-46’s clean and slender shape. The modified nacelles were much smaller than the Dinah’s, though. The main wheels were replaced with slightly smaller and narrower ones from the scrap box.

 

Inside of the cockpit, I implanted a dashboard. In the rear cabin the seat was reversed and moved further forward. In the cabin’s rear a scratched targeting scope/weapon control column for the FDSL 131 installation was added. Since I left the single-part canopies (which are quite thick but very clear) closed I outfitted the model with a crew. The Ki-46 III kit comes with a pair of figures, but they are very small (H0 scale, at best!) and look goofy, so that I exchanged them with Matchbox WWII pilots, which had their legs bent and their bottoms cut away to make them fit into the tight fuselage and under the canopies.

 

Unfortunately, the Me 210 kit had already donated its machine gun barbettes (they had gone onto an upgraded Heinkel He 115 floatplane), so that I scratched them for the Go 146. WWII bombs became the fairings, some leftover landing gear struts were used as gun barrels, and round styrene bases were used as mounts that also lift the fairings slightly off the hull. The barbettes as such look a little superficial on the slender Dinah, but they are a nice, typically German detail, über-complicated for this type of fast aircraft that probably would have more benefited from leaving them away altogether to save weight and drag.

The (typically German) 300 l drop tanks come from Hobby Boss Bf 109s and each received four short attachment struts, made from styrene profile material, so that they could be stuck under the inner wings.

  

Painting and markings:

This was more complicated than expected. I wanted to apply a plausible, late German WWII livery with typical colors, but finding something that would be suited for high-altitude operations and not copy anything I had already done turned out to be challenging.

 

The paint scheme would be very light, with only low-contrast camouflage added on top. Therefore, the basis became an overall coat with RLM 76 (I used Tamiya XF-23, Light Blue, which is an excellent option). Inspired by He 177 bombers I found in literature, large blotches of a rather obscure and uncommon tone, RLM 77 “Hellgrau” were added to the flanks of fuselage, fin and engine nacelles. RLM 77 is/was a very light grey, and it was primarily used for markings like code letters on night fighters and not for camouflage. AFAIK it would later become the RAL 7035 (Lichtgrau) tone that still exists today. Humbrol 196 would have been an authentic option, but to keep the contrast to the underlying RLM 76 low I rather used XF-19 (Sky Grey) and extended the blotches under the fuselage and the nacelles, for a semi-wraparound scheme.

 

Then came the upper surfaces, everything was painted with brushes and without masks, with an intentional uneven finish. The wings and stabilizers were to receive a slightly darker camouflage in the form of RLM 02 and 75 splotches (with Tamiya XF-22 and XF-XX as proxies) over the uniform RLM 76 base, so that the aircraft’s outlines would be broken up from above. However, after first tests I found this did not look convincing, the RLM 76 was very prominent and bluish, so that I rather gave the upper wings and the spine a semi-translucent but continuous coat of paint, with the underlying RLM 76 just showing through here and there – much better. At this stage I added the decals (see below), but now found the upper surfaces to look too uniform and somewhat dark, so that, as a final measure, I added a meander pattern with RLM 77 (again XF-19) to the wings. This not only looked good and very “German”, it lightened the cammo and also helped to break the aircraft’s lines up. Some light panel shading to the uniform undersides, black ink and grinded graphite were used for weathering, but the effects are very soft.

 

Interior surfaces (cockpit and landing gear wells) became late-war style RAL 7021 Schwarzgrau (Humbrol 67), the landing gear struts were painted in RLM 02, this time Revell 45 was used. The propeller blades were painted in a very dark mix of green and black, the spinners became black with simple white spirals – the only detail with a high contrast on this aircraft.

 

The markings of this aircraft are minimal. Balkenkreuz markings only consisting of outlines were used, another typical late-war practice and for a low-visibility look/effect. They were taken from an Academy Fw 190 D. On the fuselage, the gun barbettes caused some headaches, because they take up a lot of space and made the application of a standard Luftwaffe code almost impossible. Consequently, the fuselage Balkenkreuze were placed ahead of the barbettes, partly disrupted by the observer’s lower side windows, while the tactical code became separated by the guns. At starboard the code even had to be reversed - not correct, but a pragmatic solution.

The model/aircraft belongs to a fictional unit, its code “P3” in front of the fuselage Balkenkreuz has no real-world reference and was executed in small letters, a typical late WWII measure. This part of the code was done with small, black 2 mm letters. A fictional unit badge, depicting a running greyhound, was added under the cockpit. It actually belongs to a German tank unit.

