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Тунгуска

2008-06-30

Tunguska event: trees Exactly 100 years ago, on 30 June 1908, there was a tiny explosion1 in the midst of Siberia in the Tunguska region2, felling a couple trees3. So what? Why blame UFOs or black holes for that – tststs… ;)

Okay, seriously: According to the mostly accepted opinion of scientists, it was an asteroid exploding 5–10 km4 above ground – which explains why there’s no big crater; results of a research group last year indicate that a lake a few miles away from the epicenter may be the result of the impact of a fragment.

» More in Wikipedia.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

  1. with a power of 10–15 megatons TNT, equivalent to over 1000 Hiroshima atom bombs [↩]
  2. accordingly, this post’s title is “Tunguska” in cyrillic letters [↩]
  3. 60–80 millions on an area of 2000 km² [↩]
  4. the exact numbers vary a little, depending on the source [↩]

Full moon #2

2008-06-23

This time, however, not about the nonsense full moon mysticism and astrology, but a few photographic tests of mine with my Canon 40D with Tamron 28-300mm VC (click for large versions, which are crops without size changes):

The full moon a few nights ago behind the city hall tower pinnacle – unfortunately the moon wasn’t high enough to get behind the ball or the vane, but only behind the middle part of the pinnacle, and I didn’t want to climb on the roof…; the second image is the not perfectly succeeded attempt to focus on the tower:
full moon full moon

With longer exposure, the moon gets too bright, of course, but you can dimly see the tower (yes, I should have focused on that) – first1 with 0.3s exposure time and without post-processing, then with 0.4s and a little color noise reduction and brightness curve adaption (if you don’t see anything above the ball above the moon, your monitor settings are wrong):
full moon full moon

I wouldn’t be opposed to hints from (not only) professionals… :)

  1. Photographed in the opposite order, of course, since the moon had moved farther to the west in the mean time. [↩]

Moles on Mars!!!

2008-05-26

The new Mars lander Phoenix touched down last night, everything seems to have worked well, scientists cheer about the first images – and what do I see:
THERE ARE MOLES ON MARS !!!1one

You don’t believe it? See yourself – on the left the original image where I marked the spot, top right the detail section, in the middle with enhanced contrast, bottom from this false-color version:

Mole on Mars

Now if that don’t look like a mole peering out of the ground – it almost seems to swim in it – what else? :P

For comparison, a photo of a mole from Earth:
mole
(by Michael Dufek, see Wikipedia)

PS: Yes, of course I’m just joking, playing around a little with this pareidolia, of course this is just a rock.
:loll:

Links of the Week (2008/17)

2008-04-27

Short and sweet:

Links of the Week (2008/14)

2008-04-06

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