Yerres, Path Through The Old Growth Woods In The Park Via Gustave Caillebotte

Dancer with a Fan by Edgar Degas

Medium: pastel

Ancient Buddha statue emerges in E. China reservoir

Archaeologists have started an underwater detection project after villagers in eastern China’s Jiangxi Province found the head of a Buddha statue emerging from the surface of a local reservoir.

The head was spotted at Hongmen Reservoir, Nancheng County in the city of Fuzhou, at the end of last year when a hydropower gate renovation project lowered water levels in the reservoir by more than 10 meters.

Judging from the head design, the statue was carved during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), said Xu Changqing, head of the provincial research institute of archaeology.

He said that the researchers had also found rectangular holes carved on the cliff, obvious marks of architecture, which meant that a temple could have existed there. Read more.

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Space station flyover of Gulf of Aden and Horn of Africa

European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti took this photograph from the International Space Station and posted it to social media on Jan. 30, 2015. Cristoforetti wrote, “A spectacular flyover of the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa. #HelloEarth”

Image credit: NASA/ESA/Samantha Cristoforetti

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Patagonian fossil leaves reveal rapid recovery from dinosaur extinction event http://www.geologypage.com/2016/11/patagonian-fossil-leaves-reveal-rapid-recovery-dinosaur-extinction-event.html

Fright Night, The Witches Hour & The Darkest Hour by DVerissimo - Like it? Find out more and buy HERE (t-shirts, phone & laptop cases, prints, pillows, stickers, mugs, calendars, etc…)

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this atmospheric phenomenon is known as a circumhorizontal arc, which occurs when the sun is at least 58° above the horizon and the hexagonal ice crystals which form cirrus clouds become horizontally aligned.                     

(photos x, x, x, x, x, x, x. see also: more circumhorizontal arcs, asperatus clouds, mammatus clouds, polar stratospheric clouds and cloud iridescence)

The Pork Butcher by Camille Pissarro

Size: 66x54 cm Medium: oil on canvas

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Four Dancers by Edgar Degas

Medium: pastel

Celestial nomad takes centre stage

In this new ESO image, nightfall raises the curtain on a theatrical display taking place in the cloudless skies over La Silla.

In a scene humming with activity, the major players captured here are Comet Lovejoy, glowing green in the centre of the image; the Pleiades above and to the right; and the California Nebula, providing some contrast in the form of a red arc of gas directly to the right of Lovejoy.

A meteor adds its own streak of light to the scene, seeming to plunge into the hazy pool of green light collecting along the horizon.

The telescopes of La Silla provide an audience for this celestial performance, and a thin shroud of low altitude cloud clings to the plain below the observatory streaked by the Panamericana Highway.

Comet Lovejoy’s long tail is being pushed away from the comet by the solar wind. Carbon compounds that have been excited by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun give it its striking green hue.

This is the first time the comet has passed through the inner Solar System and ignited so spectacularly in over 11 000 years. Its highly elliptical orbit about the Sun — adjusted slightly due to meddling planets — means that it will not grace our skies for another 8000 years once it has rounded the Sun and begun its lonely voyage back into the cold outer regions of the Solar System.

Image credit: P. Horálek/ESO

Saint-Sauves-d'Auvergne via Armand Guillaumin