good old Solar System

Solar System diagram “for fun” by Piotr Kaczmarek, creative director of http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com.

This animation represents the Solar System dynamics: you can see the movements of the planets and even the satellites of the planets. Keep in mind that the model is by no means a realistic one (many bloggers have announced it as “representing exact scales and sizes”). Obviously it is no more than a schematic model in terms of relative sizes and distances. However, the overall dynamics corresponds to the real one.

This is an interactive animation. You can set a particular date, see the phase of the Moon in real time or trace a particular planet. You can even see the information about the current zodiak sign, which has little to do with astronomy but anyway .

A nice joke by the creators of the diagram: you can switch between the Copernican and Tychonian models of the world and check out the difference between the heleocentric and geocentric systems.

full-size here!

Enjoy!

Paper beauty

aussie english and happy skies

30.11.2008, Los Angeles, photo by Dave Jurasevich (Mt. Wilson Observatory)

***

…Question to a year 4 group today
“Do you know what a light year is?”
“Yes”, replied one girl.
“Can you explain it to the others?”
“Sure”, she said with confidence “… it’s a piece of fruit”,
at which point the teachers and I exchanged glances.
And then the lightbulb moment,
“You don’t mean Lychees do you?”
“Yes”, she replied with confidence ag…ain, oh they were so cute… (From Sydney Observatory FB)

I wrote about that Observatory here last year.

***

In the picture you can see a “smile” over Los Angeles (it was visible all over the world, of course), formed by an unusual superposition of the three brightest objects of the night sky – Moon (the “smile”), Venus (the left blue “eye”) and Jupiter (the right eye).

I remember observing this scene in 2008… Look up in the sky when you can, and you will be rewarded by the the amazing things you will see.

***

Volgograd Bridge Oscillating!

…always the same…

On the white sand
Of the beach of a small isle
In the Eastern Sea
I, my face streaked with tears,
Am playing with a crab.
Ishikawa Takuboku

…the author and director of this magical short movie is so easily recognizable…

Beautiful… simply beautiful. Lady Dior Blue in Shanghai… Watch and listen… and dissolve yourself in the flow.

…this feeling came over me as i heard the pearls falling and hitting the jade… that most beautiful sound

Part 1

Part 2

and the Poem…

S., thank you

Rain, La Lluvia, Дождь, Der Regen, Βροχή

Today’s rain is different from that everyday lazy and fearful one you would likely meet in Eindhoven. It is the real royal Rain. I could even hear the skies thundersneezing once or twice. It is such an esthetic pleasure to watch the viscous drops in their long fall, all the way down from the thirteenth floor where i currently work.

When it rains, my sense of “planetness” is strongly enhanced… as if we all were living in a big (small?) greenhouse. Is it actually “as if”? Life in a stratum of matter stuck to Earth. And the notions of “up” and “down” make no sense, while “towards the Earth” and “away from the Earth” are always out there. Just imagine a global rain for a moment…

P.S. Does the rain sound like a distant train? Or is it the train that sounds like rain “td /td td /td td /td”?

Wild hymn for a wild country =)

Check this out starting from 0:49 or so. Syria welcomes the Russian president. Musically.

Music collection #4

The brand new album of Faithless… yessss.

Artist: Faithless
Album: The Dance
Date: 2010
Quality: MP3 | ~320bps (VBR)
Total time: 01:10:42
Size: 100,27 Мб

1. Not Going Home
2. Feel Me
3. Crazy Bal’heads
4. Comin Around
5. Tweak Your Nipple
6. Flyin Hi
7. Love Is My Condition
8. Feelin Good
9. North Star
10. Sun To Me
11. Scandalous (Bonus Track)

Download links
RapidShare

The downloaded files MUST be deleted in 24 hours. Please support the authors and buy a CD.

I happy am. Joy is my name!

I just want to share my good mood with you… there are may ways to do so, but now i feel like just showing you beautiful pictures of happiness and joy. By the way, which Photoshop tool (except curves, hue, saturation, etc.) does one have to play with in order to transform a normal picture into such a warm and “old style” one? Any special tricks?

Personally, i scarcely retouch my pictures in Photoshop. But when i do, i just do contrast and “cheap whiskey” corrections or simply make crazy-coloured pictures just for kicks. When it comes to “serious pictures”, I don’t like to transform them beyond recognition.

When i get a moment, when mood and free time meet, i will publish some of my favourite shots here.

For more pictures and one bonus cat