Till the end of the world by Xiao Yang
Breathtaking Sunset in Tokyo, Japan
Warmth of the Sun by Cardim
Dazzling Photographs of Earth From Above
Satellite images of mountains, glaciers, deserts and other landscapes become incredible works of art
1. Van Gogh From Space (July 13, 2005)
The green and blue swirls of the Baltic Sea surrounding the Swedish island Gotland look like they could have been painted by Vincent van Gogh, but they are the work of microscopic marine plants called phytoplankton. When ocean currents bring an abundance of nutrients to the surface, the population of tiny plants proliferates into big, colorful blooms.
2. Lake Eyre (August 5, 2006)
The ghostly face is part of southern Australia’s Lake Eyre. The desert lake remains dry most of the year, filling during the rainy season. When the lake is completely full—which has only happened three times in the past 150 years—it is the largest lake on the continent.
3. Spilled Paint (February 10, 2003)
The various hues of this abstract scene represent the different landscapes present in Dasht-e Kavir, or the Great Salt Desert, of northern Iran. The sparsely populated desert is named after its many salt marshes (“kavir” means salt marsh in Persian). The Great Salt Desert is also home to dry streambeds, plateaus and mud flats, covering almost 30,000 square miles of the Iranian Plateau.
4. Icelandic Tiger (October 21, 1999)
Nature often inspires art, but sometimes it is art. For almost 40 years, the Landsat satellites have been snapping images of earth that look more like they belong on the walls of a modern art museum than stored in a scientific archive. The U.S. Geological Survey, which manages the satellite program with NASA, is sharing the beauty of these photos in its new “Earth as Art” exhibit on display at the Library of Congress through May 31, 2012.
Everyone at USGS who works with Landsat data has a favorite photo, and that led to the idea of gathering a collection of favorites to share with the public, says Ronald Beck, a USGS public information specialist who has worked with the Landsat Program for 37 years. Beck’s favorite in the new exhibit, the third installment of “Earth as Art,” is Icelandic Tiger. The “tiger” is part of Iceland’s northern coast, and its mouth is the fjord called Eyjafjorour, meaning “Island Fjord.” The name refers to the small island the tiger is about to eat.
(Source: smithsonianmag.com)
Ways to Lure a Lover, Orchid-Style
Beauty, mystery and deceit—the Smithsonian’s collection of nearly 8,000 live orchids has it all
By Megan Gambino
1. Camouflaging Itself as an Insect
Orchids of the genus Psychopsis are often called “butterfly orchids” because of their resemblance to the dazzling insect. “The three sepals [modified leaves] look like antennae sticking out of the top, whereas the three petals are more wing-like,” says horticulturist Tom Mirenda, of Psychopsis versteegiana (above). Even the column—the reproductive structure in the center of the flower where the male and female parts are fused together—looks like part of an insect, the head.
2. Bold, Arresting Colors
Also known as Venus’s slipper orchid, Paphiopedilum venustum, found in Southeast Asia, uses its bold coloration to bait insects. Often, when insects land at the center of the flower, they fall into its cupped lip. In orchid terminology, the lip is one of the flower’s three petals and serves as a landing pad of sorts for its pollinators. “Inside, in tight quarters, insects have difficulty spreading their wings and flying out again and have to climb up the textured rear of the pouch,” says Mirenda. They escape—but in the process, the insects pick up pollen, which they ultimately bring to other flowers
3. Gimme Shelter
Male euglossine bees collect fragrances from flowers. “The males with the most complex array of fragrances get all the ladies,” says Mirenda. But when the bees land on male Catasetum orchids, they also get a swift wallop on the head. “The flowers basically mug their pollinator by shooting really large pollinia at them when they touch a little trigger switch in the flower,” says Mirenda.
After being whacked, as a reaction, the bees retreat to shelter—in this case, to the Catasetum’s female flowers (above). The helmet-like flowers, found in Central America, actually resemble the nests that the bees build. There, while feeding on nectar, the bees deposit the pollen.
4. Creating a Sticky Situation
The bucket orchid, Coryanthes macrocorys, also ensnares euglossine bees. When an unsuspecting male bee visits the orchid, looking to pick up a scent, it falls into the flower’s bucket-like lip. The orchid secretes a sticky liquid, which nearly drowns the bee. “Desperate to escape and unable to fly out due to its wet wings, it must squeeze out an escape hatch in the back of the flower,” says Mirenda. Conveniently, the orchid’s pollen is in that hatch and adheres to the fleeing bee.
(Source: smithsonianmag.com)
Fractal Artforms of Nature by Tom Beddard
The nineteen century German biologist Ernst Haeckel is famous for his fantastically illustrated book Artforms of Nature. The copyright for this book from 1904 has now expired and thanks to Wikimedia Commons it is available for everyone to appreciate.
Haekel’s artistic interpretation of the biological forms he studied have a clarity of symmetry and detail that has been a source of inspiration for many artists and engineers over the years. They provide the perfect subject matter for my Photoshop plugin Pixel Bender Fractal Explorer.
