Wikipedia:Picture of the day/January 2005

Picture of the day

The Sombrero Galaxy is a spiral galaxy in the Virgo constellation. It was discovered in the late 1700s. It is about 28 million light years away and is just faint enough to be invisible to the naked eye but easily visible with small telescopes. In our sky, it is about one-fifth the diameter of the full moon. M104 is moving away from Earth at about 1,000 kilometers per second.

Photo credit: NASA / STScI
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Three polar bears approach the USS Honolulu submarine, surfaced around 280 miles from the North Pole. The bears investigated the submarine for two hours before moving on.

Photo credit: United States Navy
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Magnetic resonance imaging is a commonly used form of medical imaging which creates images of the inside of opaque organs in living organisms and detects the amount of bound water in geological structures. It is primarily used to visualise alterations of living tissues. A functional MRI scan (shown in the image) measures signal changes in the brain that are due to changing neural activity.

Photo credit: Fastfission
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The Moscow Metro is the world's most heavily used metro system. Kievskaya station is one of the oldest stations on the network and lies on the Kol'tsevaya line (the central ring line) which was completed in 1937. Several of the central stations are remarkable for their ornate architecture, with marble columns, granite floors and chandeliers. Kievskaya station is particularly noted for its wall mosaics which depict socialist realist scenes from the history of the Ukraine.

Photo credit: Worldtraveller
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1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, Washington, US. Mount St. Helens from Monitor Ridge showing the cone of devastation, the huge crater open to the north, and the post eruption lava dome inside it. The small photos were taken from Spirit Lake before and after the eruption. Spirit Lake can also be seen in the larger image, as well as two other Cascade volcanos.

Photo credit: Daniel Mayer, U.S. Forest Service and USGS
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A portrait of Wernher von Braun standing in front of the cluster of F-1 rocket engines on the base of the first stage of a Saturn V launch vehicle. Von Braun had a lifelong aspiration to fly to the moon. A pioneer of rocket development, in the Second World War von Braun led the German development of the V2 rocket at Peenemünde. Along with his team of engineers, he surrendered to the American forces in the closing stages of the war, then helped to establish the military rocket program in the United States. In 1958 he transferred to the newly established NASA program, developing the Saturn V rocket that successfully delivered a man to the moon in 1969.

Photo credit: NASA
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A newborn joey (baby kangaroo) in its mother's pouch. Kangaroo babies are born at a very early stage of development after a gestation of 31-36 days. At this stage, only the forelimbs are somewhat developed, to allow the newborn to climb to the pouch and attach to a teat. It will not re-emerge for several months, during which time it develops fully.

Photo credit: Geoff Shaw
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The Coyote is a wild member of the dog family found in North America. Being intelligent and highly adaptable, the coyote is one of only a few larger animals who have been able to increase their territory in the face of human encroachment, despite being actively hunted. In the mythology of Native American peoples, the coyote plays a similar role to that of the fox in Europe and Japan — that of being a cunning and wily trickster.

Photo credit: vxdigital
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The LG-118A Peacekeeper missile system being tested at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The Peacekeeper can carry up to ten re-entry vehicles, each armed with a nuclear warhead with the explosive power of up to 300 kilotons, 25 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II. Under the unratified START II treaty, all are to be removed from service by 2005.

Photo credit: U.S. Army Forces Strategic Command
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Kiritimati is a Pacific atoll re-discovered by Captain James Cook on 24 December 1777, which explains its alternative name of Chistmas Island. It has the largest land area of any coral atoll and is also the oldest surviving atoll. Between 1956 and 1962 the island was used by the United Kingdom and United States governments as a base for nuclear tests. Today the island is part of the Republic of Kiribati.

Photo credit: NASA
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A red Sunset. The red-hue is explained by the phenomenon of Rayleigh scattering. The sunset is often more brightly coloured than the sunrise because there is more dust at the end of the day than at its beginning. Because the light from the Sun is bent by the variable density of the Earth's atmosphere, the Sun is still seen after it is below the horizon.

