Taken by Reddit user hayloo who said, “Saw this storm while flying into Denver”:
When conditions are just right in the Bay of Biscay, the body of water nestled in the elbow crook between western France and northern Spain, huge blooms of phytoplankton begin to emerge. The marine microorganisms live in the bay all year, but in the spring, the combination of more sunlight, warmer waters and an influx of nutrients carried by ocean currents and freshwater rivers swollen with melted snow creates explosive blooms–those multi-colored swirls in the water.
The massive population explosion is big enough to see from space, and NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) earlier this month. The blooms usually die down by May, so this might be one of the last swirly-marine-life photos we get this year.
via NASA via Popular Science
Photographer Bill Gekas recreates classic paintings using his daughter as a model. More at BuzzFeed and his website.
Sometimes, if you wait long enough for a clear and moonless night, the stars will come out with a vengeance. One such occasion occurred earlier this month at the Piton de l’Eau on Reunion Island. In the foreground, surrounded by bushes and trees, lies a water filled volcanic crater serenely reflecting starlight. A careful inspection near the image center will locate Piton des Neiges, the highest peak on the island, situated several kilometers away. In the background, high above the lake, shines the light of hundreds of stars, most of which are within 100 light years, right in our stellar neighborhood. Far is the distance, arching majestically overhead, is the central band of our home Milky Way Galaxy, shining by the light of millions of stars each located typically thousands of light years away. The astrophotographer reports waiting for nearly two years for the sky and clouds to be just right to get the above shot.
Tsuneaki Hiramatsu has taken some beautiful time-lapse photographs of lightning bugs in the wild. Lots more in the previous links.
Via Boing Boing:
[…]Wonderland, an unfinished Disneyland clone outside of Beijing. Here, a farmer tends crops in a field now encompassing the abandoned Cinderella Castle-style building that was to be a centerpiece. Construction work at the park, promoted by developers as “the largest amusement park in Asia”, stopped around 1998; disagreements over property prices with the local government and farmers are cited as factors.