The Incredible Sights of India |
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| India is a huge country with vast and beautiful landscapes. Everyone has heard of the exquisite Taj Mahal but have you heard about the colorful Meenaksi Amman Temple or the Blue City of Jodhpur? India has scores of hidden treasures. I was amazed to learn about some of these eye-popping temples and monuments. I can’t wait to visit… | ||||
| Meenakshi Amman Temple
If you travel to the city of Madurai, you can lay your eyes on the colorful Meenaksi Amman Temple. This towered temple is a vast complex of ten gateway towers, guarding the Hindu temple to the Goddess Parvati, and Shiva, her husband consort. Jantar Mantar
This colorful complex is an astronomical observatory in New Deli, built by orders of the Mahajara Jai Singh II in the 18th century. Root Bridges of Meghalaya
Surprisingly India is home to one of the wettest places on earth. The Meghalayan jungle is a mountainous subtropical forest with steady rain. The rivers are dangerous to cross so the locals creatively used nature to form a root bridge. Karni Mata Temple
Also known as the Temple of Rats, this beautiful Hindu temple in Deshnoke is home to 20,000 black rats. The rat infestation is encouraged by the locals as their presence is in memory of the Karni Mata, a Hindu sage. The Ajanta Caves
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Engineering
Imagine you are diving, and suddenly …..Watch this Video clip …!!!
Amazing video of whales surfacing – open-mouthed – under a diving expedition.
This 2013 video shows divers near Souza Rock on the central California coast, having a close call with two humpBack whales. Via Biologia com o Prof. Jubilut
Source…….www.earthsky.org and You tube
Natarajan
Image of the Day….Progress 59 Launch on 28 April 2015…
An unpiloted ISS Progress 59 cargo craft launched at 3:09 a.m. EDT (7:09 UTC, 1:09 p.m. local time in Baikonur) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. At the time of launch, the International Space Station? was flying about 257 miles over northeast Kazakhstan near the Russian border, having flown over the launch site two and a half minutes before lift off.
Less than 10 minutes after launch, the resupply ship reached preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas as planned.
Russian flight controllers notified the crew members that Progress will make a two-day, 34-orbit rendezvous to the station instead of the planned four-orbit, six-hour journey after telemetry could not confirm the Kurs automated rendezvous antennas deployed.
The Russian cargo craft now is scheduled to arrive at the space station Thursday morning at approximately 5:03 a.m. EDT/9:03 UTC.
Image and launch details via NASA on G+
Bottom line: An unpiloted ISS Progress 59 cargo craft launched at 3:09 a.m. EDT (7:09 UTC, 1:09 p.m. local time in Baikonur) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying food and supplies for the International Space Station.
Source……www.earthsky.org
Natarajan
Photos With Perfect Timing…!!!
Source….www.lifebuzz.com
Natarajan
Incredible Images of Macro Photography ….
A Tiny Wonderland in the Backyard
While studying for a degree in neuroscience, Nadav Bagim (A.K.A. Aimishboy) went through a period of introspection. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to continue with his studies, leaving him in somewhat of an existential impasse. When his father gave him an SLR-like camera, Nadav’s life went in an entirely different direction.
Nadav taught himself how to use the camera and became fascinated with macro photography. He says that he only uses Photoshop to perform minor tweaks in his images and that his tiny models do the real work.
The Celestial Conductor
Moon River
The Offering
Life Inside a Snowglobe
Swirling
Winged Shadows
Piggy-Back Ride
Tickle Me
Hey There!
Waiting for the Princess
Sunrise Friends
Make Slime, Not War
Source….www.ba-bamail.com
Natarajan
” I ‘am Sorry’ Written Across Brisbane Sky…” !!!
The words “I’m sorry”, followed by “I love you” were written across the Brisbane sky just after lunchtime on April 27. Photo: Michael Coombes/Twitter
It’s the question all of Brisbane wants answered: What on earth did he do to need to apologise in the sky?
Just after lunchtime on Monday, a skywriter plastered the words “I’m sorry”, followed by “I love you”, with the love signified by a heart, and two crosses for kisses, across the sky over the city.
Pictures of the airborne apology splashed across social media within minutes, with rumours flying about what somebody could have possibly done to warrant a gesture way that went beyond a bunch of flowers or make-up dinner.
The apology, as seen from the CBD.
The apology, as seen from the CBD. Photo: Daniela Sunde-Brown
The $4000 contrail confessional was carried out by Rob Vance of Skywriting Services Australia, based on the Gold Coast.
Mr Vance began the mercurial mea culpa at 12.58pm and finished it at 1.10pm.
“For us the words are back to front and upside down,” he said of the skywriting procedure.
