This image marks the opening of a new window on the
submillimetre universe with the Atacama Large
Millimeter Array (ALMA). The first released image
from ALMA is overlaid here with a beautiful view of
the Antennae Galaxies taken by the Hubble Space
Telescope (CERN
Courier December
2006 p14). The on-going merger of the two spiral
galaxies (NGC 4038 and 4039) triggers intense star
formation producing bright, blue stars out of dense
clouds of cold gas, which are now revealed for the
first time by ALMA at wavelengths of 0.87 mm (in
yellow) and 2.6 mm (in red). The quite clumpy view
by ALMA – taken with "only" 12 antennae in a compact
arrangement – is just a taster for what is to come
and does not reflect the array’s potential to
surpass Hubble in sharpness by 2013, when the full
array of 66 antennae built in Europe, North America
and East Asia will be installed at 5000 m altitude
in the desert of Chajnantor, Chile (CERN
Courier March
2009 p11).
Image credits: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); visible light
image: the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Source: ESO.
About the author
Compiled by Marc Türler, INTEGRAL Science Data
Centre and Observatory of the University of Geneva.
Some New
Photographs
taken from
the refurbished Hubble
Space
Telescope:
CLICK HERE!
for a link to the article on the
BBC Science Site:
in the text you will find a link for a close-up view of seven
photographs,
including one of the "Butterfly Nebula"
Another link to a more recent collection of the highest quality
recent Hubble photographs of galaxies, taken from a new book, and
published by the Internet daily Newspaper: "The Huffington Post":
CLICK HERE!
Please
CLICK HERE for a collection, selected by Astronomers, of the ten
most amazing photographs taken by the Hubble telescope over the last
sixteen years.
The even more Powerful
Space Telescope "Herschel"
has just sent back its first
space pictures: the "Whirlpool" Spiral Galaxy "M51" - Amazing
even its Team
The image produced by the
NASA "Spitzer" Infra-red telescope
contrasted with that of the
European Space Agency "Herschel:
The "Spitzer" is pure
infra-red; the "Herschel" is designed to produce both infra-red
images and from the other end of the spectrum.
An enhanced picture brought
them both together (and perhaps other elements) to produce this
enhanced image on what was a first attempt:
For an account of this feat,
read the BBC Science page article:
CLICK HERE!
For a further BBC Science
page article on Herschel, with further photographs
CLICK HERE!
14 November:
Photographs
of other
Planets
outside the
Solar System
Published -
One of a
Single
Planet
Circling its
Star,
the Second
of Three
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have taken the first
visible-light snapshot of a planet orbiting another star. The images
show the planet, named Fomalhaut b, as a tiny point source of light
orbiting the nearby, bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25
light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis. An immense
debris disk about 21.5 billion miles across surrounds the star.
Fomalhaut b is orbiting 1.8 billion miles inside the disk's sharp
inner edge.
This photograph, as the most convenient to manage, was downloaded
from the Washington Post of 13 November.
We recomend interested viewers to visit the web-site "HubbleSite"
which contains full information and pictures:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/39/
On the same day - 14 November - it has been announced
that three other planets ("exoplanets") have been discovered and
photographed, evidently by a different system,
circling another star:
Photograph from BBC Science pages article: "
Information about both discoveries from
Washington Post of 14
November (more scientifically expressed than by BBC on same day):
"There are disputes about whether these are the first
exoplanet photos. Others have made earlier claims, but those
pictures haven't been confirmed as planets or universally accepted
yet. The photos released Thursday are being published in a
scientifically prominent journal, but that still hasn't convinced
all the experts. Alan Boss, an exoplanet expert at the Carnegie
Institution of Washington, and Harvard exoplanet hunter Lisa
Kaltenegger both said more study is needed to confirm these photos
are proven planets and not just brown dwarf stars.
MIT planetary scientist Sara Seager, at the NASA
press conference, said earlier planetary claims "are in a gray
area." But these discoveries, "everybody would agree is a planet,"
said Seager, who was not part of either planet-finding team.
The Hubble team this spring compared a 2006 photo to
one of the same body taken by Hubble in 2004. The scientists used
that to show that the object orbited a star and was part of a
massive red dust ring which is usually associated with planets _
making it less likely to be a dwarf star.
