Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Category: Photography
I love taking photographs but this takes the cake!
(Note: there’s an option in WordPress to insert a ‘read more‘ link, the effect of which is to limit what you, dear reader, can see when you first come to a Blog article. I prefer normally not to insert that link. But for reasons that will soon be very obvious, it has to be used in this Post.)
Just watch this.
OK, more about this amazing man follows,
Continue reading “Crazy, dangerous and very, very beautiful”
The incredible achievements of man.
From the BBC website,
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC NewsIt is a stunning image and one that is bound to be reproduced over and over again whenever they recall the history of the US space shuttle.
The picture was taken by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli as he left the International Space Station in May in a Soyuz capsule to return to Earth.
Safety procedures mean the Russian vehicle would never normally be in transit when a shuttle is present.
It makes this the first-ever image of an American orbiter docked to the ISS.
Endeavour sits firmly on the bow of the station, which is moving across the surface of the Earth at a speed of 27,000km/h (17,000mph) and at an altitude of approximately 355km (220 miles).
Nespoli’s camera is looking along the ISS’s truss, or backbone, which carries the four sets of giant solar wings. The stern is occupied by Europe’s robotic freighter – the Johannes Kepler ship.
The pictures were acquired on 23 May but were only released by the US space agency (Nasa) on Tuesday [7th June, PH]. They had been eagerly awaited by space fans.
Nespoli had spent a lot of time during his 159-day stay at the station taking pictures of Earth and life aboard the international outpost. Many of these images were posted on his mission Flickr account. It was widely expected therefore that the European Space Agency astronaut would get some excellent shots during the unique departure.
Enthusiasts on the ground with telescopes routinely try to snap a shuttle attached to the ISS, and some of the results have been very impressive. But none of these pictures compares to the majestic portrait acquired by Nespoli so close to the orbiting complex.
The timing and subject are also perfect. Endeavour is seen here making her final sortie into orbit, making the last big US assembly item delivery – a $2bn particle physics experiment known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. The seven-tonne machine now sits on top of the platform.
Endeavour was also the orbiter chosen to take up the first American segment of the platform when the project had just got started in the late 1990s.
The youngest of Nasa’s shuttles returned to Earth on 1 June and will now be prepared for public display at a science museum in California. Sister ship Atlantis stands ready on the launch pad in Florida for a swansong of her own in July. Once her mission is done, no orbiter will ever fly again.
Nespoli’s crewmates in the Soyuz were Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev; and Nasa astronaut Cady Coleman. Apart from the photo opportunity, their departure was a standard ISS crew rotation flight.
Their replacements blasted off from Kazakhstan on Tuesday in another Soyuz vehicle. Nasa astronaut Mike Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa are scheduled to arrive at the ISS on Thursday, raising its complement once again to six individuals.
The venerable Soyuz will be the only way for astronauts and cosmonauts to reach the platform in the years following the retirement of the shuttle fleet.
Nasa hopes some US commercial carriers will become available in the middle of the decade.
The NASA weblink attributed above is here, from which can be read,
This image of the International Space Station and the docked space shuttle Endeavour, flying at an altitude of approximately 220 miles, was taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on May 23, 2011 (USA time). The pictures taken by Nespoli are the first taken of a shuttle docked to the International Space Station from the perspective of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Onboard the Soyuz were Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev; Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut; and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman. Coleman and Nespoli were both flight engineers. The three landed in Kazakhstan later that day, completing 159 days in space.
Do go to the NASA website here as there are a total of 40 stunning images.
This is just so beautiful.
The image is from the Photopic Sky Survey website. From which also comes the following,
What do you see? This was the anthropic question of a year-long photographic project dubbed the Photopic Sky Survey, meant to reveal the entire night sky as if it rivalled the brightness of day. In it we see tens of millions of stars, the glowing factories of newborn ones, and a rich tapestry of dust all floating on a stage of unimaginable proportions. I hope you enjoy this new view of our place in the universe as much as I have enjoyed making it.
The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures. Large in size and scope, it portrays a world far beyond the one beneath our feet and reveals our familiar Milky Way with unfamiliar clarity. When we look upon this image, we are in fact peering back in time, as much of the light—having traveled such vast distances—predates civilization itself.
Well done, Nick Risinger, for all your efforts and for presenting such a magnificent detailed view of the heavens above.
Plus, more or less the same time, this came to my attention, from the BBC News website.
The Crab Nebula has shocked astronomers by emitting an unprecedented blast of gamma rays, the highest-energy light in the Universe.
The cause of the 12 April gamma-ray flare,described at the Third Fermi Symposium in Rome, is a total mystery.
It seems to have come from a small area of the famous nebula, which is the wreckage from an exploded star.
The object has long been considered a steady source of light, but the Fermi telescope hints at greater activity.
The gamma-ray emission lasted for some six days, hitting levels 30 times higher than normal and varying at times from hour to hour.
While the sky abounds with light across all parts of the spectrum, Nasa’s Fermi space observatory is designed to measure only the most energetic light: gamma rays.
These emanate from the Universe’s most extreme environments and violent processes.
The Crab Nebula is composed mainly of the remnant of a supernova, which was seen on Earth to rip itself apart in the year 1054.
