Arif's posterous

February 11, 2009

MORE 3D Chalk Sidewalk Drawings by Julian Beever

Click here to download:

MORE_3D_Chalk_Sidewalk_Drawing.zip (1226 KB)

Loading mentions Retweet

Comments [0]

February 9, 2009

Discovering what it means to be Muslim in America | CNN

via cnn.com

Loading mentions Retweet

Comments [0]

February 6, 2009

The face of beauty | Holy Haleakala! | Discover Magazine

via blogs.discovermagazine.com

That’s NGC 4921, a face-on spiral galaxy in the Coma cluster of galaxies, over 300 million light years away. This Hubble image is a mosaic of 80 separate images, and has stunning clarity and depth.

Loading mentions Retweet

Comments [0]

February 5, 2009

Long Exposure Photography, Wow!

via digital-photography-school.com

Loading mentions Retweet

Comments [0]

February 5, 2009

High resolution image of inner corona

via zam.fme.vutbr.cz

This high-resolution image shows not only the inner corona in the delicate details but surprisingly the lunar surface is recorded in the quality not very far from an image taken during the full moon. Even small craters are clearly visible on the lunar surface. It is necessary to align the solar corona and the Moon separately in order not to blurr one of these two parts.

Loading mentions Retweet

Comments [0]

February 5, 2009

Delegation Of Ismaili Imamat Building In Ottawa

Information on Delegation of Ismaili Imamat Building

http://www.akdn.org/press_release.asp?ID=700

Click here to download:

Delegation_Of_Ismaili_Imamat_B.zip (1264 KB)

Loading mentions Retweet

Comments [0]

January 30, 2009

Frizions: Making art from ice and polarised light

clipped from www.newscientist.com

These images are frizions. They were all created by NASA scientist Peter Wasilewski. A selection of frizions is currently on display at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, Alaska.

Frozen sun

Rather than painting on canvas like most artists, Peter Wasilewski paints with polarised light on ice.

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Devana chasma

To do this, Wasilewski takes a Petri dish of ice in the process of freezing. He then sandwiches it between two polarising filters (similar to those in your sunglasses) and passes white light through it.

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Fracture

The first filter polarises the light, causing all the rays to vibrate in the same plane...

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Depth

...but light in this plane cannot travel through the lattice structure of the ice, so it is forced to split into 2 rays, oriented at right angles to each other...

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Aurora nocturne

... a process known as birefringence.

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Sublustre

These 2 rays travel at different velocities through the ice (creating a fast and a slow ray).

As a result, when they are recombined at the second polarising filter, the phase difference between them causes interference. This creates the startling colours in these images

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Plumage

The colours are not only determined by the lattice structure of the ice, but also by its thickness.

By controlling the latter, for example by varying the temperature of the surrounding water, Wasilewski produces a wide variety of different patterns.

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Deep wort

Wasilewski's day job is studying the magnetic properties of meteorites and rocks from the moon and Earth.

He learned about the peculiar properties of ice crystals while studying samples he had collected from the pale blue ice near the Transantarctic Mountains that divide east and west Antarctica

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Burble gradient

Water ice can also be found in the frozen oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa, at the equator of Mars, in the tails of passing comets, and even in the dense molecular clouds where stars form.

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Fronds

However, only the ice found on Earth is known to have the correct lattice structure to produce a frizion.

clipped from www.newscientist.com

Rendition

To see more frizions, visit Wasilewski's website.

You can also buy Frizion prints.

clipped from www.newscientist.com

This diagram shows how the process of building a frizion works.

Loading mentions Retweet

Comments [0]

December 24, 2008

Illuminated manuscripts: a true light in the Middle Ages

clipped from www.darkroastedblend.com

Some of the earliest unusual books have got to be the celebrated illuminated manuscripts. First created in such places as Ireland, Constantinople, and Italy by amazingly diligent monks, illuminated manuscripts reached their height in the Middle Ages. Very difficult to create, and so very expensive, they were mostly created as “altar Bibles” for churches or cathedrals or for very wealthy patrons.

What’s fascinating about illuminated manuscripts, beyond their elegant and beautiful craft, is that often the text was almost neglected for the artwork, which explains why many illuminated Bibles contain simple typographical mistakes.