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Δευτέρα 23 Δεκεμβρίου 2013

ΓΕΩΛΟΓΙΑ GEOLOGY

Formula: (Mg,Fe)3Si2O5(OH)4
System: Monoclinic 
Colour: green, green-blue, ...
Hardness: 3½ - 4
Member of: Serpentine Group
Name: Named after the type locality, Valle di Antigorio, Domodossola, Piedmont, Italy





Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico

1.25 inches x 1 inch x .35 inches
© Etsy, Inc.





Fluorite



A study into the brooding behaviour of birds has revealed their dinosaur ancestors shared the load when it came to incubation of eggs.

Research into the incubation behaviour of birds suggests the type of parental care carried out by their long extinct ancestors.

The study aimed to test the hypothesis that data from extant birds could be used to predict the incubation behaviour of Theropods, the group of carnivorous dinosaurs from which birds descended.


*Photo : Oviraptorid skeleton and eggs in the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main. (Credit: EvaK via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license)



Ant in Cretaceous Amber

Size: 14,0 x 10,0 x 4,3 mm
Weight: 1,75 ct or 0,35 g
Origin: Main Khun, Tanai Township, Kachin State, Burma (Myanmar)

© Crystal-Treasure




Smoky quartz on amazonite with goethite ps. siderite crystals |




Azurite 

Milpillas Mine, Cuitaca, Mun. de Santa Cruz, Sonora, Mexico





Sulfur 

Location: Agrigento | Sicily | Italy
Size: 8.0 x 5.3 x 5.5 cm

© wendel-minerals




world largest yellow diamond



Timelapse at the Pic du Midi Observatory




ΤΑ ΜΟΝΟΠΑΤΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΑΣΤΕΡΙΩΝ >>> )(
Αυτή η εικόνα λήφθηκε από Babak Α. Tafreshi, ένα από ESO Φωτογραφία Πρέσβεις , στο Paranal Observatory του ESO. Δείχνει τρία από τα τέσσερα βοηθητικά τηλεσκόπια (ΑΤ) του Πολύ Μεγάλου Τηλεσκοπίου (VLTI). Από πάνω τους, οι μεγάλες φωτεινές λωρίδες είναι αστέρι μονοπάτια, το καθένα σηματοδοτεί την φαινομενική πορεία ενός ενιαίου αστέρι όλον τον σκοτεινό νυχτερινό ουρανό, λόγω της περιστροφής της Γης. Η τεχνική αυτή ενισχύει επίσης τα φυσικά χρώματα των αστέρων, η οποία δίνει μια ένδειξη της θερμοκρασίας τους, που κυμαίνονται από περίπου 1000 βαθμούς Κελσίου για τα reddest αστέρια σε μερικές δεκάδες χιλιάδες βαθμούς Κελσίου για τα πιο καυτά, τα οποία εμφανίζονται μπλε. Ο ουρανός σε αυτή την απομακρυσμένη και υψηλή θέση στη Χιλή είναι εξαιρετικά σαφής και δεν υπάρχει φωτορύπανση, μας προσφέρει αυτό το καταπληκτικό light show.






GREENLAND



ΟΙ ΤΕΡΑΣΤΙΟΙ ΠΑΓΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΓΡΟΙΛΑΝΔΙΑΣ ΠΟΥ ΛΙΩΝΟΥΝ ΜΠΟΡΕΙ ΝΑ ΚΡΑΤΟΥΝ ΤΟ ΚΛΕΙΔΙ ΓΙΑ ΤΟ ΠΟΣΟ ΘΑ ΑΝΕΒΗ Η ΣΤΑΘΜΗ ΤΗΣ ΘΑΛΑΣΣΑΣ ΤΑ ΕΠΟΜΕΝΑ ΧΡΟΝΙΑ!

SPACE. The Grand Canyon of Mars and more

Covering nearly a fifth the circumference of Mars, the canyon system Valles Marineris reigns as the largest canyon system on the red planet. Dwarfing its Earthly counterpart, the Grand Canyon, the Martian feature is one of the larger canyons in the solar system.

Valles Marineris is a system of canyons that spans 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers). At some points, the canyon is 125 miles (200 km) wide. Regions can reach depths of 6 miles (10 km). If the system were located on Earth, it would stretch across the United States, from Los Angeles to the Atlantic coast.

By comparison, Earth's natural wonder, the Grand Canyon, is only 227 miles (446 km) long, 18 miles (30 km) wide, and 1 mile (1.6 km) deep. A windy channel on Venus, Baltis Valles, extends longer than the Martian system, as do a handful of rift valleys on Earth, which form along fault lines as the crust breaks apart.

Valles Marineris stretches east-west just below the Martian equator. It starts in the west in the Noctis Labyrinthus, a system of maze-like valleys and canyons, and stretches around 20 percent of the planet to the chaotic terrain near the Chryse Planitia basin.

