vlad01 wrote:

Source of the post Best one I ever found was this one of what I am 90% certain is natrolite.

Definitely has the look and habit of natrolite! Awesome find. I love crystals that radiate like that.

My summer of rockhounding continues, this time to the eastern side of Washington, in search of my birthstone: garnet.

I recently went to the Maelstrom of Saltstraumen, the world's most powerful tidal current, and took some images from the bridge above it, as the current passed below at 20 km/h or so.  The strongest flow was still an hour away, but at the peak things just get more foamy.  It was midnight with the sun at the northern horizon, blocked by hills, but illuminated clouds still made much light enter at a narrow angle, which highlighted the current patterns.  The patterns reminded me quite a lot about the storms of Jupiter. Quite often there is a big circular motion with a tail of several smaller ones. In the water it was clear that the eddies were formed by massive amounts of water being pushed up and down, which gave me an insight in how important vertical movement is for such patterns to form.  To give a sense of scale, the largest whirlpools were perhaps 4-5 meters in diameter (occasionally with "arms" extending much further).

Great pictures, that soft and shallow angle lighting on them is perfect!

Over here in the San Juan Islands, a huge part of the Puget Sound flows through a narrow gorge called Deception Pass with the tide cycle, and the currents can peak at around 15kph forming similar whirlpools. It's amusing to watch less powerful boats struggle to push through it, and sometimes swimmers and kayakers try to brave it as well. What you noticed about the vertical motion being important in whirlpools is definitely true and can make them very dangerous, something that is well captured in this kayaker's account starting at 3:32 here when a whirlpool flips his boat over and gobbles him for a few seconds.

I've also sailed into Bay of Fundy in Canada, which has some strong currents, though not as dramatic.  The tidal range there, however, is insane.

I made a timelapse of some rain showers yesterday night.

That magical hour of an alpine dawn.

Last night I was able to capture some images of Mentor-2, an american classified geosynchronous satellite used for illegal espionage on European citizens. I've been trying to catch it for a month now and I finally got it. We know about the existence of the satellite because of a group of amateur satellite trackers and we know about the classified operations it performs thanks to the Edward Snowden leaked documents from the NSA. I reccomend you to read this excellent article if you are interested on this topic which also shows the Mentor-4, which is currently evesdropping on a communications satellite as close as a few tens of kilometers. Mentor-4 substituted Mentor-2 in its evesdropping operations on Thuraya-2 a few years ago.



I took 187 images of 8 second exposures (thanks to OpenCamera which allows for this on my phone), then in Photoshop I applied Contrast, Brightness and Saturation filters so the object could be clearly visible. Combine everything in a video editor and voilá, 2 hours compressed in 9 seconds.

I've done it with a pair of 20x80 binoculars and my phone camera attached to it. This was taken from my nieghbourhood in Madrid, so as an european capital city the night sky was full of smog and light pollution. Also the Moon was shining brightly and close to the field of view and there was a lot of dust suspended in the air, so the observation was made with sub-optimal conditions for sure. Next time I will move to a darker zone, on a moonless night with good seeing and try to do this again.

I'm amazed that with a pair of binoculars and a phone camera one can spot an artificial object at 37.000 km from our planet. This is probably the most distant man-made object I've ever seen with my own eyes. The fact that its dish antenna is believed to be more than 100 m in diameter (which would be the largest satellite in orbit) probably helps to spot the thing. Spying on spies, that's my hobby now.

Nice video catch last night, heading almost straight towards my house!  Meteorites very likely.  Low entry speed at near 11 km/s.  I suspect it has visited Earth before and been captured.  Pre entry orbit below (preliminary results).

FastFourierTransform wrote:

Last night I was able to capture some images of Mentor-2, an american classified geosynchronous satellite used for illegal espionage on European citizens. I've been trying to catch it for a month now and I finally got it. We know about the existence of the satellite because of a group of amateur satellite trackers and we know about the classified operations it performs thanks to the Edward Snowden leaked documents from the NSA. I reccomend you to read this excellent article if you are interested on this topic which also shows the Mentor-4, which is currently evesdropping on a communications satellite as close as a few tens of kilometers. Mentor-4 substituted Mentor-2 in its evesdropping operations on Thuraya-2 a few years ago.



I took 187 images of 8 second exposures (thanks to OpenCamera which allows for this on my phone), then in Photoshop I applied Contrast, Brightness and Saturation filters so the object could be clearly visible. Combine everything in a video editor and voilá, 2 hours compressed in 9 seconds.

I've done it with a pair of 20x80 binoculars and my phone camera attached to it. This was taken from my nieghbourhood in Madrid, so as an european capital city the night sky was full of smog and light pollution. Also the Moon was shining brightly and close to the field of view and there was a lot of dust suspended in the air, so the observation was made with sub-optimal conditions for sure. Next time I will move to a darker zone, on a moonless night with good seeing and try to do this again.

I'm amazed that with a pair of binoculars and a phone camera one can spot an artificial object at 37.000 km from our planet. This is probably the most distant man-made object I've ever seen with my own eyes. The fact that its dish antenna is believed to be more than 100 m in diameter (which would be the largest satellite in orbit) probably helps to spot the thing. Spying on spies, that's my hobby now.

all I can say is thank goodness for Snowden!
and you are right, if they spy on us we should have every right to spy on them!

midtskogen wrote:

Nice video catch last night, heading almost straight towards my house!  Meteorites very likely.  Low entry speed at near 11 km/s.  I suspect it has visited Earth before and been captured.  Pre entry orbit below (preliminary results).


orbit.jpg

early perseids?

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post early perseids

Not a Perseid, way too slow.  Besides, it wouldn't really be early.  The Perseids can be seen for mid-July, but they peak around 12th August.

Very small adjustments to the observations can push the speed up slightly, to 15 km/s, which also pushes the orbit out to the asteroid belt, which is far more common.  More data here.

how bright was it, Mid?  It looks like it might have been brighter than Venus (-4.4).  I checked the data page but it wasn't listed there (also the translation from Norwegian to English was....not complete lol.)

A hike through clouds and wildflowers.

I wondered if I could actually resolve the spectrum of a plasma using nothing but an old audio CD-R. Turns out, yes! Sometimes high-tech problems have low-tech solutions.

wow thats beautiful Wat!  can this be done with any optical disk (DVD//DVD-R/W//CD//CD-R/W,etc.)?  that low tech solution reminds me of something I once read about how to create a "portable particle colider" it basically involved using tape and a camera to record the "action" in low light.