Photo credit: Fir0002
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The Australian Garden Orb Weaver is one of the more common species of spider in Australia. Like other orb weaver spiders, they use a vertical wheel shaped web to trap flying insects. However the Garden Orb Weaver is a nocturnal hunter and spins a fresh web each evening, taking it down again in the morning. The spider waits for prey hanging head down in the centre of the web.

Photo credit: Fir0002
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In the life cycle of a frog, a female lays her eggs in a shallow pond or creek, where they will be sheltered from the current and from predators. The eggs, known as frogspawn hatch into tadpoles. The tadpoles develop gradually into adolescent froglets and finally the froglet develops into an adult frog.

Photo credit: Tarquin
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A selection of Alaskan wild berries from Innoko National Wildlife Refuge. This selection of woodland berries, including raspberries and blueberries are actually false berries. The common use of the word berry, simply refers to any small, sweet, fleshy fruit. The botanical use of the word is based on which part of the plant's ovary develop into the fruit.

Photo credit: Fish and Wildlife Service
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A Hansom cab is a kind of horse-drawn carriage designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from Leicestershire, England. Its purpose was to combine speed with safety, with a low center of gravity that was essential for safe cornering. The Hansom cab was principally used as a Hackney carriage (or early taxi) in London and later New York City and other major cities. The last horse drawn London cab was licensed in 1947.

Photo credit: Solipsist
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The Buddhabrot is a special rendering of the Mandelbrot set, which resembles, to some extent, certain depictions of the Buddha. Mathematically, the set consists of the set of points c in the complex number plane for which the iteratively defined sequence

with z₀ = 0 does not tend to infinity.

Photo credit: Evercat
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Reclining Figure by Henry Moore. Moore was an influential English sculptor who helped to introduce modernism during the 20th century. Best known for his abstract monumental bronzes, Moore's subjects were frequently abstractions of the female figure, often simply titled mother-and-child or reclining figure.

Photo credit: Solipsist
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Oil-on-panel portrait of Sir Thomas More
by Hans Holbein the Younger (1527)
Thomas More was a lawyer and political figure in 16th century England, best remembered as Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor. Although he coined the term Utopia, he was privately wracked with religious guilt, being prone to mortification and wearing a hair shirt. More became increasingly firm in his Catholic religious convictions and fell into disfavour with Henry VIII over his refusal to accept Henry as the head of the Church of England. This in turn lead to More's execution at the Tower of London.

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'Promenade des Anglais' in Nice, a major tourist centre and a leading resort on the French Riviera - Côte d'Azur. During the middle ages Nice had its share in the wars and disasters of Italy. As an ally of Pisa it was the enemy of Genoa, and both the king of France and the emperor endeavoured to subjugate it; but in spite of all it maintained its municipal liberties.

Photo credit: W. M. Connolley
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Polydactyly is the anatomical abnormality of having more than the usual number of digits on the hands or feet. It is a congenital abnormality, usually genetically inherited as an autosomal dominant trait. There are several varieties of polydactyly; this X-ray photograph shows a left hand with middle ray duplication. In Western societies, the additional digits are usually surgically removed during early life.

Photo credit: Drgnu23 and Grendelkhan
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Controlling fire was one of the first great achievements of humankind. It made possible migration to colder climates which otherwise would have remained out of reach for colonization. It allowed for cooking food and using flame and heat to process materials. Archeological studies indicates that ancestors of modern humans such as Homo erectus may have been using controlled fire as early as 790,000 years ago.

Photo credit: Fir0002
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A TRACE image of sunspots. This image of the surface, or photosphere, of the sun from September 2002, is taken in the far ultraviolet in on a relatively quite day for solar activity, but still shows a large sunspot group visible as a bright area near the horizon. Although sunspots are relatively cool regions on the surface of the sun, the bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots have a temperature of over one million °C (1.8 million °F). The high temperatures are thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma.