Macintosh's team used ground-based telescopes to spot
three other planets orbiting a different star. That makes it less
likely they are a pack of brown dwarf stars.
The planet
discovered by Hubble is one of the smallest exoplanets found yet.
It's somewhere between the size of Neptune and three times bigger
than Jupiter. And it may have a Saturn-like ring.
It circles the star
Fomalhaut, pronounced FUM-al-HUT, which is Arabic for "mouth of the
fish." It's in the constellation Piscis Austrinus and is relatively
close by _ a mere 148 trillion miles away, practically a next-door
neighbor by galactic standards. The planet's temperature is around
260 degrees, but that's cool by comparison to other exoplanets.
The planet is only
about 200 million years old, a baby compared to the more than 4
billion-year-old planets in our solar system. That's important to
astronomers because they can study what Earth and planets in our
solar system may have been like in their infancy, said Paul Kalas at
the University of California, Berkeley. Kalas led the team using
Hubble to discover Fomalhaut's planet.
One big reason the
picture looks fuzzy is that the star Fomalhaut is 100 million times
brighter than its planet.
The team led by
Macintosh at Lawrence Livermore found its planets a little earlier,
spotting the first one in 2007, but taking extra time to confirm the
trio of planets circling a star in the Pegasus constellation. The
star is about 767 trillion miles away, but visible with binoculars.
It's called HR 8799, and the three planets orbiting it are seven to
10 times larger than Jupiter, Macintosh said.
"I've been doing
this for eight years and after eight years we get three at once," he
said."
Yet another rare Meteorological Object
Photographed in England
by Visitors to here and to the Web-site
Keith and Corinne Bennett are
aware of our interest in clouds, and have sent us this
photograph of an object which they could not identify:
They wrote to the
Meteorological Office of the U.K. asking for information about
it.
Their first reply was: "I think
the rainbow is caused by the sun shining through the layer of
high, thin cloud (called cirrostratus)."
But they pursued the matter:
"For your records the rainbow appeared at about 18.00 hrs for
about twenty minutes above our Old Rectory at Michelmersh SO51
0NU. I am sure your diagnosis is correct, and we have
often seen a concentric rainbow as a halo around the sun. But
strangely this rainbow was not concentric to the sun but opposed
to it and the rainbow was almost overhead whilst the sun was
edging towards the north west."
To which they received an
answer from a higher echelon: "As the National Met Service and a
world leading source of information and advice on the weather
and natural environment we are well equipped to deal with your
enquiry.
The Picture that you sent through is a picture of a
Circumzenithal Arc.
As Chris mentioned this is caused by light refraction in the
upper atmosphere. To try to see them you (generally) need to
face the sun and then look directly above your ahead.
This Arc is one of the most
colourful of the sun's haloes and may be seen several
times a year. It looks a bit like an upside down rainbow high
above the sun ( just like the one in your picture).
It is caused by sunlight refracted through the edges of
plate-shaped crystals. In effect each crystal is acting as a 90
degree prism which gives the arc such pure colours.
Apart from having the right shape the base of the crystals must
also be horizontal, which is why this arc is not always seen.
Unfortunately the circumzenithal arc is often missed because it
is so high in the sky, the closest point is 46 degrees above the
sun. The higher the sun the shorter the arc, it won't be visible
at all when the sun is above 32 degrees."
Thank you Keith and Corinne!
[The item
below has remained on the site for some time, but it merits
inspection by the large number of new viewers. With its
illustrations, it makes a good pair with the above new item:]
Recently we
presented you with a Meteorological Puzzle
asking what this
object might be, rounded and surrounded by a spectrum, and clearly very high
...
It was identified by one of the
nurses in the hospital. Unhesitatingly, she said it was a
"Glitský" - a "shining cloud". She said she had seen a similar one a year ago.
The Hospital Administrator was able to add to this. It was, he said, a very high
feature - higher than the already distant clouds which come in front of it.
Extremely low temperatures freeze the liquid element of the cloud making it crystalline. Light which passes through the cloud is refracted into a spectrum.