At the heart of the brilliantly coloured gas cloud we can see in visible light, there is a pulsar – a rapidly spinning neutron star that emits radio waves which sweep past the Earth 30 times per second. But so far none of the nebula’s known components can explain the signal Fermi sees, said Roger Blandford, director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, US.
Beautiful images that will make appreciate the majesty of wild animals.
First a big thank you to Mary and Ed G. for passing me an email that contained fabulous photographs of the polar bear playing with a husky dog. From that email it was the matter of a few moments to find more on the Internet.
Let’s start with a YouTube video of a short talk by Stuart Brown called Animals at Play.
Then another YouTube video that is from FirstScience TV, which appears to be a defunct website.
Here’s Norbert Rosing’s website and here’s the website for the charity, Polar Bears International.
Enjoy your week-end.
These charming pictures were taken by renowned nature photographer Norbert Rosing, whose work has appeared inNational Geographic and other magazines, as well as several books including The World of the Polar Bear (Firefly Books, 1996), in which Rosing recounts the story of how these particular photographs came to be taken.
The location was a kennel outside Churchill, Manitoba owned by dog breeder Brian Ladoon, who kept some 40 Canadian Eskimo sled dogs there when Rosing visited in 1992. A large polar bear showed up one day and took an unexpected interest in one of Ladoon’s tethered dogs. The other dogs went crazy as the bear approached, Rosing says, but this one, named Hudson, “calmly stood his ground and began wagging his tail.” To Rosing and Ladoon’s surprise, the two “put aside their ancestral animus,” gently touching noses and apparently trying to make friends.
If you want to watch the whole sequence of photographs including background notes to each picture, click here.
A wonderful tribute to Yuri Gagarin and all his team.
When I recently wrote of it being 41 years since Swigert on board Apollo 13 transmitted “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” I also included a closing reflection as follows,
Finally, this Post is published, not only on the 41st anniversary of that memorable Apollo Flight but the day after the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s first flight of a human into space, the 12th April, 1961.
Coincidentally, our favourite documentary film website, Top Documentary Films, featured on April 14th the new film First Orbit. We watched the film that night. It was a most unusual format for a film, yet a most haunting experience. Watching the credits, it then became clear that the film was a co-operative venture made especially for the 50th anniversary of that remarkable, historic flight.
Of course, had I previously been aware of the venture and this remarkable film then it would have been promoted on Learning from Dogs in good time before the anniversary date. However, better late than never!
Indeed, there is a dedicated website in recognition of this First Orbit. Here’s the background to the film,
April 12th 1961 – Yuri Gagarin is about to see what no other person has seen in the history of humanity – the Earth from space. In the next 108 minutes he’ll see more than most people do in a lifetime. What sights awaited the first cosmonaut silently gliding over the world below? What was it like to view the oceans and continents sailing by from such a height?
In a unique collaboration with the European Space Agency, and the Expedition 26/27 crew of theInternational Space Station, we have created a new film of what Gagarin first witnessed fifty years ago.
By matching the orbital path of the Space Station, as closely as possible, to that of Gagarin’s Vostok 1spaceship and filming the same vistas of the Earth through the new giant cupola window, astronaut Paolo Nespoli, and documentary film maker Christopher Riley, have captured a new digital high definition view of the Earth below, half a century after Gagarin first witnessed it.
Weaving these new views together with historic, recordings of Gagarin from the time, (subtitled in Englsih) and an original score by composer Philip Sheppard, we have created a spellbinding film to share with people around the world on this historic anniversary.
The music in the film is most beautiful, quite moving. Here’s the background to the music from the First Orbit website,
The music in our film is all composed by Philip Sheppard and comes from his album Cloud Songs.
First Orbit’s producer Christopher Riley first worked with Philip in 2006 on the Sundance Award winning feature documentary film ‘In the Shadow of the Moon‘ and since then Philip had been working on a new suite of music inspired by spaceflight.
“We’d been working with some of these tracks on another project” says Chris, “and we suddenly realised how perfectly they could compliment ‘First Orbit’ as well. We contacted Philip to ask his permission to use them, only to find that his entire Cloud Song album was already in orbit onboard the International Space Station!”
“NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, had them on her iPod” says Philip. “Her husband Josh Simpson is a friend of mine and they’d listened to a lot of my music together before she left, so I made up a playlist for her!”
Quite by coincidence Cady had been listening to the music in ‘First Orbit’ at one end of the Space Station whilst European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli was shooting for the film at the other end, without either of them knowing the connection!
Back on Earth Chris and the film’s editor Stephen Slater took Philip’s tracks from Cloud Song and weaved them together with Paolo’s new views of the Earth to create the different moods of the film; from the first views of snowy Siberia to the darkness of night over the Pacific Ocean and the homecoming over Africa, as Gagarin starts to re-enter the atmosphere.
The result is a mesmerising combination of imagary and music which we hope convey the spectrum of emotions which no doubt went through Yuri’s mind as he gazed down upon the Earth.
Finally, here’s the film. It’s an hour and thirty-nine minutes and, as I said, an unconventional film experience. But if any part of you either remembers the event or wonders what it was like, those 50 years ago, then find somewhere out of reach of interruptions and watch the film.
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,
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.
A bit tight on time for today’s Post so just feast your eyes on this image.
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.”
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
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 ….
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!
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.
Wonderful.
By Paul Handover
Learning from Dogs 