I sent my brother a postcard similar to the following during our trip to Block Island After I sent it I tried to get a similar picture of my own. So I went to the Mohegan Bluffs that were pictured and went down the staircase there. One problem is that the staircase doesn't go all to way to the beach. The other problem is that the lighthouse isn't visible from that part of the beach. It seemed that it might be visible from further up the beach, and it was a beautiful day, so I started walking When I got to that distant point, the lighthouse was visible, but just barely After the hike and the climb back up the staircase, I went to the lighthouse a short way up the road. In the end I figured out that either: 1) the postcard image was taken from somewhere up on top of one of the cliffs, or 2) it was taken years ago before they moved the lighthouse further away from the cliff edge to keep it from falling in the ocean. or 3) they doctored the image using photoshop Look it even has a sailboat now. :-)

Gigantic Jet Lightning over China Image Credit & Copyright: Phebe Pan Explanation: That's no meteor. While watching and photographing this year's Perseid Meteor Shower, something unexpected happened: a gigantic jet erupted from a nearby cloud. The whole thing was over in a flash -- it lasted less than a second -- but was fortunately captured by an already-recording digital camera. Gigantic jets are a rare form of lightning recognized formally only a few years ago. The featured high resolution color image, taken near the peak of Shikengkong mountain in China, may be the best image yet of this unusual phenomenon. The same event appears to have been captured simultaneously by another photographer, further away. The gigantic jet appears to start somewhere in a nearby thundercloud and extend upwards towards Earth's ionosphere. The nature of gigantic jets and their possible association with other types of Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) such as blue jets and red sprites remains an active topic of research.

Aurora over Icelandic Fault Image Credit & Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado (TWAN, Earth and Stars) Explanation: Admire the beauty but fear the beast. The beauty is the aurora overhead, here taking the form of great green spiral, seen between picturesque clouds with the bright Moon to the side and stars in the background. The beast is the wave of charged particles that creates the aurora but might, one day, impair civilization. Exactly this week in 1859, following notable auroras seen all across the globe, a pulse of charged particles from a coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with a solar flare impacted Earth's magnetosphere so forcefully that they created the Carrington Event. A relatively direct path between the Sun and the Earth might have been cleared by a preceding CME. What is sure is that the Carrington Event compressed the Earth's magnetic field so violently that currents were created in telegraph wires so great that many wires sparked and gave telegraph operators shocks. Were a Carrington-class event to impact the Earth today, speculation holds that damage might occur to global power grids and electronics on a scale never yet experienced. The featured aurora was imaged last week over Thingvallavatn Lake in Iceland, a lake that partly fills a fault that divides Earth's large Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

I have a folder full of totem pole photos on my computer, but have been looking all morning and can't find them, so these will have to do instead. Tree stump carvings seen at a temple in Vientiane, Laos. They are amazingly elaborate and detailed carvings of animals, people, mythical characters, trees and buildings.