Pictures
drorzel | May 9, 2008You have no idea how hard it is to be the Queen of Niskayuna. Between the talking about Relativity, and the people working on the house, and the nice weather, and the squirrels, and the cleaning service coming by, and the inferior dogs in the neighborhood, well, she's just wiped out:
She was too tired to even arrange her pillows in a satisfactory manner last night. She managed on Wednesday, and the resulting picture is much cuter:
There are probably two more weeks to go on the construction project, so life won't get any easier for Her Majesty. I'm sure she'll find a way to muddle through,…
drorzel | May 8, 2008In honor of the Japanese crow story in today's Links Dump, here's a filler post with a picture of a Japanese crow:
grrlscientist | May 2, 2008tags: Rufous-crowned Roller, Coracias naevia, birds, Image of the Day
This is the last bird that I will be showing you by this photographer this week. More of John's images are waiting in the queue, and will appear next week.
Rufous-crowned Roller, Coracias naevia.
Image: John Del Rio. [larger view].
grrlscientist | May 1, 2008tags: Andean Cock-of-the-rock, Rupicola peruvianus, birds, Image of the Day
This is the fourth image of a passerine taken by this photographer.
Male Andean (red) Cock-of-the-rock, Rupicola peruvianus.
Image: John Del Rio. [larger view].
This dimorphic species is a medium-sized bird that is native to the cloud forests in the Andes Mountains in South America, being found in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. This species is frugivorous and the females choose their mates from among a group of males that display on a communal lek. The species gets its name from the females' habit…
drorzel | April 25, 2008I'm kicking myself for not using this as a filler post a couple of weeks back when it was Easter:
This is from one of the shrines at Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto-- the temple with the gigantic wooden platform looking out over the city. The sign at the lower right identifies it:
This stuatue is called "okuninushino-mikoto."
A Japanese god who is in charge of love and good matches
The rabbit beside him is a messenger of the god.
Emmy grumbles that the divine rabbit has a certain Donnie Darko quality to it, but I think she's just jealous that she doesn't have a four-foot-high bunny to play with.
esiegel | April 24, 2008(Thanks to Starts With A Bang! reader benhead.) The Hubble Space Telescope has released some beautiful images of colliding galaxies in a huge collection! Here are some of my favorites, with my very own names for them (real name in parentheses).
We'll start with the Glowing Arrow (Arp 148):
The Highway Windshield (NGC 6240)
The Flaming Splinter (NGC 6670):
And finally, I call this one "my new desktop wallpaper:"
I was going to write a whole bunch about this, but I have been beaten to the punch by Universe Today, Bad Astronomy, and Will Gater. I'll have to wake up earlier next time! In the…
drorzel | April 24, 2008Lest you think that people in the US are uniquely alarmist about threats to Chiiiiillllllldrruuuun, a picture from last summer's trip to Japan:
I have absolutely no idea what that says, but it sure is lurid.
grrlscientist | April 13, 2008tags: Ruddy Duck, Oxyura jamaicensis, birds, Image of the Day
Sixth in a series of duck images by this photographer.
Male Ruddy Duck, Oxyura jamaicensis.
Image: John Del Rio. [larger view].
grrlscientist | April 12, 2008tags: King Eider, Somateria spectabilis, birds, Image of the Day
Fifth in a series of duck images by this photographer.
Male King Eider, Somateria spectabilis.
Image: John Del Rio. [larger view].
grrlscientist | April 11, 2008tags: Northern Pintail, Anas acuta, birds, Image of the Day
Fourth in a series of images by this photographer.
Male Northern Pintail, Anas acuta.
Image: John Del Rio. [larger view].
grrlscientist | April 10, 2008tags: Wood Duck, Aix sponsa, birds, Image of the Day
Third in a series of images by this photographer.
"Abstract"
Male Wood Duck, Aix sponsa.
Image: John Del Rio. [larger view].
grrlscientist | April 9, 2008tags: Harlequin duck, Histrionicus histrionicus, Long-tailed duck, Clangula hyemalis, birds, Image of the Day
Second in a series by this photographer.