The “KN” part of the code, including the Ks on the nose, came from an Airfix Ju 87 B sheet. As an aircraft belonging to the 5th squadron within the unit’s 2nd group, the 4th letter in the code became “N”, while the 3rd letter “K” denotes the individual aircraft. The color code associated with a 5th squadron was red, incorporated on the aircraft as a thin red outline around the individual aircraft letter (another late-war low-contrast measure). To provide a little visual excitement, small red Ks were added to the nose, too, to make thew aircraft easy to identify when parked at the flight line.

Since this aircraft would operate over the Western front from German home ground, no further ID/theatre markings like fuselage or wing bands or wingtips in yellow or white, etc. were added. This, together with the lack of visible red as squadron code, results in a rather dry look, but that’s intentional.

After some exhaust and oil stains with graphite and Tamiya “Smoke”, a coat of acrylic matt varnish finally sealed the model and a wire antenna, made from heated sprue material, was added.

  

Well, an exotic what-if idea, but I really like how this conversion turned out, even though the livery evolved in a different way from what I had initially in mind. The Ki-46 was already an elegant aircraft, especially the Ki-46-III with its teardrop-shaped nose section. But, with the smaller, streamlined inline engines instead of the radials, this iteration looks even better and faster. It reminds a little of the D.H. Hornet? The gun barbettes are a nice “German” detail, and the makeshift high-altitude paint scheme adds to the obscure impression of the model. A really nice sister ship for the Go 146 A-0 build from 2015.

#90 astrodeep200407aab10ada.png 3.68 MB 1244X1243 HUDF center top left

 

This image is 6.3x6.3 arc-seconds, 3.965% of the area of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field,

 

which is 186 arc-seconds wide and high = 3.1 arc-minutes

 

= 1/10 width of the Full Moon or Sun, about 0.5 degrees,

 

so the HUDF is about 1% of the area of the square that holds the Full Moon or Sun.

  

Rich Murray,

MA Boston University Graduate School 1967 psychology,

BS MIT 1964 history and physics,

254-A Donax Avenue, Imperial Beach, CA 91932-1918,

rmforall@gmail.com,

505-819-7388 cell,

619-623-3468 home,

rmforall.blogspot.com

 

short introduction re viewing lovely subtle earliest structures in HUDF: AstroDeep, Rich Murray 2009.02.23

 

I've found since 2005 myriad ubiquitous bright blue sources, always on a darker fractal 3D web, along with a variety of sizes of irregular early galaxies, in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, simply by increasing the gamma from 1.00 to 2.00 and saturating the colors, while minimizing the green band to simplify the complex overlays of complex fractal structures.

 

Dozens of these images, covering the entire HUDF in eight ~20 MB segments, are available for viewing at many scales [ To change the size of images on Windows PCs, use Control - and + ] on www.Flickr.com at the "rmforall" photostream. Try #86 for the central 16% of the HUDF.

 

ubiquitous bright blue 1-12 pixel sources on darker 3D fractal web in five 2007.09.06 IR and visible light HUDF images, Nor Pirzkal, Sangeeta Malhotra, James E Rhoads, Chun Xu, -- might be clusters of earliest hypernovae in recent cosmological simulations: Rich Murray 2008.08.17 2009.01.20

rmforall.blogspot.com/2008/08/ubiquitous-bright-blue-1-12...

tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/25

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/85

 

www.flickr.com/photos/rmforall/1349101458/in/photostream/

 

The 5 closeups are about 2.2x2.2 arc-seconds wide and high, about 70x70 pixels.

The HUDF is 315x315 arc-seconds, with N at top and E at left.

Each side has 10,500x10,500 pixels at 0.03 arc-second per pixel.

 

Click on All Sizes and select Original to view the highest resolution image of 3022x2496 pixels, which can be also be conveniently seen directly at their Zoomable image:

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/zoomable/heic0714a.html

 

Notable in the deep background of the five closeups are ubiquitous bright blue sources, presumably extremely hot ultraviolet before redshifting, 1 to a dozen or so pixels, as single or short lines of spots, and a few irregular tiny blobs, probably, as predicted in many recent simulations, the earliest massive, short-lived hypernovae, GRBs with jets at various angles to our line of sight, expanding bubbles, earliest molecular and dust clouds with light echoes and bursts of star formation, and first small dwarf galaxies, always associated with a subtle darker 3D random fractal mesh of filaments of H and He atomic gases.

