The Picture Thread

ChooChooCharlie

Well-Known Member
Hangin' at the Japanese Friendship Gardens today
Cherry blossoms doing their Spring thing
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macbill

Oh No! Mr macbill!!
Staff member
There is a Canadian goose (not gander) sitting on eggs atop the avian perch in front of my townhouse. I've read they lay their eggs every 1.5 days, and then occupy the nest until they hatch 28 days later. To me it seemed she finally started incubation the 24th of March. Once they all hatch, the mom and dad honk encouragement from below. One by one, they jump....
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From a few years ago... just before mom & dad jumped down to call them
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CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
From APOD...What are those red filaments in the sky? They are a rarely seen form of lightning confirmed only about 30 years ago: red sprites. Recent research has shown that following a powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike, red sprites may start as 100-meter balls of ionized air that shoot down from about 80-km high at 10 percent the speed of light. They are quickly followed by a group of upward streaking ionized balls. The featured image was taken earlier this year from Las Campanas observatory in Chile over the Andes Mountains in Argentina. Red sprites take only a fraction of a second to occur and are best seen when powerful thunderstorms are visible from the side.
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The Sun sets beneath two horizons...
Taken from the Paranal mountain, home to the ESO Paranal site that houses the Very Large Telescope (VLT), this spectacular view points out over the South Pacific Ocean at sunset. The water itself is hidden beneath a second sea of very thin clouds — so thin that the Sun shines up through them, revealing the line of the true water horizon. This gives the odd illusion that the Sun is sinking into the sea.
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CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
The striking radiant light visible in the sky here is a phenomenon called airglow, which lends a magical appearance to the already breathtaking night sky. As the name suggests, airglow is a faint glow in the air created as atoms and molecules in the atmosphere combine and emit radiation. It is only visible in regions where the sky is dark enough that artificial lights do not overwhelm it. This perspective was captured from the site of VISTA, the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. The trail of faint yellow lights along the ground leads towards Cerro Paranal, the mountain in the center of the image, where ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) is just about discernible at the top. The bright band of stars that forms our home galaxy, the Milky Way, appears to arc over the mountain, infused with the colors of the atmosphere.
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CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
Just above the horizon, The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades open star cluster can be seen above distant mountain peaks. Directly above them, the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), giant clouds and arcs of ionized gas — called emission nebula, seen here as red patches, and the Milky Way.
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