england's lake district

a couple weeks ago i drove to england's lake district with some friends. the drive was gorgeous, if a bit strenuous for the vehicle!


obviously, lakes are plentiful.




another strikingly abundant feature of much of the british countryside is stone walls. they seem to meander randomly around many areas i've explored and are even identified on ordinance survey maps indicating places where crossings have been constructed!


the presence of the walls has something to do with the enclosure acts that started in the mid 1700s requiring farmers to enclose their fields. over 5000 acts of parliament were passed which covered almost 7 million acres of land, enclosing about 21% of england!


the greenest grass ever?



amazingly, the weather was pleasant throughout the entire weekend, but i must admit that plentiful showers bring lovely flowers!


we ended the weekend with a bit of fun at the beach!


"nottn'm woz 'ere"

black holes are out of sight!

i know this photo is classified as an "awkward family photo" and all, but i kinda want that shirt!


spotted at fresh photons

temporal gallery

this month's gallery for the royal observatory greenich's astronomy photographer of the year challenge was chosen by stuart, who writes the astronomy blog.

my favorite from his temporal gallery was this photo by thierry legault. aside from the necessary timing and technical skills required to capture the ISS just as it passes in front of the sun, the foresight to catch the ISS with the shuttle atlantis docked (on the left) is brilliant! this was the final space flight for atlantis before it was retired.


the clarity of the silhouette is stunning.

fly to the moon

dangerous dive

this picture made my heart jump. it looks so exciting and refreshing and scary that it made me instantly anxious.


then i noticed the dark thing in the photo appearing to have jumped just after the long-haired man in sri lanka, and wondered if he had a pet mouse that simply couldnt live without him? unfortunately, i couldnt get any more information from the caption at the big picture.

constrained ball

while its true that the name is unfortunate, this innovation is certainly very clever. the "constrained ball" is a drawing aid created by korean designer giha woo. you attach it to a pen and are then able to draw straight lines across a whole page without accidentally crossing out the neighboring couple lines, inevitably, by accident!


the downside is that you have to be using a flat surface for the constrained ball to produce a strait line, and i find i get a lot of paper reading accomplished on the bus these days, or leaning back in my chair with my feet up.

sixty symbols: asteroids

there has been quite an excited buzz around the internet about the recent video showing asteroid discovery from 1980 to 2010. what you gain from watching is that there are LOTS of asteroids out there, which is "cool and mildly terrifying" as a friend so succinctly described it.

it just so happens that sixty symbols released a video describing asteroids today which describes, ironically, why individual asteroids are no longer given unique symbols.

castles in north wales

here are some photos from a trip to wales i took in the spring. the focus of this trip was to see old castles, but we stoppen in Llangollen...


and saw this interesting aqueduct.


we visited conwy castle in nothern wales....


we didnt enter this one, but we walked around the wall that still surrounds the city.




we found the smallest house in great britain! the last occupant was 6 ft 3 and named robert jones. the tiny flat was condemned in the early 1900s, but when the tall man got kicked out, he traveled around great britain to visit all the small houses to verify that his was indeed the smallest.


a mere 20 miles south of conwy, is the massive caernarfon castle, which translates to carnarvon ("car-NAR-von") in english, if that makes the pronunciation any easier!








a small bit of the welsh language.

silent star wars

i'm almost more impressed by the piano composition than the silent movie bit, but its still worth a quick watch...

bad universe on TV!

phil plait, aka the bad astronomer, has a tv show on the discovery channel!! so if youre in the US, tune in this sunday night at 10pm.

here's a description of the episode: "65 million years ago, an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest slammed into the Earth wiping out the dinosaurs. Are we in for the same fate? Phil Plait investigates the possibility and tests some explosive measures that may just save our planet."

and here's a preview:



i'm excited for this opportunity for phil and i'm thrilled that he gets to share his enthusiasm and knowledge on TV for the masses! let me know what you think!

