I have no idea who took these. I received them in an email today. Click on the picture above for larger images.

I think this picture is a hoax, but all this is worth a look anyway.

Snopes calls the photo “undetermined,” but agrees with me that it is quite evidently a created artwork.”

When an airplane travels at a speed faster than sound, density waves of sound emitted by the plane cannot precede the plane, and so accumulate in a cone behind the plane. When this shock wave passes, a listener hears all at once the sound emitted over a longer period: a sonic boom. As a plane accelerates to just break the sound barrier, however, an unusual cloud might form. The origin of this cloud is still debated. A leading theory is that a drop in air pressure at the plane described by the Prandtl-Glauert Singularity occurs so that moist air condenses there to form water droplets. Above, an F/A-18 Hornet was photographed just as it broke the sound barrier.

Many photographs of airplanes breaking the sound barrier. link

Nebula NGC 2392 – the Eskimo

Daily Mail: Ten Best Hubble Photographs.

Mauna Kea Volcano, Hawaii, April 2002

Launched in 2001, the Project for On Board Autonomy (Proba) satellite was designed as a technology testbed with a lifetime of a couple of years. Five years on, it has exceeded all expectations and has been used extensively as an Earth observation satellite, providing crucial pictures to environmental researchers across the world. The size of a small tea chest, Proba has taken more than 10,000 pictures of more than 1,000 places on Earth using a compact high resolution imaging spectrometer. The device, which was part-funded by the British National Space Centre, weighs 14kg and is the smallest of its kind to fly into space. It can see details on the surface of the Earth at a resolution of 17m and has helped scientists monitor landfill operations, track the role of woodland as sources and sinks of carbon dioxide, identify Roman buildings and assess different land use strategies in central Namibia’s savannahs.

13 photo slideshow at the Guardian.

A spooky nebula for Halloween.

photo

Hat tip to Karen Myers.

State Street, Chicago 1949

The great director Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) actually started his career as a freelance photographer.

The Chicago Tribune serves up 8 Kubrick photos taken in Chicago in the summer of 1949, which demonstrate that Kubrick could handle lighting and compose a shot. Interesting stuff for the cinéaste.

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Hat tip to Frank Dobbs.

Jewish children with teacher, 1911

The Library of Congress is exhibiting the photography of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944). These remarkable images were made as magic lanterns slides, and were displayed in color using a set of red, green, blue filters. The LOC has been able to produce new digital colored images by a process they are calling digichromatography, and their results are very impressive.

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Hat tip to Chuck.

Le Monde publishes eleven photos taken over a period of two decades.

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Hat tip to Erik.