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Bryce Canyon National Park, a sprawling reserve in southern Utah, is known for crimson-colored hoodoos, which are spire-shaped rock formations. The park’s main road leads past the expansive Bryce Amphitheater, a hoodoo-filled depression lying below the Rim Trail hiking path. It has overlooks at Sunrise Point, Sunset Point, Inspiration Point and Bryce Point. Prime viewing times are around sunup and sundown.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. If you wish to license them for commercial purposes, want to purchase prints or are interested in commissioning me to take photos, please send me a Flickr mail or visit my website, www.memoriesbymike.zenfolio.com/, for contact information. Thanks.]
I figured out how to remove the sensor smear using photoshop, and so have reposted an earlier picture. I just feel better fixing it.
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The moon looked incredible last night with the cloud rolling in. I just switched it to monochrome and cropped a little, no other edits. I did notice afterward a smear on the lens, which now it appears is on the sensor.
I am definitely a sourdough bore these days!
This one today was particularly good though.
So posting one more sour dough picture ...last for a while I promise
This one was:
50% white 50 % coarse wholemeal
lots of nuts: pecan and walnut - pulverised
and sunflower hearts and black sesame seeds
...& a good glug of olive oil too
The Clash - One More Time
All rights reserved - Tous droits réservés
Model : Ambre
Make-up : Emmanuelle Legrain
Hairstyle : Jessica Chatelain
Spent the day in a hotel conference room yesterday, this is a picture from the lobby. Mel Brookes filmed High Anxiety here, which in turn was a parody on Hitchcock's Vertigo, Birds and some other films. Hard to capture with my cell phone, but the inside is somewhat like an inverted pyramid with the floors directly above me extending further out as they got higher, each with a clear view directly down over empty space. Definitely vertigo inducing.
Link.
Straight out of the camera (SOOC). Feel free to edit this Creative Commons image. Please credit me and link back to this original image. Thanks!
one side planted up - slowly but surely getting there. Good to get a bed filled and then plant out stuff in it before filling the next bed.
The Fireworks - Getting Nowhere Fast
Camped out for an hour or so, looking for the albino jackrabbit once more. It turned up. It has two buddies which would have been much easier to photograph, I wonder does it sense that it contrasts more with its surroundings, it's so much more nervous, last to step forward, first to bolt.
Anyway, likely to be my last effort this summer. I don't have time to come back for quite a while. Something a bit magical about seeing it, I can see why so many myths and superstitions surround white offspring of any species, sadly so much being negative and hostile, because of the alleged "demon" eyes. The good news is that it seems to be accepted by the other rabbits in the group.
Spotted this guy looking through the window last night, casing the joint I guess. Please don't comment on the smudgy window.
Today is day 133 of Project 365 (Thursday).
This group of musicians played traditional music, drank beer and generally enjoyed themselves as they entertained pilgrims and tourists near Senso-Ji temple.
I took this shot at the hypocenter of the nuclear blast in Hiroshima, which is the surface location directly below the nuclear explosion.
On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., the nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima from the Enola Gay, and detonated approximately 600m directly above this exact spot, immediately killing at least 70,000 and destroying 70% of the city's buildings. In short, with a vanishingly small number of exceptions, anybody standing within 3/4 kilometer of where I was standing ceased to exist instantaneously. Of course the casualty numbers expanded dramatically over the coming days, and indeed months.
Truth be told, I'm not a bleeding heart, and can understand those who rationalize the necessity of this event, as much as those who believe it is an inexcusable horror that should never have happened. It did happen though, and the consequences were real and undeniable, and still can be felt when you stand in a place such as this. If you have the means and opportunity to visit Hiroshima sometime in your life, do.
In anticipation of the upcoming 35th anniversary of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, ESA/Hubble is continuing the celebrations with a new image of the Sombrero Galaxy, also known as Messier 104. An eye-catching target for Hubble and a favourite of amateur astronomers, the enigmatic Sombrero Galaxy has features of both spiral and elliptical galaxies. This image incorporates new processing techniques that highlight the unique structure of this galaxy.
As part of ESA/Hubble’s 35th anniversary celebrations, a new image series is being shared to revisit stunning Hubble targets that were previously released. First, a new image of NGC 346 was published. Now, ESA/Hubble is revisiting a fan-favourite galaxy with new image processing techniques. The new image reveals finer detail in the galaxy’s disc, as well as more background stars and galaxies.