Sixty Symbols: you ask the questions!

the 100th video for the sixty symbols project will be filmed soon! the filmmaker, brady, is asking for you all to submit questions that he can ask us - without us knowing the questions beforehand! i like his advice: don't ask something that you could look up in a textbook or on the internet... see if you can be creative and ask questions we've never been asked before!

i admit, i'm moderately terrified by this idea, but certainly excited to see what you come up with! eek!

you can submit questions directly to brady at sixtysymbols [at] hotmail.co.uk or you can ask me a question in the comments if you want!

laser cooling

did you know you could cool a gas with lasers? this sixty symbols video explains the process...

(i didnt know there was such an intricate laser system here at the university of nottingham!)

(also, the last line of this video is great ;)

this is how you lock a gate

all across england and wales, there are public footpaths that are available for walking. i felt strange at first walking across someone's meadow where sheep are eating grass just meters away, but people have even built steps to help you over fences and walls that you might come across during your walk. these footpaths only apply to walkers (and "bridleways" that also allow cyclists and people on horseback), but i was still surprised to see this heavily-locked gate as we walked through the lake district in northwest england!

what the flux?

click image to embiggen...


via buzzfeed

UK exploration continues

it seems i'm working my way from the southwest to the north of the UK. this weekend i'm off to see how the rain feels in the lake district!

mountain photography

a nice collage by liesl pfeffer:

perseids and planets: evidence

did anyone get out to see the perseid meteor shower or the planets last week? in case you were clouded out or just not lucky this time around, you can see a nice 2010 perseids photo gallery, from which i've chosen a couple to share.

this is a shot by david harvey from mount lemmon in arizona, USA on august 12, 2010:


this capture comes from amir abolfath, from the alamut castle in iran, august 14, 2010:



today's APOD shows a lovely view of the current planetary alignment from a beach in portugal.


here's a key they provide so you can keep an eye out over the next few evenings! :)

how to be alone

a beautiful poem by tanya davis put to video by kilmmaker andrea dorfman.


via ze frank

procrastination meter

9000 on flickr

martian rock names

alexander trevi, pruned on flickr, compiled the NASA-listed names given to lots of rocks around the pathfinder's site. i think these two snapshots are interesting, but the full panorama is pretty amazing as well.



makes me wonder what i would name rocks on mars if i got the chance?

reboot

put up in new haven, connecticut by ryan laughlin.

space helmet reflections

awesome collection of 35 space helmet reflections compiled at 3 ton gallery.


click the image to enbiggen. can you identify all the sources? i certainly cannot, but i think its great that each row has a color theme.

perspective and creativity

i love this little story from my milk toof.

read it: here

testing gravity

more adventures in snowdonia, wales.

planets and the perseid meteor shower

tonight and the next few nights, the solar system treats us to the lovely sights of the perseid meteor shower. go outside and enjoy nature's display of meteors as the earth passes thru the interplanetary debris left by comet swift-tuttle.


you can also see where other people on earth have seen perseid meteors fly across the sky, or report your own sightings, via twitter, to help with the online project meteor watch.

even if you don't want to relax peacefully waiting for the meteor shower, you can pop out to see some excellent planetary alignments over the next few nights as well. venus is the super bright object in the west, and a bit to the south. mars hangs just above to the left and saturn above to the right. the sliver moon passes below this planetary triangle tomorrow night, aug 12th and to the left of the group on the 13th.

"AstroPixie Conquers Cyber Space as Advocate for Science"

that's right, according to my undergraduate alma mater, the university of cincinnati's mcmicken college of arts & sciences, i have officially conquered the entirety of cyber space! ;)

read the article titled "AstroPixie Conquers Cyber Space as Advocate for Science" here!

chemistry in the clouds: snowdonia

i lucked out with the weather for one day of the weekend and managed to hike to some of the highest peaks in wales, without sitting inside clouds at the top!


while i thoroughly enjoyed the "scramble" to the top, i must admit i'm so sore today that it was slightly painful to drink my coffee this morning ;)

coincidentally, brady happened to be on the same mountain range this weekend shooting some footage, not for sixty symbols, but for the periodic table of videos! they chose to climb on saturday, in the rain, but still managed to make cisplatinum on top of mt. snowdon! watch this 4-minute video that captures their journey to perform probably the highest chemistry experiment ever done in wales, as they make this popular anti-cancer drug:



find out more about their anti-cancer research group and donate to the cause: here!