Photo credit: NASA/TRACE
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Nattō (納豆) is a traditional Japanese dish made from fermented soybeans, popular especially at breakfast, when it is eaten on top of rice. Natto is an acquired taste and has a powerful aroma and sticky consistency.

Photo credit: Gleam
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Pu'u 'O'o is a classic cinder-and-spatter volcanic cone on Kilauea, Hawaii. Expanding gases in the lava fountain tears the liquid rock into irregular globs that fall back to earth, forming a heap around the vent. The still partly liquid rock splashing down and over the sides of the developing mound is called spatter.

Photo credit: G.E. Ulrich of the United States Geological Survey
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Fire ants, like these Red Imported Fire Ants (Solenopsis invicta), are more aggressive than most native ant species and have a painful sting that is rarely life-threatening to humans and other large animals, but can kill smaller animals such as birds. Fire ants cannot be killed by flooding. If the ants sense a change in water levels in their nests, they will come together and form a huge ball that is able to float on the water and protects the queen in its center.

Photo credit: Scott Bauer of the Agricultural Research Service
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An animated Pentakis dodecahedron, member of the Catalan solids. Catalan solids are all convex, face-uniform but not vertex-uniform. This is because the dual Archimedean solids are vertex-uniform and not face uniform. Note that unlike Platonic solids and Archimedean solids, the faces of Catalan solids are not regular polygons. However, the vertex figures of Catalan solids are regular, and they have constant dihedral angles. Additionally, two of the Catalan solids are edge-uniform: the rhombic dodecahedron and the rhombic triacontahedron. These are the duals of the two quasi-regular Archimedean solids.

Photo credit: Cyp
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The Caterpillar of the Large White butterfly. Caterpillars eat leaves voraciously, grow rapidly, shed their skins generally four or five times, and eventually pupate into an adult form. Caterpillars do not breathe through their mouths. Air enters their bodies through a series of small tubules along the sides of their thorax and abdomen. These tubules are called 'spiracles', and inside the body they connect together into a network of airtubes or 'tracheae'.

Photo credit: Sannse
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Halos are optical phenomena that appear near or around the Sun or Moon, and sometimes near other strong light sources such as street lights. There are many types of halos, but they are mostly caused by ice crystals in cold cirrus clouds located high (5-10 km, or 3-6 miles) in the upper troposphere. The particular shape and orientation of the crystals is responsible for the type of halo observed. Light is reflected and refracted by the ice crystals and may split up into colors because of dispersion, similarly to the rainbow.

Photo credit: Lieutenant JG Cindy McFee, NOAA
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The Emperor Gum Moth caterpillar feeding on a eucalyptus leaf. Caterpillars of the Emperor Gum Moth pass through five stages, shedding their skin and changing their appearance at each stage of development, before spinning a dark brown silken cocoon and metamorphising into the adult moth.

Photo credit: Fir0002
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Ladybirds are beneficial to organic gardeners because most species are insectivores, consuming aphids, fruit flies, thrips, and other tiny plant-sucking insects that damage crops. In fact, their name is derived from "Beetle of Our Lady", recognizing their role in saving crops from destruction. Today they are commercially available from a variety of suppliers. Adult ladybirds are able to reflex-bleed from their leg joints. The blood is yellow, with a strong repellent smell, and is quite obvious when one handles a ladybird roughly.

Photo credit: PDPhoto.org
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Cerro de la Silla, or Saddle Hill, is an imposing landmark and Natural Monument of the city of Monterrey in Mexico. The tallest of its four peaks, the Pico Norte, is 1820 m (5970 ft) high. The mountain is a popular recreational area, although since the city is at an altitude of 560 m (1837 ft) the climb to the top is relatively challenging. This picture, taken from the west, shows the profile of the "saddle" to its best advantage.

Photo credit: Spangineer
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