Southern Lights from space

This is a picture of the South Pole which you can see as the ice covered area inside the green ring. This green ring is the Southern Lights which are similar to the Northern Lights which can sometimes be seen from northern Canada. This is an unusually strong amount of Southern Lights which occurred 5 days after a strong solar flare.

The deepest dive ever!

This is a picture of a new remotely controlled submarine that is designed to go deeper than any other submarine has ever gone. After testing it will try to go to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean which is the deepest part of any ocean. It is 36,089 feet deep or a mile deeper than Mt. Everest is high. This depth was reached before and a photographed a sea cucumber, a worm and a shrimp down there so it looks like animals live almost everywhere on this planet.

The smallest hummingbird

The bee hummingbird is the world's smallest warm-blooded vertebrate. This means that it has a spine. The smallest animal with a spine is a fish but it is not warm blooded. This hummingbird flaps its wings 80 to 200 times per second, which is the fastest for any bird. It has the fastest heart beat of any animal at 60 beats per second which is that same as your heart beats in one minute. Bee hummingbirds also have the fewest feathers of all birds. Their body temperature is 40 °C (104 °F), the highest of all birds. At night, their body temperature drops down 19 °C (66 °F) to save energy. Bee hummingbirds eat half their total body mass and drink 8 times their total body mass in water each day. The bee hummingbird can be found only in woodland, shrubbery, and gardens in Cuba and the Isle of Pines. Its nest is only 3 cm across or 1 inch. Sometimes people see this bird and think it is a large Bee which is how it got its name.

Now I'm not sure this was such a good idea.

Here we have a picture of a mommy wondering if it was such a good idea to take the sleigh ride that her sons suggested. However it wasn’t such a good idea for her to roar off on the sled with no helmet, with her glasses on or the wrong kind of shoes. Fortunately she survived the ride but said to herself, ‘never again’!

Opps, where is my wrench?

This picture is a reminder to always make sure the wheels on your bicycle are on tight. It is also a reminder to not go as high as this guy did without wings.

Big wave eh?

This is not a good place to go swimming even if there is a nice beach!! This picture was taken at the north shore of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Strong wind storms far away from Hawaii in the north Pacific ocean make these huge waves and they can go all the way to Hawaii without losing too much of their height. Notice that the water is so disturbed by the huge waves that the entire surface is covered by white foam.

Great view in Norway

Hey Kids, don’t try this yourself!!! This man has decided to sit on the end of a piece of rock known as Prekestolen in Norway. In English this is known as Preacher’s Pulpit. It is unusual to find a rock that sticks out so far as most rocks like to be supported from underneath. One day this rock will fall off as water seeps into cracks in the rock and then freezes in the winter. When this water freezes it get slightly bigger and this freezing water can even crack rocks. Lets hope no one is sitting on the rock when that happens.

Northern Lights from space

This picture was taken from about 150 kilometers above the surface of the earth. You can see the clouds above the ground and ocean and near the horizon you can see the northern lights. These are natural lights that occur in the ionosphere which is about 300 kms above the earth, mostly at northern latitudes. They also occur at the South Pole and can be seen from southern Australia, New Zealand and the end of South America. The Cree people in Northern Canada call this phenomenon the "Dance of the Spirits."

Sidewalk Artist

A very nice chalk drawing by a young street artist from England named Julian Beever. There appears to be a man standing at the top of the globe and this is an actual man. The tricky part is the perspectives required for his drawings as this next photo will show. Julian makes a good living drawing perspective pictures all over Europe because nobody seems to be able to do what he does. His drawings illustrate how things often aren’t how they seem. For more really neat pictures go to –
http://www.impactla
b.com/2006/03/09/amazing-3d-sidewalk-art-photos/

Shuttle Transits the Sun

This is a picture of the sun which as we all know is 93,000,000 miles away, 150,000,000 kms. If Caleb was to drive his bike at 100 miles per hour, which is faster than Daddies truck goes it would take him 930,000 hours or over 100 years to get there. Boys, mommie will explain how you figure this out. This was a very difficult picture to take because the spacecraft was traveling at 5 miles per second so it was only in front of the sun for 8/10ths of a second. Therefore the photographer had to know when the spacecraft would pass in front of the sun, take the picture within the 8/10th of a second and use a shutter speed of over 1/8000 of a second. Although this was very tricky picture to take Heidi could do this no problem.
For a picture of Atlantis taking off 2 days ago go here –

http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2009-05/46849419.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-shuttle-hubble12-2009may12,0,7184922.story&h=333&w=500&sz=47&tbnid=cpFomW9VFIhgxM::&tbnh=87&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Datlantis%2B%252B%2Bhubble%2Bpictures&hl=en&usg=__CR2vSmo3hGTO5ZFihvyH_qjGPno=&ei=DoYPSu7PG5OMtgOJiM2JAw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=4&ct=image

Welcome

I thought it might be interesting for my grandkids to get a picture each day of something really neat.

I hope that I can find enough pictures and that the kids will be interested in them.

I would like to use pictures that will help the kids learn about science, the environment, animals and machines.

I will have a brief description with each picture which you can use to explain what the picture is all about to your kids if your kids are not reading yet.

If you want to join in and get a picture each day send me the email address where you want the pictures sent.

Good viewing,

Bob Fearn

PS: I may miss a day or so if I am away from my computer.