Category: Cool photos

Arctic Ocean Flowers

ArcticOcean Flowers These spiky little bunches of ice form on thin and new ice in the Arctic Ocean. But these badboys can only form under very special conditions:

1) Calm winds. We can’t have these beauties blown away can we?

2) Cold, cold air. It has to be about 20C less than the water and since seawater freezes around -2C, that means the air must be about -22C or -7.6F. BRRR.

Frost flowers form when newly formed ice sublimates, that is ice changes directly from a solid to a gas totally bypassing the liquid stage. Initially, the water vapor formed by sublimation is the same temperature as the sea ice, but gets quickly cooled by the cold air. The air is then becomes supersaturated with water vapor, which means the air has too water much in it. Air really doesn’t want to hold all that excess water vapor, so when the supersaturated air touches another ice crystal the water vapor quickly turns back into ice. (Click the image to enlarge)

via The icy plumage of the Arctic | Deep Sea News. Continue reading “Arctic Ocean Flowers”

Spectacular Ice Caves in a Swiss Glacier

 British adventure photographer Robbie Shone descended into the Gorner Glacier near Zermatt in Switzerland to capture spectacular pictures of ice caves

via British photographer Robbie Shone explores beautiful ice caves in a Swiss glacier – Telegraph.

Lenticular Clouds Over Mt. Rainier

Credit & Copyright: Tim Thompson

Moist air forced to flow upward around mountain tops can create lenticular clouds. Water droplets condense from moist air cooled below the dew point, and clouds are opaque groups of water droplets. Waves in the air that would normally be seen horizontally can then be seen vertically, by the different levels where clouds form. On some days the city of Seattle, Washington, USA, is treated to an unusual sky show when lenticular clouds form near Mt. Rainier, a large mountain that looms just under 100 kilometers southeast of the city. This image of a spectacular cluster of lenticular clouds was taken in 2008 December. Click picture to enlarge. Credit & Copyright: Tim Thompson

via APOD: 2012 November 4 – Lenticular Clouds Over Washington.

“Michaelangelo” of Pumpkin Carving

In 2007 Villafane was contacted by High Noon Entertainment and asked to participate in the Food Network’s Challenge Show for a segment called “Outrageous Pumpkins”. He competed against three other professional pumpkin sculptors and won all three rounds to receive the grand prize.[2] The Food Network contacted Villafane again in 2009 to come back to the show and defend his title. He was also the grand prize winner for the “Outrageous Pumpkin Challenge II”. In 2011, he carved the world’s biggest pumpkin to resemble zombies.[3] From Wkipedia

The Pumpkins « Villafane Studios – Pumpkin Carving, Sand Sculpting, Action Figure Creating.

Ouracing Enemy Missles in the World’s Fastest Plane

Excerpts from Sled Driver, the amazing book by one of the SR-71 pilots, Major Brian Shul:

Plane Porn – Click to Enlarge

In April 1986, following an attack on American soldiers in a Berlin disco, President Reagan ordered the bombing of Muammar Qaddafi’s terrorist camps in Libya. My duty was to fly over Libya and take photos recording the damage our F-111’s had inflicted. Qaddafi had established a ‘line of death,’ a territorial marking across the Gulf of Sidra , swearing to shoot down any intruder that crossed the boundary. On the morning of April 15, I rocketed past the line at 2,125 mph.

I was piloting the SR-71 spy plane, the world’s fastest jet, accompanied by Maj Walter Watson, the aircraft’s reconnaissance systems officer (RSO). We had crossed into Libya and were approaching our final turn over the bleak desert landscape when Walter informed me that he was receiving missile launch signals. I quickly increased our speed, calculating the time it would take for the weapons-most likely SA-2 and SA-4 surface-to-air missiles capable of Mach 5 – to reach our altitude. I estimated that we could beat the rocket-powered missiles to the turn and stayed our course, betting our lives on the plane’s performance

via Holy Crap—Look at All These SR-71 Blackbirds Together!.