Google.com has many sites concerned with this feature, which seems a particular
feature of Iceland, though it is seen elsewhere even in England. Many are in
Icelandic, which means that they are not accesible to many people.
But a single page of a school project, headed "Glitský"
[click here for the link] has an interesting video, lasting about a minute. If
you do NOT click then on the arrow under the screen-mask, but on the reddish "glitsky"
which is above the screen-mask and at the left side;
your computer may play it automatically on your "Real" or "Windows Media"
player; in which case change to "Full Screen" for a better view. It
is much more spectacular than the one we saw here. Another page, belonging to the
"Náttúrustofa Norðurlands
vestra" [click here for the link] has some good photographs: go to the top
of the page and click on two titles containing the word "Glitský": "... í
desember, ... í janüar", and go down the photographs, thumb nails of which appear on the right.
With the last you might have to go back to search-machine and summon the title
as given above.
Since I wrote this, Thor Jakobsson
of Icelandic Meteorological Office has sent me the following Email:
"Many people enjoyed seeing "glitský" in recent days and sent their photos
to Vedurstofan (Icelandic Meteorological Office). In Icelandic the clouds
are sometimes called "perlumóðurský" which is more of a translation of the
English name: "mother-of pearl". I have listed below two web-sites for your
information.
These rare
clouds, sometimes called mother-of-pearl clouds, are 15 - 25km (9 -16 miles)
high in the stratosphere and well above tropospheric clouds. See further:
as well as:
I
hope this is of use." We are very grateful to Thor for this
information. From the second of these addresses we find that "nacreous
clouds" is another name.
These two web-sites
are in English.
See also the link
to the web-site of the "Cloud Appreciation Society" at the bottom of this
page.
NEW COMMENT!
Recently a friend
of your Editor, the Cambridge Geographer Alfred ("Dick") Grove, sent
him this summary of a recent article on Nacreous Clouds, of which
Thór Jakobsson approved very much:
"I
saw an article by James Bullock in a Cambridge journal called
Bluesci today (Issue 11, Lent 2008, p. 21) which might (or might
not) interest you. (But I think you sent me a relevant picture) It
is about nacreous
clouds and is illustrated
by pictures from Lón, E Iceland. Such stratospheric
clouds are said to be
caused by Mie scattering when air masses greatly differing in
temperature come into contact at high latitudes and generate a
vortex in which the air becomes isolated and cooled to below -78°C,
thereby condensing and freezing water vapour and nitric acid to form
‘mother of pearl’ clouds.
Chemical reactions take place on the surface of the
clouds liberating CFC
halogens from their otherwise stable forms. Sunlight photons allow
reactions to take place between the halogens and ozone. With
depletion of the ozone, temperatures rise, the vortex breaks up and
the nacreous
clouds disperse."
THE
PROCESS FOR THE BEATIFICATION AND CANONISATION
OF
POPE JOHN PAUL II
This was solemnly opened after Vespers of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul
in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, with a solemn swearing in of all the officials,
under the Presidency of the Vicar-General for His Holiness for the Diocese of
Rome, Cardinal Ruini.
Here, Cardinal Ruini adds his signature to the document establishing the
process:
For
the official website of the Beatification and Canonisation of Pope John Paul II,
click here.
The website now has some new photographs of the opening of the process, much
better than those originally published.
Last week
the press learnt the report that a French Sister who had once been a
nurse at the Saint Felicité Maternity Hospital in Paris had been cured
from Parkinson's Disease after intercession made to John Paul II.
It seemed
impossible to contain the news and so eventually a Press Conference was
called on 30 March with the Bishop of Aix-en-Provence presiding; he is
to the left in this picture. Soeur Marie-Simon-Pierre, who claims to have
been cured, is answering a question,
We recommend reading the article in the
usually sober Washington Post of last Thursday:
CLICK HERE!
15 March 2010:
a miracle has been reported as taking place at a visit of a nine-year
old Polish boy from Gdansk at the beginning of April 2009, who had been
suffering from a kidney tumor. According to Cardinal Dziwisz after
being taken in an invalid chair to pray at the tomb of Pope John Paul
II, he expressed the desire to walk around. From a report of the
American Catholic News Agency taken from the London Daily Mail at
the time, and now republished.
