Category: Photography

and it’s so insignificant!

Yesterday’s post It’s all we have showing the famous Earthrise picture taken from Apollo 8 generated a lovely follow-up.

One of the comments was from Mike Turner who wrote,

It’s all we have and it’s so insignificant!

The Pale Blue Dot

Mike included a link to an entry on WikiPedia about the tiny, small dot of light in the universe that is Earth, shown in a photograph taken by spaceship Voyager 1 from the edge of the Solar System on February 14th, 1990.  Here’s that photograph,

Planet Earth from 3,762,136,324 miles

Can you see our planet home?  Earth appears as a tiny dot (the blueish-white speck approximately halfway down the brown band to the right) within the darkness of deep space. In a 2001 article by Space.com, STScI‘s Ray Villard and JPL‘s Jurrie Van der Woude selected this photograph as one of the top ten space science images of all time.

Carl Sagan later wrote about his deep feelings about this photograph.  That was almost 20 years ago and, as I reflected just a few days ago, human insanity still seems alive and well; it’s about time that the majority of us recognised the fragility and vulnerability of where we live.

Sagan’s words are reproduced here and should be read by every inhabitant of this planet.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. [my italics, Ed]

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

You may also wish to watch this video.

Thanks Mike for prompting this piece.

It’s all we have!

A bit tight on time for today’s Post so just feast your eyes on this image.

 

Earthrise, from the cabin of Apollo 8

 

This view of the rising Earth greeted the Apollo 8 astronauts as they came from behind the Moon after the lunar orbit insertion burn. The photo is displayed here in its original orientation, though it is more commonly viewed with the lunar surface at the bottom of the photo. Earth is about five degrees left of the horizon in the photo. The unnamed surface features on the left are near the eastern limb of the Moon as viewed from Earth. The lunar horizon is approximately 780 kilometers from the spacecraft. Height of the photographed area at the lunar horizon is about 175 kilometers.

The Apollo 8 mission was the first time man had left the orbit of the Earth.

The photograph was taken on the 24th December 1968 by NASA astronaut William Anders.  Within 18 months of this image being published, the environmental movement had started. Wilderness photographer Galen Rowell called it “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”

 

On a Clear Day

An inspirational film with an incredibly relevant message to us all.

I’m not going to yield to the temptation to take a personal view, real life is too complicated.

Just, if you can, watch the film.

Here’s the summary from Wikipedia.  More background to the film is on the IMDB website including this review:

I saw this movie at Sundance, and it was brilliant. Beautiful shots, wonderful acting and such a moving story! It made me cry, it made me laugh (with Billy Boyd as much of the comic relief!), it made me want to see it again! Gaby Dellal’s direction was spot on, and the emotions from each of the characters was so true, that I wanted to cheer Frank (Peter Mullan)) on while swimming the English Channel and console him when he felt like he couldn’t do anything.

The only thing that I had an “issue” with, was that at a few moments, the Scottish accent was so thick that I missed what was said.

Some scenes from the film follow:

Finally, more on Peter Mullan, a very powerful actor.

By Paul Handover

Just a garage door!

This is a very cool idea!

Big thanks to Blog reader, Bill Wells, for sending me details of this rather jazzy idea for sprucing up your garage door!

Yes, that’s what I wrote.  Learning from Dogs wishes to promote how you might want to redecorate your garage door.

Try this ….

Continue reading “Just a garage door!” →

Magical connections

A wonderful aspect of our modern digital world

There is much about the modern World Wide Web that reflects the more crass aspects of modern civilisation.  But there is also much that offers a magical way of learning about people and sharing their moments.

Thus it was via a comment posted on Facebook that took me to a web link for the Boston Globe and thence to an article about Russia in Color. Try this for a photograph!

 

An Armenian woman in national costume poses for Prokudin-Gorskii on a hillside near Artvin (in present day Turkey), circa 1910. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC)

 

The author of the article in the Boston Globe writes:

With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II.

Not only are the images presented in that article stunning – truly so – it was very easy to find the link to the Prokudin-Gorskiĭ photograph collection in the Library of Congress.  This is how the collection is described:

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskiĭ’s photographic survey of the Russian Empire (1909-1915) provides 2,615 distinct photographic views that show cities and villages, religious architecture, industrial and agricultural activities and sites, historic sites, waterway and railway construction, cultural artifacts, people, and flora and fauna. Each journey is represented by one or more photographic albums and corresponding negatives for the Caucaus, Turkestan (Central Asia), Marinskii Canal, Ural Mountains region, Volga River region, Napoleonic War area, and Murmansk Railway. There is also an album of various studies, including views in Europe.

