a companion to the previous post – awe inspiring time-lapse video of the night sky above the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) group in Chile’s Atacama Desert. link
The Photopic Sky Survey is a 5,000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,440 exposures. Large in size and scope, it portrays a world far beyond the one beneath our feet and reveals our familiar Milky Way with unfamiliar clarity. When we look upon this image, we are in fact peering back in time, as much of the light—having traveled such vast distances—predates civilization itself.
Nick Risinger has put together a fantastic interactive image of the night sky. link
Christopher Wilde makes collage pictures out of cut-out bits of worldwide currency.
Wilde painstakingly cuts various shapes out of paper money from around the world to form collages with economic and political undertones and overlays. The relationship between art and commerce is another theme that cannot be avoided when an artist cuts and pastes with money.
only because i’ve been working in and out of trees all day today …
above, General Sherman, a sequoia in Sequoia National Park in California, US. est. 2,300 years old to 2,700 years old.
Pando, colony of Quaking Aspen in Utah, US…
While Pando isn’t technically the oldest individual tree, this clonal colony of Quaking Aspen in Utah is truly ancient. The 105-acre colony is made of genetically identical trees, called stems, connected by a single root system. The “trembling giant” got its start at least 80,000 years ago, when all of our human ancestors were still living in Africa. But some estimate the woodland could be as old as 1 million years, which would mean Pando predates the earliest Homo sapiens by 800,000 years. At 6,615 tons, Pando is also the heaviest living organism on earth.
The ‘Foodscapes’ are created in Carl’s London studio where they are built on top of a large purpose built triangular table top. The scenes are photographed in layers from foreground to background and sky as the process is very time consuming and so the food quickly wilts under the lights. Each element is then put together in post production to achieve the final image.
an international crew observed the total solar eclipse of July 22, 2009 on Enewetak Atoll in Marshall Islands and recorded fabulous images
The display of the solar corona, lunar surface and stars in the resulting image are highly beyond the ability of human vision during the eclipse. The weakest stars visible in the image are of about magnitude 10. The stars are a little bit blurred by the motion of the Sun during the very long eclipse.
Wired.com previews a sampling of images from upcoming book and MoMA exhibition featuring artwork by filmmaker, director, producer, writer, and concept artist Tim Burton. link to Wired article link to MoMA page