This beautiful symbolic
painting of Pope John Paul II
which is in the Vatican Galleries has come to our attention,
which we should like to display here:
"Papa Karol Wojtyla",
Monika Riemenschneider
[This is "painterly" in the
highest sense, for it moves in the closest sympathy with
the subject. The hands are beautifully drawn. The quality of its
water-colour parts may not be immediately appreciated.
Prosaically, one cannot correct a water-colour once one has
painted it. It is part of the creative process to compute how the
colours will appear when they are dry after they have been
allowed to merge or to drain downwards. The heavenly reality (more real!) - receding and relying on the paper
showing through the paint - is in a beautiful spiritual balance
with the firm, emphatic hands.
The Sisters of Stykkishólmur have
an earlier sketch by the same artist of Saint Thorlock in their
chapel.]
NEW!
As
announced on the front page of this website, a NEW
WEBSITE HAS BEEN OPENED AT THE VATICAN giving access
to most of the Vatican Museums.
For the convenience of visitors to the site, we
provide another link to the website here:
For the link to the Home Page
CLICK HERE!
For the list of Museums, click
next on "Vatican Museums Online"
Note that the extensive
galleries of the great painters of the past is indicated by
"Pinacoteca".
Note that when you use the
"Zoom" device, the image first becomes blurred, and then falls into
focus
Many of the features of
Vatican Radio's audio and television
connections seem to have changed, or become inaccessible - at
least to your editor.
The following seem the possibilities.
There is an official
Radio Vaticana site, which has among its
possibilities 'Live Television', but with which he has never been able
to establish a working connection.
But one wants to hear the words of the
Holy Father during his Wednesday audiences, and so this possibility can
always be relied on for producing a Radio Connection: for the opening
page of this, CLICK
HERE!
But there are also connections via the
Vatican site itself, among the different media of communication:
CLICK
HERE for the television services offered in English. Theoretically
to click on the square marked 'for live programmes' should bring you
immediately on-line. But we have found in the past that such is the
pressure of would- be viewers that it is necessary to make the
connection well in advance. Now there is an additional complication that
when one goes to the possible connections - Real, Windows Media and
QuickTime, with the first two one is told, without further explanation,
that these services are not available. But the
connection through QuickTime (as also with VLC) now proves possible and
satisfactory: follow the instructions printed on the first page of this
web-site, under the text of the Pope's address to the General Audience!
There are extensive archives of films
available (though some of them seem to have reached the end of their
lives). They go back to the death of John Paul II two years ago. The way
to them (ordered vertically by date and horizontally by quality) is
through the "Archives" button on the "television
services" mask just mentioned (there are the other langauges which
require a choice at the previous stage). We give an connection here: for
the Archives,
CLICK HERE!
To help you to
understand the nature of both the Institute of the Incarnate
Word and the Womens' Congregation of the Institute of
the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara which have recently come to
Hafnarfjörður,
we continue to display the
information in
English (click here) compiled by Father Lucio,
more compendious than can be found elsewhere, for example on their
official web-site: www.ive.org
The Vatican web-site has an
inexhaustible content. We recommend the liturgical musical collection from
two choirs: the choir of the Sistine Chapel, and the choir of the Pontifical
Institute of Sacred Music.
Go to the home-page (http://www.vatican.vat),
to the circle of emblems. The one at the bottom (with Α contained within Ω),
when clicked, will reveal "Liturgical Year". Click on that, and, next to the
picture of Holy Father kneeling, there is a clock-face, with the names of the
seasons around it. Click on the one of your choice. If you click on the links to
the years, you will get homilies and other liturgical features and information.
If you click (for example) on "Lent Music", you will get links, first to the
Sistine Choir, and then to the Pontifical Institute.
The links to the Sistine Choir give
you first lines or titles with a link to the text; the little button with a
musical note on it will give you a link to a downloadable temporary file,
which will begin to play as soon as the downloading is complete. The links to
the Pontifical Institute take you to a large collection of music, for which
items the link is at the underlined title.
