night
dr. dolittle | September 21, 2015 By Taken by fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au Canon 20D + Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L (Own work) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
Researchers at the University of Vienna are studying vocalizations from giraffes. They captured recordings of the animals "humming" during the night at local zoos. Zookeepers were surprised to learn the animals made such noises as they are not heard during the day. Researcher Dr. Angela Stöger remarked to the New Scientist, "I was fascinated, because these signals have a very interesting sound and have a complex…
esiegel | August 2, 2012"Ignignokt: Well well, I know that. I said that, but it's his nap time now.
Err: 'Cause he like, sleeps during the day.
Ignignokt: But at night he feeds.
Err: And it's always night on the Moon!
Ignignokt: Don't f*** with me, Err." -Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Moon Master
Ahh, the Moon. The brightest object in our night sky is familiar to all inhabitants of Earth, and during its full phase, easily outshines everything else in the night sky, combined.
Image credit: Furious Photos -- Amazing pictures by a delusional hack.
Capable of casting strong shadows, and easily giving off a light that's…
sjurvetson | May 31, 2009The long exposure presents all kinds of interesting visuals, from simple Estes propellant grains showering down...
...to the errant path of an unstable rocket:
Here's another example of an unstable flight followed by the fiery forward spray of a motor closure failure under pressure:
And different propellant grains provide wonderful lighting:
And of course, all kinds of high jinks come out at night in the deep desert, like the washing machine tub full of scrap propellant:
Pyro bliss.
sjurvetson | May 22, 2009
Richard Hagen's rocket, flying on a Aerotech J500G motor, created a wonderful night light over the Black Rock Desert playa.
With some of the night photos, there are random RGB pixels; digital astronomy photography becomes an exercise in the statistics of noise. The high-end photographers liquid cool their sensors and build images from a large number of relatively short exposure shots. For bright objects, like the local planets, they integrate an image from video. It's fascinating, and totally out of my league. This is just a single digital exposure without Photoshop.
It also helps to be…
edyong | May 21, 2009In the forests of South America lives the unusual but aptly named owl monkey, or douroucouli. You could probably guess by looking at its large round eyes that it's nocturnal, and indeed, it is the only monkey to be mostly active at night. But its eyes have many adaptations for such a lifestyle, beyond a large size.
The owl monkey's retinas are 50% larger than those of a day-living monkey of similar size, like the brown capuchin. The proportions of different cells in their retina are also different. Owl monkeys have relatively few cone cells, which are responsible for colour vision and fewer…
sjurvetson | May 19, 2009
Kids at the candy shop... from the DairyAire launch event this weekend. For a sense of how the photonic Ritalin works, this is what my rocket looks like as an example:
For a while, I've wanted to use a funky armored car fisheye lens from Belarus for night rocketry. I tested it at dusk:
and at night...
Green propellant - burnout - orange burst from the BP charge popping the parachute - blinking spiral back to Earth.
That a cable spool with a high power motor in the middle flies straight as an arrow is amazing enough. Strap on some lights, and fly at night, priceless.
Next, I'll show some…
sjurvetson | May 14, 2009I'll be launching this rocket again on Saturday... well, the upper half of it, which survived unscathed from this dramatic motor rupture a half-mile up in the moonlit sky of the Black Rock Desert:
I just love night launches as you can get a time-lapse capture of the entire rocket flight, especially when something goes haywire.
The Aerotech Green Mojave propellant burned brightly, lighting up the playa and the neighboring launch rails, but it also burned through the center of the forward closure (melting aluminum) and torched the electronics of the bottom section... and even burnt right…
bioephemera | April 20, 2009Light is an ephemeral but powerful artistic medium. This commercial for the Belgian energy company Electrabel captures the whimsical charm of fireflies on a warm summer night:
You can view a stunning higher-res version of this video here, with slightly different music. There is also a making-of video with scenes of the film shoot.
Thanks to Rhett for finding this one!
esiegel | April 22, 2008As you may have noticed from yesterday's unusual post, today is Earth Day! I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite pictures from space of it, including the famous photograph from Apollo 8 known as Earthrise:
This combination shot made from NASA’s Terra satellite and NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite:
The known satellites at least 0.1 meters in size in orbit around Earth (there are ~11,000 of them as of April 2005, and another 100,000 between 1 cm and 10 cm in size):
Looking at the Earth and the docked Space Shuttle from the International Space Station:
And…