A Stark Forest Of Standing Stones

Moss Agate looks like it has a forest inside. (Source)

Bug-free™ season is over and I am Afraid

A predatory moment, frozen in geological time

You’re a hungry spider who is rushing towards a wasp that has become entangled in your web when all of a sudden everything goes sticky, you can’t move, frozen in place like the proverbial Tantalus with your food in sight but forever beyond your reach. Very soon after you are engulfed in another wash of sticky sap oozing out of a tree and everything goes dark. The spider may ironically have also been courting a painful death, since these wasps are parasitic and known to lay their eggs in spiders and other insects, with the larvae slowly consuming the insect from the inside out, preserving it alive by leaving the vital organs for last. Such a moment was caught by a unique fossil pictured below, that turned up in a hundred million year old piece of amber from what is now the Hukawng valley in Burma.

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Astronaut readjusts to life back on Earth

> Don’t give him a baby for a while.

Heidi Gustafson, who has spent the past five years collecting and working with ocher, walks along Whidbey Island’s Double Bluff Beach, off the coast of Washington, in search of the material. She came to scout this area, where she spent time as a child, after recalling its interesting cliff exposure.Some ochers, Gustafson believes, are calling out to be turned into a pigment. Others are more resistant. Those ocher fragments are either returned to their point of origin, or, if Gustafson cannot get back there, placed outside in a stone graveyard of sorts that she has created in the forest near her cabin. A few of her ocher-based artworks hang on the wall.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/t-magazine/ocher-heidi-gustafson.html

Blue Morning - Lake Como, Bellagio, Italy

©2019 by John A. Royston - Nosealviewing™ All rights reserved

supermassive black hole

You Don’t Have to be a Rocket Scientist to Conduct Research in Microgravity

Putting your life’s work on top of a rocket may seem like a daunting task, but that’s exactly what scientists have been doing for decades as they launch their research to the International Space Station.

This season on #NASAExplorers, we’re exploring why we send science to space, and what it takes to get it there! 

Watch this week’s episode to meet a team of researchers who are launching an experiment to space for the first time.

Follow NASA Explorers on Facebook to catch new episodes of season 4 every Wednesday!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Sea Landscapes by Japanese artist Fujishima Takeji (1867-1943)

The Sea at Sunrise l Oarai l Waves l Sunrise at the Port of Kobe