By accident we
discovered that a great exhibition of Vatican Library manuscripts, which was
taken to Washington in 1993-4, is still accessible. Here is the link with the
contents page. It is of the highest quality, and merits careful examination:
click here.
On the contents page, click further on the item you wish to see.
NEW!
Recently an old friend -
actually a former parishioner - of your editor sent him a display -
actually a slide-show with a musical background about what is regarded
by some people as an extraordinary miracle in the city of Santa Fé, New
Mexico. U.S.A. The Sisters of Loreto arrived there in the middle
of the nineteenth century. The Bishop wanted them to found a high
school. Which they did.
A Gothic Chapel was built,
modelled approximately on the famous Saint Chapelle on the Ile de Paris.
Curiously through a mistake
of either builder or architect, or both, they forgot to construct a
staircase from the floor of the chapel to the Choir Loft at the back.
Fmom then the tradition is as
follows.
Sisters made a Novena to
Saint Joseph, who was a carpenter.
On the ninth day a complete
stranger arrived and said he would help them by building a staircase.
Which he did - and left
without asking for payment.
At some stage they began to
wonder whether Saint Joseph himself had performed the miracle ...
It was a particularly
beautiful and finely crafted staircase, on a circular pattern. With no
central pillar; and only a small iron bracket attaching it to a pillar.
So the whole weight (which is considerable) is carried by the first
step. He seems to have used no nails, and no glue. The wood did not come
from the region.
Your Editor's scepticism was
satisfied when he found an identification of the man: a carpenter
hermit, later found dead, who - according to a contemporary Obituary
notice - had built the staircase.
But your Editor found two
other identifications, which keeps the embers of the story burning.
The three identifications can
be found at the end of this account (in French):
http://www.christ-roi.net/index.php/L'escalier_de_Santa_Fe
The display can be found if
you
CLICK HERE!
It came to your editor as an
Email attachment. The computer has treated it as a Windows Power Point
file. There is no music, and you pass from one image to the next down
the series in the left-hand margin.
But perhaps it comes to you
through Internet in the same way as it came to me - with music, and
fading from one picture into the next ... !
Home page of
St. Franciskusspítali.
founded by Franciscan Missionaries of Mary 1936 (in Icelandic, with
photographs).
A Visit to Grödental,
a Centre in South Tyrol (Italy)
for the Sculpture of
Wooden Statues and Crib Figures:
Perhaps you will
remember how we succeeded in tracing not only the place of origin but
also the sculptor himself of a wall-statue of Saint Francis, bequeathed
to the Sisters, which now hangs in their refectory. These pictures of
the statue and of his signature cut into the back may remind you:
We eventually found that it came from
from the Grödental [the Gröden Valley] in the Gröden Dolomites. Here is
a photograph of the valley in summer conditions:
With this link -
CLICK HERE! - you will come to
the web-site of the place.
When you are there, if you click on
'Holtschnitzereien.Net' you will find links from there to the Home-Pages
[right hand side of the name] to some of the most important workshops.
You will find there contemporary
woodcarving of the highest quality, of religious and non-religious
settings. Some sub-web-sites have videos.
It is multilingual.
One beautifully managed web-site from
the valley is that of the "Gardena Art Association" ("Gardena" is the
Italian form of "Gröden"). It is more specifically taken up with the
production of figures for cribs. The link below will take you to the
English version of the home page. The site is multilingual, and you can
choose your language there.
In particular, follow the sections
entitled "Crib" which contain hundreds of photographs.
CLICK HERE!
The Web-Sites of two Important English University Art Galleries:
the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge;
the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.
'the Fitzwilliam':
Firstly we give you a link to the
Home-Page: CLICK HERE!
The evident first step is to click on
"Collections" in the menu provided on the left hand side of the page.
This leads you to a page which gives the principle divisions: e.g.
'Antiquities', 'Manuscripts and Printed Books', 'Paintings, Drawings and
Prints' You can use the data bases at the top of the page, or go through
the departmental divisions.
But we strongly recommend a visit -
though it will need many more - to the new approach through 'Pharos',
which leads to a large collection of really exceptional exhibits.