Several Hubble images of the Sombrero Galaxy have been released over the past two decades, including this well-known Hubble image from October 2003. In November 2024, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope also gave an entirely new perspective on this striking galaxy.
Located around 30 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, the Sombrero Galaxy is instantly recognisable. Viewed nearly edge on, the galaxy’s softly luminous bulge and sharply outlined disc resemble the rounded crown and broad brim of the Mexican hat from which the galaxy gets its name.
Though the Sombrero Galaxy is packed with stars, it’s surprisingly not a hotbed of star formation. Less than one solar mass of gas is converted into stars within the knotted, dusty disc of the galaxy each year. Even the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, which at 9 billion solar masses is more than 2000 times more massive than the Milky Way’s central black hole, is fairly calm.
The galaxy is too faint to be spotted with unaided vision, but it is readily viewable with a modest amateur telescope. Seen from Earth, the galaxy spans a distance equivalent to roughly one third of the diameter of the full Moon. The galaxy’s size on the sky is too large to fit within Hubble’s narrow field of view, so this image is actually a mosaic of several images stitched together.
One of the things that makes this galaxy especially notable is its viewing angle, which is inclined just six degrees off of the galaxy’s equator. From this vantage point, intricate clumps and strands of dust stand out against the brilliant white galactic nucleus and bulge, creating an effect not unlike Saturn and its rings – but on an epic galactic scale.
[Image description: The Sombrero Galaxy is an oblong, pale white disc with a glowing core. It appears nearly edge-on but is slanted slightly in the front, presenting a slightly top-down view of the inner region of the galaxy and its bright core. The outer disc is darker with shades of brown and black. Different coloured distant galaxies and various stars are speckled among the black background of space surrounding the galaxy.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Noll; CC BY 4.0
Stonehenge by Hazizk is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Visitors to the London Calling exhibition at The Getty in Los Angeles, California
Day 270 of my 366 Project
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. If you wish to license them for commercial purposes, want to purchase prints or are interested in commissioning me to take photos, please send me a Flickr mail or visit my website, www.memoriesbymike.zenfolio.com/, for contact information. Thanks.]
Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features the glorious spiral galaxy NGC 5643, which is located roughly 40 million light-years away in the constellation Lupus. NGC 5643 is what’s known as a grand design spiral, referring to how the galaxy’s two large, winding spiral arms are clear to see. The spiral arms are defined by bright blue stars, lacy reddish-brown dust clouds and pink star-forming regions.
As fascinating as the galaxy appears at visible wavelengths, some of NGC 5643’s most interesting features are invisible to the human eye. Ultraviolet and X-ray images and spectra of NGC 5643 show that the galaxy hosts an active galactic nucleus: an especially bright galactic core powered by a feasting supermassive black hole. When a supermassive black hole ensnares gas from its surroundings, the gas collects in a disc that heats up to hundreds of thousands of degrees. The superheated gas shines brightly across the electromagnetic spectrum, but especially at X-ray wavelengths.
NGC 5643’s active galactic nucleus isn’t the brightest source of X-rays in the galaxy, though. Researchers using ESA’s XMM-Newton discovered an even brighter X-ray-emitting object, called NGC 5643 X-1, on the galaxy’s outskirts. What could be a more powerful source of X-rays than a supermassive black hole? Surprisingly, the answer appears to be a much smaller black hole! While the exact identity of NGC 5643 X-1 is not yet known, evidence points to a black hole that is about 30 times more massive than the Sun. Locked in an orbital dance with a companion star, the black hole ensnares gas from its stellar companion, creating a superheated disc that outshines the galactic centre.
NGC 5643 was also the subject of a previous Picture of the Week. The new image incorporates additional wavelengths of light, including the red color that is characteristic of gas heated by massive young stars.
[Image Description: A close-up of a spiral galaxy, seen face-on. Its center is a bright white point, surrounded by a large yellowish oval with thin lines of dust swirling in it. From the sides of the oval emerge two bright spiral arms which wind through the round disc of the galaxy, filled with shining pink spots where stars are forming and more dark reddish dust. Many stars can be seen in the foreground, over and around the galaxy.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess, D. Thilker, D. De Martin (ESA/Hubble), M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble); CC BY 4.0