The canyon system contains a number of different features that give clues to its formation. Collapse pits created by rushing water eating away at the land, massive floods, and seeping along canyon walls all point to water just at or beneath the surface at some point in the Martian history. Cracks in the crust, cliffs and walls, and landslides also exist along the expanse of Valles Marineris.

The vast canyon can be seen from Earth through a telescope as a dark scarring on the planet's surface. Features known as chasmata, steep depressions that resemble canyons on Earth, dominate the canyon.

The canyon begins in the Noctis Labyrinthus on the western edge, a region of material thought to have volcanic origins. Two parallel chasmata, Ius and Tithonium, stretch eastward, and contain lava flows and faults from the Tharsis Bulge.

Three more chasmata, Melas, Candor and Ophir, are connected on the east side of the parallel features. Their floors contain eroded material and volcanic ash. The floor of the Melas chasma contains the deepest point of the canyon system.

Coprates Chasma lies farther east, with well-defined layered deposits. These deposits may have formed from landslides or wind-blown material, although the region may once have housed isolated lakes.

Eos and Ganges are another set of chasmata that contain volcanic or windblown deposits that have slowly eroded over time.

The Valles Marineris system empties into the Chryse region, one of the lowest regions on Mars. Any water from the canyon system would have flown into the lowlands, and it may have once contained an ancient lake or ocean.

Over the years, scientists have proposed a number of theories about the formation of Valles Marineris. Erosion during a water-rich past and the withdrawal of subsurface magma were both early possibilities.

Today, most scientists think that the formation of the Tharsis region may have helped the canyon to form. The Tharsis region contains several large volcanoes that dwarf those found on Earth, including Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system.

As molten rock pushed through the volcanic region to form the monstrous volcanoes 3.5 billion years ago, the crust heaved upward. The strain cracked the crust, causing large faults and fractures across the planet's surface. Such fractures, growing over time, birthed the enormous canyon system.

The spreading cracks caused the ground to sink and opened an escape for subsurface water. The upward rushing liquid broke down the edges of the fractures, enlarging them and washing away more of the ground while flowing past.

Signs of flooding are especially apparent at the eastern end, in the mesas and hills known as chaotic terrain. Rushing water poured through channels into the lowlands, carving a series of channels. Scientists do not yet know whether the flooding took place over a short span of time, or whether one overwhelming flood was accompanied by several smaller flooding events.

At the same time, canyons were slowly widened over smaller scales as seeping groundwater carried rock and sediment away in smaller quantities. Landslides also helped to enlarge the features, sometimes traveling as far as 60 miles (100 km). Lava flows and ash falling from the nearby volcanoes may also have played a role in forming the intricate feature.

The large canyon system was discovered in 1972 by its namesake, NASA's Mariner 9 spacecraft, the first satellite to orbit another planet.

This picture is a mosaic of images taken by Viking 1 centers on Valles Marineris.



Simply Earth 

A day’s clouds. The shape and texture of the land. The living ocean. City lights as a beacon of human presence across the globe. This amazingly beautiful view of Earth from space is a fusion of science and art, a showcase for the remote-sensing technology that makes such views possible, and a testament to the passion and creativity of the scientists who devote their careers to understanding how land, ocean, and atmosphere—even life itself—interact to generate Earth’s unique (as far as we know!) life-sustaining environment.

Drawing on data from multiple satellite missions (not all collected at the same time), a team of NASA scientists and graphic artists created layers of global data for everything from the land surface, to polar sea ice, to the light reflected by the chlorophyll in the billions of microscopic plants that grow in the ocean. They wrapped these layers around a globe, set it against a black background, and simulated the hazy edge of the Earth’s atmosphere (the limb) that appears in astronaut photography of the Earth.

The land surface layer is based on photo-like surface reflectance observations (reflected sunlight) measured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite in July 2004. The sea ice layer near the poles comes from Terra MODIS observations of daytime sea ice observed between August 28 and September 6, 2001. The ocean layer is a composite. In shallow water areas, the layer shows surface reflectances observed by Terra MODIS in July 2004. In the open ocean, the photo-like layer is overlaid with observations of the average ocean chlorophyll content for 2004. NASA’s Aqua MODIS collected the chlorophyll data. The cloud layer shows a single-day snapshot of clouds observed by Terra MODIS across the planet on July 29, 2001. City lights on Earth’s night side are visualized from data collected by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program mission between 1994–1995. The topography layer is based on radar data collected by the Space Shuttle Endeavour during an 11-day mission in February of 2000. Topography over Antarctica comes from the Radarsat Antarctic Mapping Project, version 2.

Most of the data layers in this visualization are available as monthly composites as part of NASA’s Blue Marble Next Generation image collection. The images in the collection appear in cylindrical projection (rectangular maps), and they are available at 500-meter resolution. The large images provided above are the full-size versions of these globes. In their hope that these images will inspire people to appreciate the beauty of our home planet and to learn about the Earth system, the developers of these images encourage readers to re-use and re-publish the images freely.


Colors of the Innermost Planet 

This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER's primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up Mercury's surface.



stormy sea