Male Harlequin duck, Histrionicus histrionicus (left)
and male Long-tailed duck (formerly: Oldsquaw), Clangula hyemalis (foreground).
Image: John Del Rio. [larger view].
grrlscientist | April 8, 2008tags: Bufflehead, Bucephala albeola, birds, Image of the Day
The first in a series by this photographer.
Male Bufflehead, Bucephala albeola.
Image: John del Rio. [larger view].
grrlscientist | April 4, 2008tags: birds, American Goldfinch, Carduelis tristis, ornithology, Image of the Day
A long-time reader, Jerry, sent some images for me to feature as the "image of the day". This is the last image in a series of five.
American Goldfinch, Carduelis tristis.
Image: Jerry Kram. [larger size].
The photographer, Jerry Kram, writes;
I know I've sent you a goldfinch before. But they are one of my favorite birds.
My father loved goldfinches. He called them wild canaries. He told me that as a child during the Great Depression he and his friends would try to catch them (uniformly unsuccessfully)…
grrlscientist | April 3, 2008tags: birds, Eastern wood-peewee, Contopus virens, ornithology, Image of the Day
A long-time reader, Jerry, sent some images for me to feature as the "image of the day". This is the fourth image in a series of five.
Eastern Wood-Pewee, Contopus virens.
Image: Jerry Kram. [larger size].
The photographer, Jerry Kram, writes;
This peewee hung around our group on a camping trip in Northern Minnesota. I love it when the subjects of my photos come to me instead of having to trek over hill and dale.
drorzel | April 3, 2008Wow. I'm cranky today.
I really need to be more Zen about things. Here's a picture to meditate on:
This is the famous "Crane and Turtle" garden at Konchi-in in Kyoto. It's one of very few gardens absolutely known to have been designed by the great garden-desing master Kobori Enshu, out of the huge number of gardens attributed to him. It's really quite lovely-- I'm not sure the picture does it justice, but we spent a pleasant while looking at this while waiting for a tour of their art collection.
There, I feel better already.
grrlscientist | April 2, 2008tags: birds, American White Pelican, Pelecanus erythrorhynchos, ornithology, Image of the Day
A long-time reader, Jerry, sent some images for me to feature as the "image of the day". This is the third image in a series of five.
American White Pelican, Pelecanus erythrorhynchos.
Image: Jerry Kram. [larger size].
The photographer, Jerry Kram, writes;
Ah the pelican, whose beak can hold more than its bellican. A few years ago, there was a major dispersal of pelicans from their largest nesting area in North America, the Chase Lake NWF. It caused some concern at the time because a lot of…
grrlscientist | April 1, 2008tags: birds, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Dendroica pensylvanica, ornithology, Image of the Day
A long-time reader, Jerry, sent some images for me to feature as the "image of the day". This is the second image in a series of five.
Chestnut-sided warbler, Dendroica pensylvanica.
Image: Jerry Kram. [larger size].
The photographer, Jerry Kram, writes;
Warblers are hard to to photograph, especially after trees have leafed. I consider myself lucky to catch this fellow swathed in a halo of oak American elm leaves.
grrlscientist | March 31, 2008tags: birds, Western kingbird, Tyrannus verticalis, ornithology, Image of the Day
A long-time reader, Jerry, sent some images for me to feature as the "image of the day". This is the first image in a series of five.
Western kingbird, Tyrannus verticalis.
Image: Jerry Kram. [larger size].
The photographer, Jerry Kram, writes:
I love these birds because when I was growing up a flock of grackles started nesting in the shelterbelt around the house and chased away many of the robins and other perching birds. That limited my window birding opportunities until a pair of highly aggressive…
drorzel | March 24, 2008A couple more pretty pictures of the apparatus, to pass the time:
This is the plasma discharge source that we use to make metastable atoms. We excite the gas using a RF coil (under the tinfoil) with a couple of watts of power at 145 MHz (local ham radio people must love me...), which creates a discharge in the glass tube. Some small fraction of the atoms are excited to the state that we want in the chaos of the plasma, and we work with those downstream.
When it's working right, there's a pretty steep pressure drop across the discharge region:
The pressure is much lower on the left (there's…