Label: Cool Photo

September 13, 2011

Since soccer season is starting, we decided that today’s Cool Photo of the Week should be of a soccer ball in space! NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope captured this image of Kronberger 61, known as the "Soccer Ball" Nebula.

A nebula is a cloud of gas and dust in outer space. They occur when a star starts to die because it has run out of fuel. The outer layers of the star explode, giving off layers of gas that form a planetary nebula around the dying star. It gives off a fluorescent glow because of the intensity of the radiation from the star.

The Soccer Ball Nebula was discovered by an amateur astronomer over the summer, and scientists plan to watch it in hope of learning more about how planetary nebulas are formed.

Photo: Gemini Observatory / AURA

P.S. Do they call this the "Football Nebula" outside the United States? British, Canadian, Australian readers - someone comment and let me know! 

READERS: Are you wondering how to add your own "comment" to this blog? Click here for exact directions on how to add a comment so you can become one of our Seymour Science writers! We also want you to be safe and not share too much information when you write on this blog, so please take a minute to read about how to stay safe on the Internet. We love to hear from you, so give "comments" a try! 

September 7, 2011

Today’s "Cool Photo of the Week" is of a Rockhopper penguin (Eudyptes chrysocome). They are called "rockhoppers" because they live on cold, rocky islands and get around by hopping from rock to rock. Click here to see a video of a whole flock of rockhopper penguins doing their thing!

These unusual looking penguins have dark red eyes, and their heads are decorated with a tuft of yellow feathers that look like eyebrows sticking out from the side of the head. They are carnivores (meat eaters), feeding on crustaceans, cephalopods and small fish. When trying to attract a mate, a Rockhopper will shake its head back and forth, tossing and showing off those beautiful yellow feathers.

Like all penguins, rockhoppers move awkwardly on land, but they are powerful swimmers. Check out this amazing video of rockhoppers surfing the waves.

Photo: AdventurewithJenna.com

You can read more about Penguins in Seymour Simon’s book, which is now available in paperback. 

August 30, 2011

As Hurricane Irene exited the scene she left a crisp, cool, pre-autumn day here in the Northeast. I worked at my desk all day on a new book, and then decided that I would like to get some exercise before dinner. I went to the driving range to hit some golf balls…..and discovered a beautiful Great Egret picking its way through puddles of water on long spindly legs!

The owner told me that the entire field was under water after the storm, and as the flood from the nearby river receded, his 10-year-old daughter Starsea found crawfish in the puddles. That makes sense. Great Egrets (also known as White Herons) are wading birds that eat fish, crustaceans (shell fish) and small reptiles, like frogs. They stalk their prey in shallow water, running or shuffling their feet to flush their prey into view. 

Once the field dries out, these water birds will make their way back to the nearby lake, and soon they will be flying south for the winter. And we’ll get our driving range back for hitting golf balls!

August 23, 2011

Many photographers like to shoot macro (very close up) photographs of insects because the macro camera lens reveals details of alien-looking creatures that we can’t see with our own eyes. A Polish photographer named Miroslaw Swietek goes even further. He goes into the forest in the early morning and photographs the insects when they are covered with dew. Through the camera lens, the drops of water make the insects look as though they are covered with diamonds.

This is a photograph of a dragonfly. Look at how the water drops magnify the lenses in its compound eyes! (click here to read another one of my posts if you want to understand how compound eyes work).

LiveScience interviewed Swietek about how he takes these amazing photographs, and he said that the time of day makes it easier. "That early in the morning, insects are very sleepy so the camera doesn’t disturb them."

If you would like to see more of these amazing images, click here to go to the LiveScience website , where they have a slideshow of Miroslaw Swietek’s  "jeweled" insect photographs.

August 4, 2011

August sunset is made even more brilliant by dust in the atmosphere.

Photo: Seymour Simon

July 19, 2011

Are you keeping cool during the heat wave that is gripping most of North America? It’s hot in Europe, too, and the zookeepers in Rome came up with a great idea. Look at this macaque (pronounced meh-KACK, a kind of monkey) staying cool by eating a block of frozen fruit. We figured this just had to be our COOL photo of the week! 

Photo: Rome Bioparco Foundation/AP

July 5, 2011

A Southern California man heard noises in his garage, and thought that a raccoon, or maybe a squirrel had gotten in there. When he went in to check, he found himself face-to-face with a mountain lion!

Jesse Taylor snapped this photograph - which is our Cool Photo of the Week - while his wife called 911. Animal control experts eventually tranquilized the cat and released it into the San Bernardino National Forest. 

Biologists said that the mountain lion was a young male just beginning to explore on his own. Boy, will he have a story to tell when he gets home!

June 21, 2011

Being a sea slug may not sound like a very glamorous station in life, but they are among the most colorful animals on Earth. This beauty is known as a Spanish Shawl (Flabellina iodinea).

Actually, sea slug is the casual name we often use, but this is technically a nudibranch, which means "naked gills." They come in many different shapes and colors, live in huge numbers in shallow waters near the shore, and they are invertebrates, which means that they do not have a spine.

Nudibranchs lost their shells through the course of evolution, which required them to develop a whole range of other kinds of protection. Most species have poisonous appendages sticking out from their bodies, as you see in this photo. They also tend to have very intense, bright coloring - "warning coloration" - which alerts other animals to the fact that they either taste bad, or may even be poisonous if eaten. Others are camouflaged because they look very similar to the plants around them. And if that weren’t enough, their skin releases a slimy, sour liquid when they are touched by another creature. Sea slugs are definitely a "look but don’t touch" kind of animal!

Here is another beauty, a black-spotted nudibranch (Phyllidiopsis papilligera). This one was photographed in shallow waters off the coast of Haiti.

Readers often ask me which is my favorite book of all the ones I have written. I can never say which I like the best (that’s like choosing among your children!), but my favorite at any given moment tends to be whatever animal I am writing about. These days I am working on a new book called CORAL REEFS. So, I am fascinated by all these marine animals who live in the vast "cities under the sea" that we know as the coral reefs. They are some of the most diverse, and certainly among the most magnificent, ecosystems on Earth. 

Spanish Shawl photo: Magnus Kiaergaard

June 14, 2011

Today’s Cool Photo of the Week is of a baby Canadian Goose (called a "gosling"). The little one is staying warm underneath its mother’s feathers, and by the size of that yawn, I’d say it is settling in for a nap!

Photo: Robin Loznak for msnbc.com

READERS: Are you wondering how to add your own "comment" to this blog? Click here for exact directions on how to add a comment so you can become one of our Seymour Science writers! We also want you to be safe and not share too much information when you write on this blog, so please take a minute to read about how to stay safe on the Internet. We love to hear from you, so give "comments" a try! 

June 7, 2011

Today’s Cool Photo of the Week is simply incredible. A volcano in Chile erupted this week for the first time in 50 years, and the friction caused between the rising cloud of dust and the air above the volcano created this astounding cloud-to-cloud lightning.

This is a massive eruption. Ash has been blown six miles into the sky, 3500 people have been evacuated, airports are closed, and cities in Chile and nearby Argentina are covered with so much ash that it looks as if there has been a snowstorm.

Officials say that they can’t even tell which one of four volcanoes in the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic chain has erupted, because of all the ash clouding the sky. Chile’s chain of about 2,000 volcanoes is the world’s second largest after Indonesia. Like Indonesia, Chile is situated on the "Ring of Fire" - the area in the Pacific Ocean that has the strongest geological activity on Earth, including many earthquakes and volcanoes. 

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