Author Archives: Chompsky
Contrailer
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Builder Steve Jones (you may have seen him on Channel 4’s ‘George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces’) and the caravan ‘pod’ he created from the jet nacelle of a Royal Air Force Vickers VC10.
He details the full project here.
Extraordinary footage from the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter (which still hasn’t reached its closest distance to the sun) showing surface features of our star including phenomena called “campfires” – omnipresent miniature eruptions that could be contributing to the high temperatures of the solar corona and the origin of the solar wind – too small to have been captured by previous instruments.
And that’s not all. To wit:
“Right now, we are in the part of the 11-year solar cycle when the Sun is very quiet,” says Sami Solanki, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, and PHI Principal Investigator. “But because Solar Orbiter is at a different angle to the Sun than Earth, we could actually see one active region that wasn’t observable from Earth. That is a first. We have never been able to measure the magnetic field at the back of the Sun.”
It gets better. As the mission progresses, the Solar Orbiter’s image resolution capabilities will roughly double.
Another visual size comparison from MetaBall Studios – in this case, the moons of our solar system compared first with New York skyscrapers then with the Earth itself.
Previously: Meatier
The spectacular fruit of photographer and stormchaser Paul M.Smith’s ongoing mission to capture images of rare Red Sprite lightning.
Jellyfish, column, carrot-style – it’s all good.
Related: Sprites Rouges
Wired
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Digital animations interpreting the trills, squads and coos of birds recorded during a visit to the Amazonian jungle by Austalian artist Andy Thomas, who tells Colossal:
I am fascinated with the idea of generating digital art that references the beauty and complexity of nature. I hope this piece will encourage people to research the many amazing varieties of birds that call the Amazon home, and remind us of how fragile and important this place is to us all.
Previously by Andy Thomas: Eye Candy: Synthetic Nature