the Americana fountain — Glendale, CA
I was watching the fountain show, eating some blood orange Pinkberry, enjoying the sun and feeling thankful for my life considering all the craziness happening in the world right now (Libya, Egypt, Japan) when this pretty flower floated past me.
by Tamas Ladanyi (click to embiggen)
As evening twilight faded on March 7, sky gazers around planet Earth enjoyed a beautiful pairing of young crescent Moon and brilliant planet Jupiter. Along with stars setting in the west, the two bright celestial beacons, Moon above and Jupiter below, leave short trails in this well-planned time exposure, a composite of 54 individual frames each 4 seconds long. On its final flight, the Space Shuttle Discovery and International Space Station form the second close pairing in the night skyscape. Still glinting in the sunlight in low Earth orbit, they gracefully trace overlapping arcs from lower right to upper left.
All of these photographs are so beautiful, I highly recommend looking at all of them over at the Atlantic. Here are a few selects (click to see larger versions):
The aurora australis provides a dramatic backdrop to a Scott Tent at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on July 14, 2009. (National Science Foundation/Patrick Cullis)
The Matusevich Glacier flows toward the coast of East Antarctica, pushing through a channel between the Lazarev Mountains and the northwestern tip of the Wilson Hills. Each of the smaller blocks measure nearly one kilometer across. After passing through the channel, the glacier has room to spread out as it floats on the ocean. On September 6, 2010, the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite captured this natural-color image. (NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon)
Inside an ice cave near Ross Island on November 25, 2008. (National Science Foundation/Robyn Waserman)
Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) field team member Anna Bramucci throws hot water into the air to watch it turn to ice crystals and vapor on a -25 F (-32 C) day at Lake Fryxell field camp in Taylor Valley, Victoria Land on March 30, 2008. (National Science Foundation/Chris Kannen)
Adelie penguins along the ice edge in the Ross Sea, seen on January 12, 2010. (National Science Foundation/Robyn Waserman)
by Ryo Obata
Darkest Hour by Furosuky Pochomki
by Ryo Obata
北区 by Sakumi Shu
by Krisstina
by Ryo Obata
be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
Got up earlier than necessary so I could go across the street to the Wildlife Dome and have my photo taken holding a koala! She was so little (but heavier than she looked) and soft and sleepy. And her claws were very sharp too! she really latched on when the keeper put her on me.
We met up with the group and went to Kuranda. We drove through the rainforest and our guide, Roderic, pointed out a lot of plants and animals. In Kuranda, Mom, Dad and I went to the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary and saw all kinds of gorgeous and huge butterflies and moths. One butterfly wouldn’t stop landing on me – Mom had to pry it off of me and then I ran out so it couldn’t follow me again.
We went to the market area and to the honey shop then grabbed delicious German sausages for our walk to the Skyway terminal. The Skyway Rainforest Cableway is a giant gondola over the rainforest and you can see all kinds of plants and birds up there. We stopped partway down and saw Barron Falls, which was huge due to all of the recent rain. It was mostly shrouded in the huge amounts of mist it was spraying up.
At the bottom of the Skyway we went to the Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park and saw dances and explanations about food and hunting.
Dinner that night at Rattle & Hum, gelato (of course!), then retired for the night and watched the Olympics and some ‘Bones’.
be sure to rollover ‘notes’ to see photo captions!
Woke up to rain (tropics!) on Great Barrier Reef day. It took over an hour to motor out to the floating platform but once we were there, Mom, Dad, Uncle Denny and I had the first scheduled marine biologist-guided snorkel.
Eric was a great guide and eased us into snorkeling and pointed out a lot of cool things. A humphead Maori wrasse named Roxie follows Eric around whenever he’s on the reef and will actually seek him out (the other guides say she’s in love with him. Later we found out she’s going through a lot of hormonal changes due to changing sexes, so I guess we can forgive her for being a little obsessive). We saw a lot of Roxie, and got to pet her and give her mouth a rub, which is her favorite. She was very smooth and soft and her mouth was sort of squashy. Roxie was probably the best part of the Reef; I wish I’d had an underwater housing for my camera so I could’ve taking a photo of her.
I didn’t take this, and this isn’t Roxie, but you can see the size of these fish!
We got to hold a sea cucumber and a free-living coral as well. Once the guided part of our snorkel was over, I stayed out and watched the fish and listened to the parrotfish eating (scrape scrape scrape!). It was fantastic and I wouldve been out all day, but I got stung by a jellyfish on my hand, ankle, and face (my lip and cheek), and more started drifting into our area so I didn’t go back in. The sting hurt a lot and took a few hours to go away, despite getting sprayed down with vinegar relatively soon after it happened (I was pretty far away from the base when I got stung).
We had a buffet lunch and went on a little trip in a semi-submersible so we could see more of the reef. We had a nice talk with Ken and Shirley, a couple we’d first met on our Taieri Gorge Railway trip and got some ice cream.
Back ashore, we cleaned up and relaxed then went to dinner on the Esplanade. My dinner at Barnacle Bill’s was so good i’m still fantasizing about it. We watched the fruit bats migrate out of town and got gelato.
update: more photos via the Atlantic
Anglican Cathedral in February 2010:
Anglican Cathedral today:
Don Scott, Christchurch Press