 

As a scientific layman, I am grateful for specific cogent, civil feedback, based on the details readily visible in images in the public domain.

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/heic0714a.html

 

Hubble and Spitzer Uncover Smallest Galaxy Building Blocks

 

Rich Murray, MA Room For All rmforall@comcast.net 505-501-2298

1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/messages

groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/messages

www.sfcomplex.org Santa Fe Complex

 

You are welcome to visit me and share your comments as I share these images at home on a 4X8 foot screen -- no fee.

 

Anyone may view and download for free 91 images, presenting the HUDF in eight 20 MB pieces at rmforall at www.FlickR.com -- #86 is about 20% of the HUDF in their red and blue colors, as leaving out the green greatly simplifies interpreting the overlapping layers of transparent fractal webs of gas with a wide range of sizes of rather distant sources, beyond z = 5.

_____________________________________________________________

  

astrodeep200407aab10ada.png 3.10 MB flickr.com rmforall #90 astrodeep200407aab10ada.png 3.68 MB 1244X1243 px HUDF center top left: Lillian J Kelly: Rich Murray 2008.12.30

 

The attachment is my image from my hard drive:

astrodeep200407aab10ada.png

 

www.flickr.com

 

www.flickr.com/photos/rmforall/3103426063/

#90 astrodeep200407aab10ada.png 3.68 MB 1244X1243 px HUDF center top left

 

Click on All Sizes to see and download the Original

or find it directly at

farm4.static.flickr.com/3161/3103426063_df229d2202_o.png

  

In Windows Vista, use CTRL +/= over and over to magnify images,

and CRTL _/- to reduce.

  

You can also go to Control Panel to Ease of Access

to Ease of Access Center

to Optimize visual display

to turn on Magnifier,

which creates a box of any size and location that magnifies

from 1 to 16 times in width and height,

whatever area the cursor is pointed at on any image on the screen.

You can even make "stereo" pairs side by side,

by setting Magnifier to 1X,

and putting its box to the left or right half of the screen,

and using the cursor to adjust

until the two images are matching and side by side.

Then if you can, gaze with crossed eyes at the two images

to get a third image in between,

which may well look 3D and have much more detail.

  

This image is 6.3x6.3 arc-seconds, 3.965% of the area of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field,

 

which is 186 arc-seconds wide and high = 3.1 arc-minutes

 

= 1/10 width of the Full Moon or Sun, about 0.5 degrees,

 

so the HUDF is about 1% of the area of the square that holds the Full Moon or Sun,

 

while the image is 4% of 1/1,000 of the area of the HUDF,

 

so the image is about 4/100,000 of the area of the square that holds the Full Moon or Sun.

 

The image is 6.3 are-seconds wide and high,

 

while the pixels are 0.03 arc-seconds wide in the original HUDF.

 

The background of many small blue spots are about 1-10 pixels in area.

 

I have used a simple, low-cost program, MGI PhotoSuite 4.0 to process these images:

 

double the Gamma to 2.00,

raise the color saturation,

shift colors a bit to accentuate the reds,

remove most of the Green band,

so the image is mostly made of Blue (coding for visible blue),

with Red codes for the invisible infrared just longer in wavelength than visible red.

 

Mixed Blue and Red make green, yellow, orange, red, and white.

 

However these colors are downshifted in frequency (lengthened in wavelength)

more and more the more they are distant in space (light travel time from us):

 

The "Little Feller", like the figure "8" in the top center

to the right of the red galaxy with a red swirl on the right,

has been measured to be at redshift distance z = 4.88,

so its light is changed by a factor of 4.88 --

its apparent reds, oranges, and yellows represent radiation in the hot ultraviolet,

and its age from us is about 13 billion years,

about a billion years after the Big Bang,

13.7 billion = 13,700 million years ago.

The Sun and solar system are 4.6 billion = 4,600 million years ago.

 

The myriad tiny background blue spots,

along with some green ones,

always on a dark 3D fractal mesh,

are probably the first stars,

made of pure hydrogen and helium,

about 100-100 solar masses in size,

extremely hot and short-lived,

exploding as hypernovae after 1-2 million years,

often with intense bipolar jets,

often leaving relic neutron stars and black holes,

flinging new elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen into space to become the substance of later generations of stars,

which are closer to us in space (nearer in time), smaller, more numerous, cooler, longer-lived,

collecting together by gravity to make clouds, clusters, dwarf galaxies, clump cluster galaxies, irregular galaxies, and mature galaxies,

flat slowly rotating spirals and rounded ellipticals,

which often collide, especially at first

before the constant expansion of space-time separated them more and more --

the expansion of space-time itself that originated from a minute region in a source reality

that had at least 10 dimensions of space and one of time -- the Big Bang.

