A Momentary Lapse

As a scientist I can tell you this photo is 100% accurate. Photo cred: texashumor

Western Australia is still bigger

Most photos taken from space show our planet on a massive scale, but these recently released images from NASA offer a completely new perspective. 

The stunning photos focus on entire continents and even individual countries.

NASA Releases Incredible Satellite Photos of Individual Countries

via Design You Trust

These are not images from NASA they are visualizations using NASA imagery.

Source: http://www.dreamstime.com/antartis_latest-illustrations-vectors-clipart_pg1

What is this?

It's a Saiga. How did I find this out? by googling "african weird snout goat things"

Edit: And after reading Wikipedia I now know they aren't goats and aren't found in Africa. Yay!

August Saturn Occultation (fixed) on Flickr.

This is a sequence of images from the Saturn Occultation on August 4th. Shot from my backyard in Perth, Western Australia. Images were overlaid by hand in photoshop Canon 7D Tamron Adaptall 500mm f8 Tamron 2x TC Tracked on a Vixen Polarie

Celestial Ancestors on Flickr.

The Milky Way and Thrombolites. Lake Clifton, Perth. The flare in the top left is from a 33% moon Canon 7D Sigma 10-20 @ 10mm f4 15 image 2 row panorama Tracked on a Vixen Polarie Stitched with Hugin

Moon Mars Spica on Flickr.

2 image composite. 1 exposed for the Moon, 1 for Mars and Spica

Dunsborough Milkyway Pano on Flickr.

7 shot panorama of the milkyway arching over Dunsborough Canon 7D Sigma 10-20 @ 10mm f4 ISO 1250 100s exposure Tracked on Vixen Polarie Images stitched with Hugin

Lake Hillier, Australia

Gotta go here one day

T. Dylan Moore

Happy Towel Day! Douglas Adams would have been 61 this year. Here’s to one of the funniest men who ever lived.

Moon and Mars on Flickr.

Conjunction of the Moon and Mars. May 11th 2014 Canon 7D Tamron Adaptall 500mm

Love this show

Perth, Australia (NASA, International Space Station, 03/22/13) by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr.

I can see my house from here! (actually I can’t, the image doesn’t go far enough east)

Watch this liquid boil and freeze at the same time! It’s not magic, these folks just dropped the pressure and temperature to the perfect place to hit the substance’s triple point, that magical nexus on the phase diagram where solid, liquid, and vapor coexist.

The liquid above is almost certainly not pure water (those crystals look a little funny), but here’s water’s phase diagram, complete with triple point and its various ice phases. Yes, even that one.

(via Mental Floss)

Very cool...

Perth City Startrails on Flickr.

Shot from the top of the zigzag on Gooseberry Hill This was taken a while ago, so I’ve forgotten the settings

Douglas Adams is the best when it comes to describe characters

we need to teach classes on Douglas Adams analogies okay

“He leant tensely against the corridor wall and frowned like a man trying to unbend a corkscrew by telekinesis.”

"The Galaxy, which had been enjoying a period of unusual peace and prosperity at the time, reeled like a man getting mugged in a meadow.”

"it was a deep, hollow malevolent voice which sounded like molten tar glurping out of a drum with evil on its mind.”

"Stones, then rocks, then boulders which pranced past him like clumsy puppies, only much, much bigger, much, much harder and heavier, and almost infinitely more likely to kill you if they fell on you.”

"… a large and voluminous creature who looked like someone losing a fight with a pink duvet …”

"He screwed up his face and then dropped his head forward, shaking it like someone trying to shake a coin out of a money box.”

"He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off.”

"He leapt to his feet like an author hearing the phone ring”

"he started to stalk forward slowly and stealthily wearing a puzzled frown of concentration, like a leopard that’s not sure whether it’s just seen a half-empty tin of cat food half a mile away across a hot and dusty plain.”

"it looked only partly like a spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches and so on, and a great deal like a small upended Italian bistro.”

"If it was an emotion, it was a totally emotionless one. It was hatred, implacable hatred. It was cold, not like ice is cold, but like a wall is cold. It was impersonal, not as a randomly flung fist in a crowd is impersonal, but like a computer-issued parking summons is impersonal. And it was deadly - again, not like a bullet or a knife is deadly, but like a brick wall across a motorway is deadly.”

You forgot one of the best ones:

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t."

The ships one is my go to Douglas Adams quote

Large Magellanic Cloud on Flickr.

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a nearby galaxy, and a satellite of the Milky Way. At a distance of slightly less than 50 kiloparsecs (≈163,000 light-years), the LMC is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way. It has a mass equivalent to approximately 10 billion times the mass of the Sun, making it roughly 1/100th as massive as the Milky Way, and a diameter of about 14,000 light-years. It is visible as a faint “cloud” in the night sky of the southern hemisphere straddling the border between the constellations of Dorado and Mensa, and it appears from Earth more than 20 times the width of the full moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Magellanic_Cloud ——————— Photo taken at Serpentine Dam. Canon 7D Tamron Adaptall 135mm f2.8 30s, ISO 3200 Tracked with a Vixen Polarie