Archive
Hugin and correction of photographic distortion
Superconducting conductors arriving at Fermilab, credits at end.
None of you will know I have history in photography, award winning, newspaper front page, glossy magazine front page, etc., none earth shattering but it was a personal challenge in the film era. Put another way I have an interest from both the art and technical perspective.
I intended producing a minor blog post on Fermilab and the magnet, ideally posts need a good headline photograph, what with copyright and poor technical standards this is often tricky. My own blog, this one, tends to get poor art.
Lomonosov University and the study of high atmosphere electrical events, satellite planned
A new university satellite is scheduled launch 2015[1]. A web site for the project is available in English
Mikhail Lomonosov (1711 – 1765) helped establish what is now known as Moscow University, decree signed 1755, 250 years ago.
According to Lomonosov’s plan, there were originally three faculties. First all the students acquired a comprehensive knowledge in the field of science and humanities at the Faculty of Philosophy; then they could specialize and continue at the Faculty of Philosophy or join either the Law Faculty or The Faculty of Medicine. Lectures were delivered either in Latin, the language of educated people at the time, or in Russian. [2]
![]() Aurora drawing |
Illustrations from a book published 1753. Text, perhaps embellished a little as these things are, “Mikhail Lomonosov – the Pioneer of Russian Science” nevertheless looks a good fellow.
The satellite is named Lononosov.
Anders Angstrom: Nocturnal radiation at various altitudes

The curves bring out some interesting facts that deserve special consideration.
For ordinary values of the humidity, the effective radiation has a maximum at 1 to 4 km. altitude. An increase of the humidity or a decrease of the temperature
gradient shifts this maximum to higher altitudes. The effective radiation gradient
is consequently positive at low altitudes and negative at high altitudes. — A. Angstrom
Fig. 14 from paper 100 years ago by Anders Angstrom on LWIR emission. This shows families of curves grouped by two different lapse rates.
Note: This Daedal Earth blog article was rapidly produced to make the PDF available for citation elsewhere. Content may change later.
Sub-extract from Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Volume 65, Number 3, published 1915. is A study of the Radiation of the Atmosphere
Physicist Dr Anders Angstrom was the son of physicist Dr Knut Anstrom (radiation instrument inventor) the son of physicist Dr Anders Angstrom after whom the wavelength unit the Angstrom is named. Confusion is understandable.
Collated EUMETSAT European monthly weather videos
Image from the cold March 2013.
If you are new to these videos expect a revealation, how air moves, clouds stream, bubble.
Clouds are sometimes on seveal levels moving in different directions: we are looking through circulation cells from above, warm air travelling to the Arctic to shed heat and cold air spilling back on it’s journey towards the equator.
Colour, artists, technicians, Isaac Newton onwards.
The website Dimensions of Colour by David Briggs is based on material taught at the Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney, Australia, made available for all of us to learn.
FOREWORD: COLOUR THEORY MADE DIFFICULT yet paraphrasing a gentleman but no more than necessary. Artists from all fields who use colour, oils, pastels, room decore, computer jockeys, ought to know more. If David is right, implying it has been criticised as too difficult and too simple, must be about right.
I didn’t know how fundamental Newton has been, inventing the concept of the colour wheel, is history here too.
I came across the site during investigation of colour space after hitting trouble in implementing HSL/HSI/HSV Uncle Tom and finding things are a mess. Change of tack, going to try proper matrix operations instead.
Best of luck.
Click the image or here. (both open in new window)