Author Archives: Chompsky

Behold: the RML Ferrari 250 SWB – a modern day tribute to a Cavallino Rampante classic by British auto-tech provider RML Group.

Built on a highly modified 550 Maranello chassis, the aluminium bodywork has been replaced with carbon fibre panels, mimicking the 1959 250 SWB but reducing weight to make the most of a front-mounted 478bhp 5.5-litre V12 engine.

The plush interior (with air-con, high end sound system, digital connectivity and a hidden SatNav that deploys when required) offers a similarly enhanced take on the original late 50s look.

Only 30 will be made and yours will cost around €1,500,000.

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Behold: the cosmic cloud of NGC 2359 also known as Thor’s Hemet. To wit:

Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor’s Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the cosmic head-covering is more like an interstellar bubble, blown with a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble’s center. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. NGC 2359 is located about 15,000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Great Overdog. This remarkably sharp image is a mixed cocktail of data from broadband and narrowband filters, capturing not only natural looking stars but details of the nebula’s filamentary structures. The star in the center of Thor’s Helmet is expected to explode in a spectacular supernova sometime within the next few thousand years.

(Image: Bernard Miller)

Previously: Thor’s Helmet

apod

Evocative aerial shots of the pink waters of the Camargue river delta near Arles in southern France by Paolo Pettigiani, of which he sez:

The pink water comes from a pink algae (Dunaliella Salina) which lives in it. This pink algae can exist in just about any kind of natural body of saltwater and is the main source of nutrition for another common resident of saltwater: a miniscule shrimp called the artémias salina.

designboom

Photographer Kilian Schönberger’s tribute to the spruce forests of Germany – decimated in recent years by a raging bark beetle infestation spurred by climate change but seen here in the ethereal light of misty mornings. To wit:

Huge woods were destroyed by the bark beetle within a few weeks. Since the lowlands are not the natural habitat of the spruce the bark beetles just restored the balance of nature… In the Eastern Bavarian mountain ranges with higher precipitation, I was looking for natural spruce forests and found a wood wonderland. That’s the area where almost homogeneous spruce forests will also grow in the next decades.

More of his work here.

colossal

Behold: Federal House – a 400 square metre cantilevered monochrome home at Byron Bay on the New South Wales coast.

A concrete plinth partially embedded in the sloping plot supports a black timber clad upper level with floor-to-ceiling picture windows and an internal fern garden. A swimming pool with views framing the surrounding treetops extends across the lower level.

The doorbell plays “Agadoo’ by Black Lace.

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