Category Archives: Nature

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Of this tonal flight of fancy, inspired by the work of artist Dennis Hlynsky, Conner Griffith sez:

Crow flight patterns are echoed at a thirtieth of a second to create a loopable waveform that corresponds to a tone. The waveform was measured at 27 crows across one tenth of a second. The animation plays at 12fps (2.25 seconds per 27 birds) and is 22.5 times slower than the rate of the comparable frequency. The median crow waveform was “tuned” to D4 and from there, the other crow waveforms were measured. Different wave shapes (sine, saw) were loosely based on flight pattern shape, which was a result of the speed of the crow and the angle and proximity of the crow to the camera.

Well, duh.

curiousbrain

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A fascinating time lapse video by wildlife filmmaker Francis Chee of cell division in a developing frog egg, as it splits from two cells into several million over the course of 33 hours. Chee sez:

… it was done with a custom designed microscope based on the “infinity optical design” It is not available by any manufacturer. I built it. I used LEDs and relevant optics to light the egg. They too were custom designed by me. The whole microscope sits on anti-vibration table. I have to say that it doesn’t matter too much what microscope people use to perform this. There are countless other variables involved in performing this tricky shot, such as for example: the ambient temperature during shooting; the time at which the eggs were collected; the handling skills of the operator; the type of water used; lenses; quality of camera etc etc.

kottke

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A composite image taken last October by Johannes Holzer at the Isar river in southern Germany. The image was achieved using two cameras shooting three photos from roughly the same perspective, which were then stitched. To wit:

..[the] sky with a Sony A7r and Vixen Polarie Startracker, one additional shot for the landscape without [a] Startracker, [and] underwater was done with a Canon 5Dm2 with an EWA Underwater case.

colossal

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Images of the rings of Saturn pix 1,2: (outer (B) ring, pix 1,2; inner (A) ring, pic 3 and a detail of a density wave, pic 4) taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, now in the midst of its ‘ring grazing’ phase as it moves in to study the outer and inner disks of orbiting ice and rock.

These images are twice the resolution of anything previously achievable and allow objects as small as 550m (about the height of the CN Tower in Toronto) to be discerned.

Full resolution photos here.

Previously: The Seas Of Titan

dyt