 

So, we see far-away early gatherings of hot blue and green objects,

and closer (nearer to us in time) more numerous gatherings of cooler red objects,

which all seem exist as a 3D fractal network of twisted tubes,

rather transparent, as there was little dust in early time to darken light.

 

It is well known that for every mass of ordinary matter, gas, dust, stars,

there is about 6 times more mass of completely invisible dark matter,

which pulls itself together by gravity into a 3D fractal network, making

the scaffold that ordinary matter collects within.

Dark matter surrounds glalaxies and superclusters of galaxies,

bending light gently by gravity,

so that the dark matter appears as subtle transparent bubbles

against the complex background of deeper structures.

 

Additionally the cosmic zoo may include galaxy-wide strings of

condensed space-time geometry, formed during the Big Bang,

that are massive enough to bend light

and make double twin images of objects far behind them from us.

  

ubiquitous bright blue 1-12 pixel sources on darker 3D fractal web in five 2007.09.06 IR and visible light HUDF images, Nor Pirzkal, Sangeeta Malhotra, James E Rhoads, Chun Xu, -- might be clusters of earliest hypernovae in recent cosmological simulations: Rich Murray 2008.08.17

rmforall.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.htm

Sunday, August 17, 2008

groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/25

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/85

 

www.flickr.com/photos/rmforall/1349101458/in/photostream/

 

The 5 closeups are about 2.2x2.2 arc-seconds wide and high, about 70x70 pixels.

The HUDF is 315x315 arc-seconds, with N at top and E at left.

Each side has 10,500x10,500 pixels at 0.03 arc-second per pixel.

 

Click on All Sizes and select Original to view the highest resolution image of

3022x2496 pixels, which can be also be conveniently seen directly at their

Zoomable image:

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/zoomable/heic0714a.html

 

Notable in the deep background of the five closeups are ubiquitous bright blue

sources, presumably extremely hot ultraviolet before redshifting,

1 to a dozen or so pixels,

as single or short lines of spots, and a few irregular tiny blobs,

probably, as predicted in many recent simulations, the earliest massive,

short-lived hypernovae, GRBs with jets at various angles to our line of sight,

expanding bubbles, earliest molecular and dust clouds with light echoes and

bursts of star formation, and first small dwarf galaxies, always associated with

a subtle darker 3D random fractal mesh of filaments of H and He atomic gases.

 

As a scientific layman, I am grateful for specific cogent, civil feedback, based

on the details readily visible in images in the public domain.

  

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/heic0714a.html

 

Hubble and Spitzer Uncover Smallest Galaxy Building Blocks

 

In this image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, several objects are identified

as the faintest, most compact galaxies ever observed in the distant

Universe.

They are so far away that we see them as they looked less than one billion

years after the Big Bang.

Blazing with the brilliance of millions of stars, each of the newly

discovered galaxies is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than our Milky

Way Galaxy.

 

The bottom row of pictures shows several of these clumps (distance expressed

in redshift value).

Three of the galaxies appear to be slightly disrupted.

Rather than being shaped like rounded blobs, they appear stretched into

tadpole-like shapes.

This is a sign that they may be interacting and merging with neighboring

galaxies to form larger structures.

 

The detection required joint observations between Hubble and NASA's Spitzer

Space Telescope.

Blue light seen by Hubble shows the presence of young stars.

The absence of red light from Spitzer observations conclusively shows that

these are truly young galaxies without an earlier generation of stars.

 

Credit: NASA, ESA, and N. Pirzkal (European Space Agency/STScI)

 

Id: heic0714a

Object: HUDF, UDF, Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Type: Cosmology

Instrument: ACS

Width: 2750

Height: 3312

Downloads

Images

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/original/heic0714a.tif

Fullsize Original 17.085 MB

 

www.alternatiff.com/

view with free software AlternaTIFF

 

alternatiff-1_8_4.exe for Firefox browser

  

Large JPEG

3,422 KB

 

Screensize JPEG

387 KB

 

www.spacetelescope.org/images/html/zoomable/heic0714a.html

Zoomable

 

Copyright-free material (more info).