Stars Over Uppsala
Photograph by P-M Heden, TWAN
The night sky stretches above a ruined castle near Uppsala, Sweden, in a February 21 photograph. A star cluster known as the Pleiades, or Messier 45, can be seen above the castle.
Walking the Path
Photograph by Jack Fusco, My Shot
A star-gazer in Cherry Springs State Park, Pennsylvania, stops in his tracks to look at the zodiacal light—a faint cone of light that rises from the horizon along the ecliptic. This imaginary line—the plane of our solar system—is the path the sun and planets appear to travel in the sky.
Venus and Jupiter are also visible along the ecliptic in this frame.
Zodiacal light is caused by sunlight reflecting and scattering off dust grains that lie between the inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Earth’s Haunting Craters
1. Meteor Crater, Arizona — Photographer Stan Gaz was in Arizona when he came across a postcard of the Meteor Crater.
“The postcard intrigued me, so I went to see it,” he said. “My father was a geologist. He would take me on these expeditional trips to go rock hunting when he was alive, when I was a kid. When I saw the crater it made me think of him, what he would have thought, what his reaction would have been. Immediately I thought, ‘I’m going to look into this more.’”
In 2003, Gaz launched into a six-year-long global project of tracking down and photographing the planet’s cosmic scars, beginning with Meteor Crater. The results speak for themselves: haunting, otherworldly images of craters that are familiar, and yet utterly strange.
2. Gosses Bluff, Northern Territory, Australia — Gaz’s riveting, stark images make you wonder if you’re actually looking at Earth. In the image above, he turned the sky into a black, alien thing by using a red filter (in front of black and white film) when he shot the 14 mile-wide Gosses Bluff, which formed 142.5 million years ago.
3. Upheaval Dome, Utah — It’s not surprising that the origins of some craters are the subject of decades-long controversy. The terrific heat and energy of an impact often vaporize large asteroids made of nearly solid iron and nickel.
Such is the case at Upheaval Dome, shown above. Scientists have gone back and forth over whether the pummeled, uplifted rocks were abused by a salt dome that rose from below, or cosmic artillery from above. In 2008, researchers discovered the presence of shocked quartz (stishovite, or its close cousin coesite) in the dome, confirming its extraterrestrial origins.
4. New Quebec (aka Pingualuit) Crater, Quebec, Canada — As a child, Gaz used to follow his father around, rock hounding in the hills of Southern California, in search of illusive pink crystals of rose quartz.
The blue planet’s toxic new colours
1. Tissue slurry — Ontario, Canada This man-made lake in Terrace Bay, Ontario, Canada, is more than 500 metres long. It’s an aeration pond, part of the waste-treatment system at a factory that produces pulp for Kimberly-Clark tissues. “The treated water is returned to its source — often a river,” says Fair. Each yellow cone is an “agitator” that aerates and churns the liquid, assisting its breakdown. According to Worldwatch Institute figures, if recycled paper was used instead, 64 per cent less energy would be needed.and churns the liquid, assisting its breakdown. According to Worldwatch Institute figures, if recycled paper was used instead, 64 per cent less energy would be needed.
2. Fertiliser — Louisiana, US This emerald-tinted lake near Geismar, Louisiana, includes gypsum, uranium and radium. These chemicals result from manufacturing phosphorous fertiliser and are dumped into this impoundment to solidify. The world’s supplies of phosphates are dwindling and most are located in the US, China and Morocco. Unlike oil, however, there is no known renewable alternative for making fertiliser. “You think the resource crisis is in oil?” says Fair. “Think again.”
3. Spilled oil — Gulf of Mexico, US Fair captured this shot over the BP Deepwater Horizon spill at the Macondo well in June 2010, when 750m litres of oil leaked into the Gulf. “The stuff that was coming out of that well was all different colours,” says Fair. “We think of crude oil as being black — it’s all kinds of different colours and consistencies.” The bright red is the crude on the surface, reflecting light. The less viscous oil below the surface is purple-brown.
4. Liquid sulphur — Alberta, Canada At Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, a blood-red vein of liquid sulphur is pumped on to a bed of solidified yellow sulphur. The element is one of the major by-products of tar-sand upgrading and there is now an abundance of stocks globally. With prices low, producer Syncrude isn’t selling — it’s storing it in giant pyramids. Liquid sulphur, at around 200°C (its melting point is 115°C), is pumped into fenced-off compounds and left to harden.
5. Aluminium sludge — Louisiana, US This slurry pit is where the solid and liquid by-products of aluminium manufacture are separated. The process involves refining bauxite ore, which produces alumina. The waste includes bauxite impurities, heavy metals and sodium hydroxide (one of the chemicals used during processing). Fair estimates that the red-brown sludge has a pH of about 13, “meaning if you touch it, it burns the skin off”.
6. Fertiliser slurry — Louisiana, US This wintry-looking scene is a mix of lead, ammonia, mercury and ethanol — by-products of phosphate fertiliser production. “It’s a giant lake of waste,” says Fair, who shot the image 80km west of New Orleans in 2005. Owned by Mosaic Fertilizers, the plant, called Uncle Sam, has violated the US Clean Water Act nine times. The slurry pit is less than 3km from the banks of the Mississippi.
