The Four Ages Of Sand

Question of the week 78: can a digital camera photograph galaxies?

Yes!

It's quite easy to image the Milky Way, which is our galaxy of course. This is towards the galactic centre and the dust lanes are clearly visible. Without the dust, this would be as bright as a full moon:

Now, how about another galaxy? Our nearest galactic neighbour is Andromeda. It's 2.2 million light years away but it's rushing towards us at great speed and will one day collide with us. If you have binoculars you can easily see it at this time of year, and it will look something like this. (15 second exposure)

 

 Amazing to think that the light that was recorded on the camera's sensor  had been travelling for 2.2 million years. It started its journey before our species even existed  (See here for human timeline)

TV Presenter On Death Row For Witchcraft

I do try to keep 4AoS lighthearted, but some news is so bizarre and ridiculous that it deserves the widest audience. This really SHOULD be on the news:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20091124/twl-tv-presenter-on-death-row-for-witchc-3fd0ae9.html 

Heron take off

The morning sun reflecting off the lake was so dazzling that I wasn't sure I'd captured any image until I looked later.

Woodpecker in the garden

This Female Great Spotted Woodpecker was right outside our window!

 She's usually in the neighbour's garden as she's very fond of their fat balls, but she paid a rare visit to our apple tree this week. 

 

Answer to "What is it? 129

Congrats to Alan...(gosh, I  wished I'd cropped it a bit tighter now)

It is indeed...

An England's Glory matchbox.

Apologies again to PSI for the Anglo-centric "WII?"

I've been experimenring for 2 weeks with matchboxes and beans as part of an invention I'm working on (big 4AoS announcement due by the end of the week) and I've found through bitter trial and error that  England's Glory is by far the neatest and strongest of the commercially available matchboxes.

Makes you proud to be British doesn't it?

Except of course they are made in Sweden...

What is it? 129

More orange things that aren't orange

Following the orange bird at sunset, here's a shell on the beach at sunrise. The sun is illuminating it from behind, turning it orange:

This is one of the pics from our recent trip to the East coast of Scotland. A couple more:

 

 

Worst parking ever takes the internet by storm

This is one of the web's most popular popular "worst driver" vids at the moment. (half a million hits and counting) A lot of this kind of stuff is a set up but this is the real deal:

The video of a BMW X5 trying to park has spread like wildfire across the internet. Caught on CCTV, the BMW driver presses the throttle instead of the brake and shoots up and over the bonnets of two other parked cars.

What's made this video such a sensation (watched by more than half a million viewers already) is that the driver then reverses off of the two parked cars. Not only that, the BMW driver then makes off without even checking the damage to their own car, never mind the two innocently parked cars.

Full story:

http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/10112009/36/worst-parking-takes-internet-storm-0.html

"This is the original video footage from the DVR's ...Thursday Oct. 22, 2009 - Extreme Fitness Thornhill, Ontario, Canada Parking lot. The female driver of the X5 was charged today and is due in court Dec. 1st."

I think it's extremely sexist to point out that the driver is a woman. That's totally irrelevant and it could just as easily have happened to a man. Although we can't actually get away from the fact that it is a woman...

Extreme Fitness BMW parking failure. [As seen on the CCTV] Worst parking job @ Yahoo! Video

 

 

Swan's eye under water

A sign of the times

 I thought it took several lifetimes, but apparently you can do it in 5 weeks for under £3.