  

www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMCGRMPQ5F_index_1.html

 

hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/31

 

hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/31/image/

 

www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

 

www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0714.html

 

www.spacetelescope.org/news/text/heic0714.txt

 

HEIC0714: EMBARGOED UNTIL 18:00 (CEST)/12:00 PM EDT 06 September, 2007

www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0714.html

 

News release:

Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes find "Lego-block" galaxies in early

Universe

 

06-September 2007 The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA

Spitzer Space Telescope have joined forces to discover nine of the

smallest, faintest, most compact galaxies ever observed in the distant

Universe. Blazing with the brilliance of millions of stars, each of the

newly discovered galaxies is a hundred to a thousand times smaller than

our Milky Way Galaxy.

 

The conventional model for galaxy evolution predicts that small galaxies

in the early Universe evolved into the massive galaxies of today by

coalescing. Nine Lego-like "building block" galaxies initially detected

by Hubble likely contributed to the construction of the Universe as we

know it. "These are among the lowest mass galaxies ever directly

observed in the early Universe" says Nor Pirzkal of the European Space

Agency/STScI.

 

Pirzkal was surprised to find that the galaxies' estimated masses were

so small. Hubble's cousin observatory, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope

was called upon to make precise determinations of their masses. The

Spitzer observations confirmed that these galaxies are some of the

smallest building blocks of the Universe.

 

These young galaxies offer important new insights into the Universe's

formative years, just one billion years after the Big Bang. Hubble

detected sapphire blue stars residing within the nine pristine galaxies.

The youthful stars are just a few million years old and are in the

process of turning Big Bang elements (hydrogen and helium) into heavier

elements. The stars have probably not yet begun to pollute the

surrounding space with elemental products forged within their cores.

 

"While blue light seen by Hubble shows the presence of young stars, it

is the absence of infrared light in the sensitive Spitzer images that

was conclusive in showing that these are truly young galaxies without an

earlier generation of stars," says Sangeeta Malhotra of Arizona State

University in Tempe, USA, one of the investigators.

 

The galaxies were first identified by James Rhoads of Arizona State

University, USA, and Chun Xu of the Shanghai Institute of Technical

Physics in Shanghai, China. Three of the galaxies appear to be slightly

disrupted -- rather than being shaped like rounded blobs, they appear

stretched into tadpole-like shapes. This is a sign that they may be

interacting and merging with neighbouring galaxies to form larger,

cohesive structures.

 

The galaxies were observed in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) with

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Near Infrared Camera and

Multi-Object Spectrometer as well as Spitzer's Infrared Array Camera and

the European Southern Observatory's Infrared Spectrometer and Array

Camera. Seeing and analysing such small galaxies at such a great

distance is at the very limit of the capabilities of the most powerful

telescopes. Images taken through different colour filters with the ACS

were supplemented with exposures taken through a so-called grism which

spreads the different colours emitted by the galaxies into short

"trails". The analysis of these trails allows the detection of emission

from glowing hydrogen gas, giving both the distance and an estimate of

the rate of star formation. These "grism spectra" -- taken with Hubble

and analysed with software developed at the Space Telescope-European

Coordinating Facility in Munich, Germany -- can be obtained for objects

that are significantly fainter than can be studied spectroscopically

with any other current telescope.

 

# # #

 

Notes for editors

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation

between ESA and NASA.

 

Pirzkal's main collaborators were Malhotra, Rhoads, Xu, and the GRism

ACS Program for Extragalactic Science (GRAPES) team.

 

Image credit: NASA, ESA and N. Pirzkal (European Space Agency/STScI)

 

If you wish to no longer receive these News and Photo Releases, please

send an email to distribution@spacetelescope.org with your name.

 

For more information, please contact:

Nor Pirzkal ;

European Space Agency/Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA

Tel: 410-338-4879

 

Lars Lindberg Christensen ;

Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany

Tel: +49-(0)89-3200-6306

Cellular: +49-(0)173-3872-621

 

Ray Villard ;

Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA

Tel: +1-410-338-4514

 

Whitney Clavin

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, USA

Tel: +1-818-354-4673

  

AST HUDF Spitzer IR 9 galaxies z 4-5.7, N Pirzdal, S Malhotra, JE Rhoads, C Xu,

2007.05.01 28p

 

www.spacetelescope.org/news/science_paper/0612513.pdf

  

arXiv:astro-ph/0612513v2 1 May 2007

Optical to mid-IR observations of Lyman-a galaxies at z about 5 in the HUDF: a

young and low mass population

N. Pirzkal 1,2,

S. Malhotra 3,

J. E. Rhoads 3,

C. Xu 4

 

ABSTRACT

 

High redshift galaxies selected on the basis of their strong Lyman-a emission

tend to be young ages and small physical sizes.

