Beautiful Time-Lapse Footage Of Red Aurora Australis

Red Aurora Australis from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.

{Description from the person that posted this.} LINK, Via: Vimeo After chasing it for more than two years I was finally rewarded with two displays of Aurora Australis (Southern lights) within a week visible from Mornington peninsula, not far from Melbourne. The nights were warm an clear and the Moon was not in the sky either - I could not have asked for better conditions. The red color of this aurora is caused by the charged particles from the Sun exciting oxygen atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere. Hopefully there will be more to come as Sun's activity increases in 2012-13. Being able to photograph it all night I came up with a nice video. The brighter Aurora happened on January 22nd and the smaller one, featured in the middle section, was from January 16th, followed by a rather bright Moonrise. Images and blog: terrastro.com/blog/red-aurora/ Time lapse motion control performed with Dynamic Perception Stage Zero ( dynamicperception.com ) Music: Coral Reef by Psychadelik Pedestrian toucanmusic.co.uk/releases/release.php?q=tou274

Could an Abba reunion ever top The Day Before You Came?

With a sense of foreboding almost unparalleled in pop, the Swedish quartet's last song is a forgotten masterpiece. LINK

Pop the question ... with Abba's Agnetha and Frida in talks, could one of music's most longed-for reunions be on the cards? Photograph: UPPA Ltd

So the mighty female component of Abba are reportedly discussing working together again for the first time since 1983. "It would be great to do something with Agnetha," says Frida, now 65. "If we did, it would be hard to avoid all the pressure because of Abba. It could never be low-key." But while a recording might be fun (if, as Frida says, somewhat highly strung), how on earth could a pair of sixtysomethings top the enduring appeal of the band's underrated last track – six-minute epic The Day Before You Came? LINK: Youtube



But recording circumstances aside, what's so special about The Day Before You Came? Surely it can't compete with the transcendence of The Winner Takes It All? LINK: Youtube

Close, But No Cigar

The face is instantly familiar, the two-fingered salute unmistakable. In the original photograph the war leader has his cigar gripped firmly in the corner of his mouth. But in the other image - currently greeting visitors to a London museum - his favourite smoke has been digitally extinguished.

It seems Churchill may have fallen victim to the modern curse of political correctness. The question of who removed the cigar and when was something of a mystery.

The Winston Churchill's Britain At War Experience confessed to being astonished to discover that the image may have been doctored. LINK: The Presurfer

Unusual Photo Made With a Pinhole Camera

A pinhole camera is the ultimate in simple photographic devices – a lightproof box with a small aperture (often literally a pinhole) and a bit of film or photo paper. The image above was made with such a camera.

In the foreground is the pointed roof of a house or small building. Behind that is… what???

The surprising answer is at the link, with further explanation here.

Link, Via: Kottke, Via: Neatorama

Out of the Blue: Islands Seen From Space

Atafu Atoll, Tokelau, Pacific Ocean

Around 500 people live on Atafu Atoll, mostly in a village that can be seen on the corner in the left of the image above. Atafu is just five miles wide and is the smallest of three atolls in the Tokelau Islands, a New Zealand territory.

Atafu is made up of coral reefs that surrounded the flanks of a volcano that has since become inactive and submerged. Like many tropical atolls, Atafu is very low lying and vulnerable to sea-level rise. This photograph was taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station in January.

Image: NASA. More photos of other islands at this LINK.

Is this the world's best body art? ( SNSFW )

Body art is an art form that stretches back thousands of years, although for one American artist, it is as relevant today as it ever was.

Craig Tracy paints stunning images on people's bodies before photographing them in unique poses.

The resulting collection of masterpieces could be regarded as some of the best body painting in the world by an artist at the top of his game.

Using luscious colours he spends up to nine hours painstakingly applying water-based paint to his volunteer's curvy bodies before photographing them.

The former illustrator began body painting in 2002 and opened his gallery in New Orleans five months after hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Painted Alive Gallery, which was opened in February 2006 was renamed Craig Tracy Gallery. LINK

National Geographic's New Infinite Photograph

Check out the video of this new Web app from National Geographic. It's called Infinite Photograph and is live today at www.ngm.com/infinite.

The browser-based program features stunning user-submitted photography from the natural world to create a massive As Seen on Earth photo mosaic that you can navigate by clicking on color patterns to create an infinite number of photograph mosaics. LINK: Youtube

That’s the idea behind the Infinite Photograph, a giant mosaic composed of some 300,000 photos submitted to National Geographic’s My Shot program. You click on the first image, then go deeper and deeper into the mosaic, and find mosaics within mosaics. Curiouser and curiouser. LINK: Neatorama