“We’re working in three dimensions and can’t see what we’re doing, so it’s a bit tricky.”
Mr Vance said for now he could only confirm the person behind the apology was a man and an “interesting guy”.
But the man who requested it didn’t appear to be frantically lovelorn, he said.
“No, he was calm, cool and collected,” Mr Vance said.
While you can’t put a price on love, Mr Vance said the service usually charged $3990 for up to 10 letters or characters.
Interestingly, it’s not the first time Mr Vance has made a profit from someone screwing up.
“It’s usually along the same lines – someone saying sorry and that’s basically it,” he said.
“‘I’m sorry Barbara’ or something like that.”
The author and recipient of Monday’s message remain a mystery.
Mr Vance said he would check with his client to see if he could share the story behind the soaring sorry note.
“I’m sorry” appears over Brisbane. Photo: Amy Remeikis
Source….
Natalie Bochenski in
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au
Natarajan
Nine Indians Who have Planets Named after Them….
Viswanathan Anand just had a planet named after him. The Chess Grandmaster, once nicknamed the “Lightning Kid”, famous for his rapid tactical calculations has been immortalized with planet Vishyanand, the main asteroid belt minor planet between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
But Indians are no strangers to having planetary bodies named after them – these whiz kids have had their own planets for a while now.
Hamsa Padmanabhan
At 16, Hamsa Padmanabhan had a minor planet 21575 named ‘Hamsa’, after her. She was then a second-year B.Sc student of Fergusson College, when she made a presentation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln lab for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fir (ISEF) in 2006. Today at 21, she is doing her post graduation in Physics from Pune University, after which she plans to do her doctoral research in theoretical physics.
Sainudeen Pattazhy
NASA named a minor planet (5178 No CD4) after Kerala zoology professor Sainudeen Pattazhy for his environmental research and campaigns, including red rain, health hazard of mobile phone towers, biological control of mosquitoes and the eco-biology of trees of religious importance.
Vishnu Jayaprakash
In 2010, Vishnu Jayaprakash, then a Chennai Class XII student of Chettinad Vidyashram demonstrated a microbial fuel cell that runs on cow dung and inexpensive graphite electrodes. The minor planet named after him is called 25620 Jayaprakash. He aimed to reduce power costs for India’s 700,000 villages. Today, he has done extensive research on renewable energy technologies, and is now focussing on Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology.
Anish Mukherjee
When Anish Mukherjee and Debarghya Sarkar were only 16 years old, they noticed the large scale bottle tampering rampant in India. They took the idea of autodisposable syringes—which, once used, cannot be used again—and implemented that for one-time use bottle cap. Their design enabled customers to know if the the bottle had been tampered with. For this, planet 2000 AH52 he was renamed 25629 Mukherjee.
Debarghya Sarkar
In 2010, Sarkar and his school classmate Anish Mukherjee worked on an innovative design that would make bottle-caps completely tamper proof. For his contribution to electrical and mechanical engineering, 25630 Sarkar (previously 2000 AT53) is named after him. Debarghya Sarkar is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California. He plans to take his interest in bottle cap design towards a larger goal – design, fabrication and integration of devices that modulate photons and electrons.
Hetal Vaishnav
When class X student Hetal Vaishnav saw that ragpickers were not picking up waste packets made up of multilayer plastic, she found that recycling companies avoided buying multilayer film plastic waste from them as it cannot be reused or recycled. Hetal then spent months to innovate upon a process to deliver an innovative material that is “sustainable to water, has good nail- and screw-holding capacity, and has features that are better than MDF (Medium-density fibreboard) and plywood.”. This let her use multilayered and metallised plastic used for packaging wafers and chewing tobacco. “I got a certificate from Lincoln Lab a few days ago,” Hetal said on telephone from Rajkot. Planet 25636 Vaishnav was named for her contribution to the environment.
Akshat Singhal
After Akshat found how annoying it was to index documents in a computer, he developed a system to automatically categorise documents, and also find relations between them, using artificial intelligence. The planet named after him, 12599 Singhal, is in the same region of planets that has 8749 Beatles, 2001 Einstein and 7000 Curie.
Madhav Pathak
Madhav Pathak has changed the conventional Braille slate, making writing easier for the visually impaired. After Madhav Pathak found that his uncle could not easily write in Braille, the system of six raised dots, he decided to change it. Braille has a steep learning curve: Blind children have to memorise more than 300 combinations of dots, since they need one set of combinations for reading, and another set for writing! Madhav has modified the Braille slate (used for writing the language), which lets students easily read and write the language. For this, he has 12509 Pathak named after him.