You can click on 'Pharos' in the same
menu. That will take you to another oage which tells you that 'Pharos'
is a separate web-site; so click there on 'Pharos website'. That will
take you to a page which has a rather menacing pictuire of the ancient
Lighthouse at the entrance to the Harbour of Alexandria. On the right
hand side, click on 'Text only site map.' It actually leads you to a
list of the exhibits collected in that site, which are truly of
exceptional quality. However, even though the heading is 'Text only site
map' that is not the case, and it will bring you to the individual
items.
We had been giving a
link to the FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, Cambridge, for its exhibitions of "Cambridge
Illuminations" and the "Macclesfield Psalter", which it acquired last year (a
nearly complete codex made about 1330 in East Anglia, England), which had lain
for years, even centuries, in the library of its owner. Thse exhibitions have
now finished, though we think that the Psalter exhibition is probably displayed
there in some form.
Because of the exceptional interest of the
MACCLESFIELD PSALTER, we retain the link to the
excellent 5-minute video documentary on it of the best quality, produced by
Channel 4 News . Members of the Museum Staff, including
the Curator of Manuscripts and Printed Books, give some perceptive comments
about the Manuscript. Click on this address:
http://edge.channel4.com/news/2005/07/week_3/20_glass.wmv
and
wait a few moments for the Video to download. Strongly recommended !
'the Ashmolean':
Firstly, we give you a link to the
Home-Page: CLICK HERE!
There you can click on
'Collections'. That will take you to a page where you can choose
between 'Highhlights of the Ashmolean' (which we recommend), and
'Collections'. At which point you begin to be aware that there is a lit
of no doubt important material, which, if it must be catagorised will be
with the description "Miscellaneous".
The really exquisite objects take a
little more finding than at the Fitzwilliam.
But we must point out one object which
will be of interest to visitors to this web-site, because its sublime
delicacy makes it a wonderful choice for the principle illustration for
Christmas, and will be posted near the head of the first page on
Christmnas Eve. It is a most delicate painting of the 'Virgin and Four
Saints' by the Siennese painter of the end of the fifteenth century,
Pietro di Francesco degli Orioli (1458-96). As contrasted with the
powerful and exuberant products of the Florence painters, those of
Siena, perhaps under not only the weight but the inspiration of the
Siennese Saint Catherine, have an element of austerity, and seriousness,
but not to the point of being outside the Christian humanistic current.
In contemplating this painting, and others of his, one hardly needs to
be told that the painter was a man of pronounced religious piety. But
you will see for yourselves at the beginning of next week, and you can
read what the Ashmolean catalogue says about him. The references will be
given.
FINALLY
(yes, finally!), we are taking down the display of maps.
The latest edition of Merki krossins (2/2006) has a long and fully
researched article on the earliest maps which concern Iceland: see
below.
PHOTOGRAPHS OF MARS AND THE MOON
Google has just established a
web-site for photographs, maps and articles of the planet Mars. Here is
a link: CLICK HERE!
It has also established web-site
for the moon, which includes videos for the original landings (quite
different in style): CLICK HERE!
We would also recommend research
amongst the pages provided from the Google search-machine.
THIS IS ALSO A PICTURE OF THE
SURFACE OF MARS
FROM THE PHOENIX
PROJECT WHICH HAS JUST LANDED
It is the first panorama taken
of the Martian Arctic, and one of the objects of the mission is to look
for water, held below the surface as ice.
The surface is broken up into
polygonal areas, all of which are of approximately the same size. This is be a sign of the the freezing conditions, and is known from analagous
terrestrial examples in permafrost regions:
The original of
this picture on the NASA web-site was intended to be a poster of width
24"
Perhaps it is
downloadable and convertible?
FLIGHT INTO SPACE IS NOW A COMMERCIAL
AND REAL POSSIBILITY
Who could not be interested in
the beginning of the finalisation of the project
to take passengers into space?
