Rordes - A.F.K

Hello hi

An array of photosynthetic plankton collected from the California coast by a colleague (thanks Greg!) 

The first two are diatoms- an unknown species and Biddulphia (mobilienisis?). I’m not too certain what those last two are, but that’s the beauty of microscopy. No matter how much you’ve seen, you’ll eventually find something completely new! 

…no but seriously if anyone can help me identify those that would be great :D

The various spines and needles help keep the plankton buoyant and may possibly deter grazing from other plankton looking for a meal. I say may because some copepods actually prefer spiny diatoms over spine-less variants of the same species. To the copepod, the spines make the diatom seem bigger and thus more appealing as food (source). I guess that makes these diatoms the equivalent of bags of chips filled with mostly air.

Ma vie en ce moment

A Man Vanishes, 1967 (dir. Shohei Imamura) 

by alexandr kudlobinsky

Eclaire Makeover

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Happy Sunday everyone! 

Here’s a comic on a ticking time bomb!

This week’s entry: “Betelgeuse”

http://www.space.com/22009-betelgeuse.html

Solar Palette

If you look at the Sun (which you shouldn’t, ever), you just see white light (for the second or so before your retinas are permanently scorched. That’s a mixture of all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes respond to, between 390 and 700 nanometers (or about 3,900 to 7,000 angstroms). And there is a lot we can learn about the Sun by viewing it in that range, from studying its undulating surface swirls to its rotation. 

But scientists at places like NASA can learn even more by extending their “eyes” beyond the visible.That’s what this new mosaic from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows us. It represents all of SDO’s detectable wavelengths and the ions and temperatures that those wavelengths represent. Viewing each of those can tell us a deeper, richer story of the solar physics at work in and on the fusion-powered energy source that feeds our planet.

I’ve captured the false colored hues that NASA scientists assign to each and put it in a digital palette. I can’t help but feel a bit amazed at not only the extreme temperatures at play (millions of Kelvin!) but also the extreme beauty. Our Sun is the best sun.

To dig into more detail about each wavelength and what it measures, check out this NASA article.