Viswanathan Anand
Named Vishyanand, the main belt minor planet is between the orbits of planets Mars and Jupiter. The planet was discovered in 1988 by Kenzo Suzuki in Toyota, Japan and was nameless until now. A minor planet is usually named after the person who discovered it but if it remains nameless, then it’s in the hands of the committee members to name it. Hence Micahel Rudenko, a minor planet committee member and an ardent fan of Viswanathan Anand’s knack for chess decided to name the planet ‘Vishyanand’. He is only the third chess player in the world after Alexander Alekhine and Anatoly Karpov to be honored in this fashion.
With inputs from Mensxp.com
Source…..www.indiatimes.com
Natarajan
” A Bad Prank by a Pax on Board …. It Went Wrong For the Crazy Pax anyway …”
A man has been arrested over an incident on an Air India flight. Source: Getty Images
A PASSENGER attempts to chat up a flight attendant, but she resists his “charms” and walks away. What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, a lot!
Yousuf Sharif, 35, allegedly sparked hijacking fears on board an Air India flight from Dubai to Hyderabad, India on Tuesday. And it was all because of a very bad prank he decided to play on a flight attendant, the Times of India reports.
Sitting in business class, the Indian resident asked the crew member if she would take a selfie with him on his phone. He also asked if he could photograph the cockpit.
“He was requesting the crew member to pose for a selfie and tried to engage her in a conversation, to which she objected,” Police officer T Sudhakar, who works for Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, where the plane landed, told local news website the DeccanChronicle.
Police allege the man had been trying to flirt with the staff member and when she refused to talk to him, he decided to scare her with a hijacking prank.
“When the air hostess rejected his request and started walking away, Yousuf told her that he will hijack the flight,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Shamshabad AR Srinivas said. “She immediately alerted the pilot.”
The man was questioned once the flight touched down, no charges have yet been laid.
news.com.au has contacted Air India for comment.
He allegedly threatened to hijack the plane as a prank. Picture: Stefan Krasowski Source: Flickr
Source….www.news.com.au
Natarajan
Photos That are Worth Thousand Words…. India Photos …
This is a scene from the ghost town of Dhanushkodi in Tamil Nadu by Nempu Guru.
And this is the sunrise as seen from Varanasi’s Assi Ghat also by Guru.
Atanu Banerjee shares with us this photograph of a fisherman at work in Digha, West Bengal
And Pradipto Chakrabarty sends us this stunning view from the picturesque village of Sarahan in Himachal Pradesh.
And this view of Chandrakhani Pass in Manali has been sent to us by Shyam Chavan.
Chavan also sends us this picture of Parashar Lake in Himachal Pradesh
And Pankaj Kumar witnesses the cleanliness of Meghalaya’s rivers. This picture has been shot at Dauki.
This is a picture of the frozen Lake Tsongmo in Gangtok by Ashish Kawale.
And we come back to Tamil Nadu with this picture of the Kasimedu fishing harbour in Chennai by Jaimurugan.
Source……..www.rediff.com
Natarajan
Image of the Day…” Quadruple Rainbow …” !!!
Yes, the quadruple rainbow photo is real
Amanda Curtis’ rare sighting of a quadruple rainbow over Long Island on April 21, 2015 is the real thing. It’s what’s called a reflection rainbow …
Amanda Curtis, CEO of 19th Amendment, is having a very lucky day. While waiting for a train in Long Island this morning she caught this heavenly vision, a rare quadruple rainbow.
Amanda’s photo, which quickly went viral turns out to be what Les Cowley of the great website Atmospheric Optics calls a reflection rainbow. A reflected double rainbow! Bad Astronomer Phil Plaitat Slate agrees. In other words, according to Phil:
The angle of the weirder, more vertical bows is what gives it away. If the light forming rainbows reflects off a body of water (say, a lake, pond, or even standing water on a road) you get another set of rainbows cast at a different angle.
Les explains that reflection rainbows are:
… produced by sunlight beaming upwards after reflection from calm water or wet sand …
The Scottish Western Isles are favored places for reflection bows. The prevailing warm south westerlies from the Atlantic Ocean bring frequent showers of fine rain interspersed by skies of exceptional purity whose sunlight is reflected in the many bays and inlets.
But today, thanks to Amanda Curtis, we can all enjoy this rare optical phenomenon!
Thanks for sharing your pic with us at EarthSky, Amanda!
P.S. This reflected double rainbow is a different phenomenon, by the way, from what experts in atmospheric optics call tertiary or quaternary bows. They are even more rare. Read the latest on them – from 2011 – here: First-ever photos of triple and quadruple rainbows
Bottom line: Amanda Curtis’ rare photo of a quadruple rainbow, seen over Long Island on April 21, is the real thing. It’s a reflected double rainbow.
Source…….www.earthsky.org
Natarajan
Take off with Natarajan 