The American aeroplane designer, of great
experience and imagination, Burt Rutan
and his English entrepreneur,
with enormous success with Airlines and Railways under the global logo
of "Virgin", Sir Richard Branson, have just
presented in New York their project for Virgin
Galactic to use a space-craft, designed and built by Burt
Rutan's Scaled Composites company,
carrying six passengers, to be taken up into the what is technically
called "space", where gravity is zero, and then to return. The
time-scale is not finalised, but it seems to be in about two to four
years' time
The space-ship is lifted into a
high position by a carrying plane, launched, and then continues its
journey upwards under rocket propulsion for about five minutes.
After which (or before that
should there be a malfunction) it will then glide back to earth, and
land like a normal aeroplane.
The dangers are reduced to a
minimum, and the craft does not have to carry en enormous weight of
fuel.
Here we give you links to two
videos:
a) a lecture given in 2006 by
Burt Rutan on "The Future of Space Flight".
It actually gives a highly
perceptive overview of the preceding periods of innovation in
air-travel, as well as the preceding periods of non-innovation. Rutan
has in mind the stimulation of others to make further innovations.
CLICK HERE!
b) a very recent Video coming
from Virgin Galactic, with Branson in a leading role, which presents the
present state of the project:
CLICK HERE!
To those who are unfamiliar with
the diversity of the Virgin Group, a visit to Virgin.com
could be revealing.
After a visit to China in which
he accompanied the British Prime Minister, Branson went to New York for
the unveiling of the space project. This week he has appeared in Moscow.
ALways in the background, the project of creating a Russian Airline (Virgin
Russia ?) with some local carriers, begins to emerge
into the headlines. He found the time to attend an investment
conference: "Troika Dialog Russia Forum". There he found criticism of
the new Russian oligarchs, to which he added his authoritative and
incisive own: "Having a very large boat is not going to give you a
lot of satisfaction, and it gives capitalism a bad name. Responsibility
comes with wealth". He seemed to promise success with his air-line
discussions, with an announcement within two or three months. And on
Monday he puts in a bid for Northern Rock, a British
Mortgage Bank which is in serious trouble, with the savers-investors
very worried.
We have to remember that
entrepreneurs create employment in a way that no others can.
No doubt having
seen some of the cloudscapes among "Photographs of Stykkishólmur", an English
friend has just sént us the web address of the "CLOUD APPRECIATION SOCIETY".
It is a web-site very much worth exploring, not only for the beauty but also for
the curiosity of the photographs of clouds which it has and to which it links. I
had never heard of "mammatus" clouds (also known as "mamma", and presumably from
the breast-like formation), but I would be very grateful to be told how they are
formed. The site has a "Cloud of the Month", and that for January 2006 is a
"nacreous cloud" (Icelandic "glitský"), for which we have had for some weeks a
display with links at the top of this page.
Click here.
NEW!
A new conception of a newspaper has emerged in
Korea. The articles which it contains are written by the readers
themselves - no doubt selected by the editors! It is called OhmyNews
International. It has some collections of readers' photographs,
arranged as slide-shows. Our attention was drawn to a series on Santiago
de Compostella, taken by a Korean photographer. Unfortunately we cannot
manage to provide a link to a particular slide-show, only to the page
for the whole collection. The other collections are also of interest, so
for this index page, we provide you with this link:
CLICK HERE!
Stykkishólmur
Web-Cam
We recommend you to go down the
page beneath the Web-Cam.
Below some columns of local links
you will find the Weather Forecast of the Icelandic Meteorological Office.
Click on “Weatherforcast in english”,
to enter their site.
Underneath the tables and map, you
will find a central line (in small type). “©
2004 The Icelandic Meteorological Office. All rights reserved.
“ Click on that. Here there
is much to view through the links provided.
If you
click on “Earthquakes and Seismicity”, you will find a particularly interesting
section. Firstly the daily seismic report, with a map. At the left-hand side is
a link to documentation on the recent sub-glacial volcanic eruption: “Eruption
in Grimsvötn in 2004”. Click on that to find first a detailed chronology, and
then some splendid aerial photographs. At the bottom, a click on “Magnús
Tumi Guðmundsson” will take you to more photographs, including a short
aerial video.
Við viljum vekja
athygli ykkar á Merki krossins, kaþólsku tímariti sem kemur út
tvisvar á ári. Þar má finna vandaðar einar um margvísleg málefni.