 

We show this by analyzing the spectral energy distribution (SED) of 9 Lyman-a

emitting (LAE) galaxies at 4.0 < z < 5.7 in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF).

 

Rest-frame UV to optical 700A < wavelength < 7500A luminosities, or upper

limits, are used to constrain old stellar populations.

 

We derive best fit, as well as maximally massive and maximally old, properties

of all 9 objects.

 

We show that these faint and distant objects are all very young, being most

likely only a few millions years old, and not massive, the mass in stars being

about 10E6 to 10E8 M sun.

 

Deep Spitzer Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) observations of these objects,

even in cases where objects were not detected,

were crucial in constraining the masses of these objects.

 

The space density of these objects, about 1.25 x 10E-4 per cubic Mpc is

comparable to previously reported space density of LAEs at moderate to high

redshifts.

 

These Lyman-a galaxies show modest star formation rates of about 8 M sun per

year, which is nevertheless strong enough to have allowed these galaxies to

assemble their stellar mass in less than a few 10E6 years.

 

These sources appear to have small physical sizes, usually smaller than 1 Kpc,

and are also rather concentrated.

 

They are likely to be some of the least massive and youngest high redshift galaxies observed to date.

 

Subject headings: galaxies: evolution, galaxies: high redshift, galaxies:

formation, galaxies: structure, surveys, cosmology

 

1 Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

2 Affiliated with the Space Science Telescope Division of the European Space

Agency, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands

3 School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

4 Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, 500 Yutian Road, Shanghai, P.R. China 200083

____________________________________________________________

  

See similar images:

  

notable bright blue tiny sources on darker 3D fractal web in HUDF VLT ESO

28 images from 506 galaxies, z about 6 , RJ Bouwens, GD Illingworth,

JP Blakeslee, M Franx 2008.02.04 draft 36 page: Rich Murray 2008.08.17

rmforall.blogspot.com/2008/08/notable-bright-blue-tiny-so...

tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/26

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/86

  

bright blue 1-4 pixel sources on darker 3D fractal web in IR and visible light

HUDF images -- might be the clusters of earliest hypernovae in the

Naoki Yoshida and Lars Hernquist simulation: Rich Murray 2008.07.31

rmforall.blogspot.com/2008/07/bright-blue-1-4-pixel-sourc...

tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/24

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/84

____________________________________________________________

  

Rich Murray, MA Room For All

1943 Otowi Road Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505

rmforall@gmail.com

505-501-2298

rich.murray11 Skype audio, video

 

tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AstroDeep/messages

 

groups.yahoo.com/group/rmforall/messages

Located just north of the Big Dipper, Caldwell 3 is one of at least 34 gravitationally bound galaxies in the Ursa Major galaxy group. This barred spiral galaxy, also known as NGC 4236, sits 11.7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco and has an apparent magnitude of 9.6. Although faint, Caldwell 3 can be spotted using a small telescope from a dark-sky site. However, the best views are through large telescopes, which show the galaxy as a large, diffuse glow that’s brighter toward the center. It appears highest during the spring in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be seen from northern latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere in autumn, albeit with a bit more difficulty as it will appear low in the sky. The galaxy was first spotted by British astronomer William Herschel in April 1793.

 

Barred spiral galaxies are named for the elongated lane of stars that cut through their centers. Not only do these bars often make their galaxies easier to pick out in the night sky due to their needle-like structure, but they can also have profound effects on the dynamics of the galaxies. Bars are thought to direct gas from the spiral arms toward the center of the galaxy, fueling stellar birth. These structures seem to be common in spiral galaxies. Of those that we have observed, nearly two-thirds of spiral galaxies contain a bar, including our Milky Way.

 

This stunning Hubble image captures a portion of Caldwell 3 and its central bar. It is a composite of four Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 observations in visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light. These images were taken in order to constrain the distance of the galaxy from Earth. Using the observable characteristics of some of the brightest stars in Caldwell 3, researchers hoped to determine if it was an isolated galaxy or if it was associated with a group.

 

Credit: NASA, ESA, P. Seitzer (University of Michigan), and M. Regan (STScI); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

 

For Hubble's Caldwell catalog site and information on how to find these objects in the night sky, visit:

 

www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-s-caldwell-catalog

 

man with masking tape on his mouth

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Collaborative Performance w/ Merritt Johnson at MOCNA, Sante Fe 2017