to move up and down
+unearthed
+scientist
+designer
+cultural attaché to institutions both domestic and abroad.
and most importantly, husband to the most wonderful woman in the world.
Come visit our new Library exhibition - Please Come to the Show. You can access the show when visiting MoMA or free of charge by entering at the 4 W. 54th St. entrance to the Education Building. -ds
A mother spider looks after her little ones at Rockefeller Center in 2001.
Louise Bourgeois’s Maman and Spiders.
Happy Mother’s Day!
The Ever Open Door, 1906
Sigismund Christian Hubert Goetze, British, 1866 - 1939
Oil on canvas
Overall: 304.8 x 233.7 cm
Gift of Mrs. S. Goetze, 1925
© 2013 Art Gallery of Ontario
This day in Lincoln Center history…
On May 14, 1959, the official groundbreaking for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts took place. The photo above is from the official ceremony, which included President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and a performance by the New York Philharmonic with Leonard Bernstein of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.
(Photo: Bob Serating)
X-ray vision tracks lightning bursts
Blink and you’ve missed it. Researchers in the US have captured the world’s first X-ray images of lightning, by creating a special camera that can capture radiation at 10 million frames per second. They presented their new findings at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco and they say that this new view of lightning could help to solve some of the mysteries of this spectacular natural phenomenon.
The research was carried out at the International Center for Lightning Research and Testing, located in Florida. It is one of the few sites in world where lightning is initiated and studied under controlled conditions. By firing rockets with trailing wires into thunder clouds, scientists are able to generate electric fields that are large enough to trigger bolts of lightning, which then propagate back down towards the rocket launch tower.
Joseph Dwyer and colleagues at the Florida Institute of Technology became interested in the fact that lightning emits X-rays as it propagates through the air, a phenomenon that was only noted in the past decade. But given that X-ray sources in lightning travel through the Earth’s atmosphere at velocities approaching the speed of light, it is difficult to catch them on camera before they disappear. In addition, they cannot be imaged with standard mirrors and lenses because huge amounts of material are required to prevent X-rays and gamma rays from entering through the sides of a camera.
Dwyer’s team has created a customized camera that has 30 detectors made from a combination of sodium iodide and photomultiplier tubes, each measuring 3 × 3 inch. The device, which is approximately the size of a standard refrigerator, is also equipped with a 3 inch pinhole aperture, and can record X-rays at 10 million frames per second. “This is actually a very old technique for making images, like that seen in a camera obscura,” Dwyer says.
During July and August this year, Dwyer’s team studied four rocket-triggered lightning flashes at the Florida test site. Each flash lasted for approximately two seconds and the resulting sequences of images revealed that X-rays emerged primarily from the vicinity of the lightning tip as it propagated towards the Earth. As the lightning crashed into the control tower it also triggered large bursts of gamma radiation, which were also captured by the camera.
“For the first time we’re catching a glimpse of lightning in the X-ray emission,” says Dwyer. “We’re seeing lightning as Superman would see it with his X-ray vision”.
Credit: James Dacey/physicsworld.com
via: spaceplasma
REO Motor Car Co., 1930 on Flickr.
Click image for 673 x 875 size.
Scanned from Taschen’s “All-American Ads of the 30s”.
Samurai with Katana and Wakizashi
Felice Beato’s 1860 photograph of a Japanese samurai.
Ed note: Meet Jinichi Kawakami, Japan’s last ninja.
Space Oddity (by Chris Hadfield)
A girl drinks fruit juice while resting in a hammock on a river bank near an industrial zone in southwestern China’s Chongqing city on March 24. (Associated Press) #
A man smokes a cigarette in a cafe on March 27 in Rome, Italy. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) #
A delivery man pushes a wheelbarrow following a storm in Barcelona, Spain, on March 6. (Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press) #
May 9, 1942: These California farm families are preparing to evacuate to internment camps, as documented by photographer Dorothea Lange.
Centerville, California. Farm families of Japanese ancestry awaiting the evacuation buses which will take them to the Tanforan Assembly center along with 595 others evacuated from this district under Civilian Exclusion Order Number 34. 05/09/1942
Dorothea Lange, photographer. From the Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority
May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. You can find our past posts on Japanese American Internment & Relocation under the #Japanese American Internment tag.
A nice little stamp design I found. #vietnamwar #vietnam #unbesiegbares