Using this link Prokudin-Gorskiĭ photograph collection it is relatively easy to access the individual photographs – but set aside some time to so do – you will easily lose yourself in these wonderful images of yesteryear.

Let me close with another image.

 

A switch operator poses on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, near the town of Ust Katav on the Yuryuzan River in 1910. (Prokudin-Gorskii Collection/LOC)

 

Wonderful.

By Paul Handover

Space exploration on peanuts!

Up, up and (nearly) away!

(Apologies for the minimalist post today.  Bit under the cosh in terms of free time.)

My good buddy, Dan Gomez, forwarded this piece on very, and I mean ‘very’, low cost space flight, courtesy of the Brooklyn Space Program.

Enjoy!

By Paul Handover

Friendship – alpaca style

Yet another beauty from Naked Capitalism

Regular readers will have run out of counting the number of times that I applaud Yves Smith and her amazing blog, Naked Capitalism.  Not only is it a fantastic source of many stories of real public concern, her daily antidote du jour is often delightful.  Here’s the one that came from her Blog posting of the 19th September.

Clarence and Cindy

Cattle dog Clarence plays with an alpaca named Cindy in “Alpaca Land” in Goeming, Austria. The two have lived together on the farm since they were 3 months old. Eighty-seven alpacas, the largest flock in Austria, live on the farm.

By Paul Handover

Another ‘ah’ moment!

Again, apologies for a ‘thin’ posting – here’s why.

I first saw this in Naked Capitalism but the picture came from the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper 6th August, 2010.

Trust!

The accompanying text:

This baby six-week old kookaburra called Kookie and a tiny duckling have struck up a friendship at the Seaview Wildlife Encounter, near Ryde in the Isle of Wight. Kookie was saved by staff after they feared his parents would kill him. And the duckling was rescued from one of the park’s aviaries because he was thought too small to defend himself against larger birds. Keepers took a chance and decided to see what would happen if they were put together. The duckling instantly cuddled up under Kookie’s protective wing, thinking he was his mum and Kookie didn’t seem to mind playing the caring parent

Picture: MIKAEL BUCK / SOLENT

By Paul Handover

More on those noctilucent clouds

Otherwise known as Night Shining Clouds

There was an article on Learning from Dogs on July 22nd about these mysterious and beautiful clouds.

This is just an update to show you an example of photographs taken by Finn Jari Luomanen over the night of the 29th-30th July. All the pictures may be seen here – they are of this quality:

2010_07_29-30 Mesoscale convective system

Here’s what Jari said about this night:

This mesoscale convective system sweeped over Finland with ferocious energy. The day before was historical as a record breaking temperature of 37,2 degs Celsius was recorded. The MCS proved to be a good match.

Thunderstrikes happened every two seconds at the peak and it was difficult to expose correctly due to the multiple strikes in each exposure.

Noctilucent clouds shone above the swiftly moving cell creating an eerie electric blue backdrop for the spectacle.

Never before have I seen anything close to this. I was jumping behind the tripod firing away in the hot, humid night. Since when has Finland turned into tropics?

This is a very beautiful planet!

By Paul Handover

Night shining clouds

Better known as Noctilucent Clouds

(Hoping this link is still available on the BBC web site)

Just watch this and be inspired!

From that BBC link:

Each summer, high in the night skies of the far northern and southern hemispheres a unique phenonmenon occurs – noctilucent clouds. Little is known about them, but now an amateur astronomer from north Wales is trying to predict when they are likely to appear.

Here, John Rowlands, one of four finalists in the BBC’s search for the Amateur Scientist of the Year So You Want To Be A Scientist? – and his mentor, Professor Nick Mitchell from the University of Bath – take a closer look at these mysterious silver and blue waves at the edge of space.

John has his own Facebook page here with plenty more information.

And a quick Google images search found this:

Noctilucent clouds

And there’s still more. This delightful video on YouTube, courtesy of NASA.

Described thus:

The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission will provide the first detailed exploration of Earth’s unique and elusive noctilucent or night shining clouds that are found literally on the “edge of space.” Located near the top of the Earth’s mesosphere (the region just above the stratosphere), very little is known about how these polar mesospheric clouds form or why they vary. They are being seen at lower latitudes than ever before and have been growing brighter and more frequent, leading some scientists to suggest that this recent increase may be the direct result of human-induced climate change. The mission is led by Dr. James Russell of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Hampton University.

By Paul Handover

(with thanks to the UK Flyer List for bringing this to my attention.)