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The grisly experiment in the Australian bushes is studying the effects of how bodies decompose and hopes to help assist crime scene investigators in catching killersResearchers are studying bodies that have been dumped in confined spacesA grim study involving tens of animal remains placed inside colourful suitcases is taking place in the bushlands of Western Australia. The decomposing bodies of almost 70 stillborn piglets were individually put into the cases, as well in wheelie bins, in reportedly the world's largest experiment of its kind, according to its researchers. Pig's bodies left outside and exposed to the elements have also been used for a control group. The hope is that by studying the effects of the decomposition process it will assist crime scene investigators when reconstructing events murder events - and ultimately help catch killers. The brightly coloured suitcases belie the macabre study that is happening in Western Australia (
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Hannah Andrews / SWNS) Researchers are measuring how any temperature changes and humidity both inside and outside of the cases impacts the dead animals. Microbiological and chemical changes to the bodies and bones will also be looked at Paola Magni, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science, Murdoch University, said that each year dozens of dead human bodies are found hidden in what is known as “limited access environments”. The study will look at how temperature changes and humidity effect dead bodies (
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Hannah Andrews / SWNS) Examples of these include suitcases, bags, wheelie bins, car trunks, fridges, and freezers. Dr Magni said: "This happens because the perpetrators try to avoid an easy discovery by the authorities" or "because they need something in which they can temporarily store and move the body from place to place." She added that such places are "from the primary crime scene where the death event or murder happens, to the secondary crime scene, where the body is left or discovered," reports WalesOnline. Dr Paola Magni is running the experiment and said not enough sufficient data is currently available to to support criminal investigations into bodies left in suitcases (
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Courtesy Paola Magni/SWNS) The experiment started in early winter 2022 (in the southern hemisphere) and is due to end in the summer, with results expected be presented in the world's largest forensic science conference in February 2023. The team will also look at any insects present as the limited access environment affects carrion insects that would otherwise colonise the body, laying eggs in any orifices of wounds, due to the attracting odour it gives off. Only the UK and the US have carried out similar experiments before (
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Hannah Andrews / SWNS) Dr Magni said: "Time is crucial in the reconstruction of the events, to pinpoint people, places and motives." She added that a forensic pathologist has a short window of about three days after the death to establish the time since death However, any insects found in the body can provide information for days, months and even years after the death. The knowledge of the dynamics of the insects at the scene provide more information to law enforcement to close a case and frame the killer. (
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Hannah Andrews / SWNS) The study is offering the first critical data to analyse bodies found in such environment and will give "new information to add to the toolbox of the forensic entomologist." Only three other similar studies have been carried out in the world, including one in the US and UK, according to Dr Magni. She said the data available at the moment is not good enough to support criminal investigations concerning bodies found in suitcases and other environments such as wheelie bins. Read More Read More Read More Read More Read More
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I'll admit, I'd never heard of a Solumbellula sea pen until today, when I saw a tweet from the Exploration Vessel Nautilus showing an intriguing tentacle-y creature with a long thin stalk reaching down to the ocean floor. I was immediately enchanted. The Nautilus team called it "a thrilling discovery."The sea pen made its appearance during a visit by a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to an unexplored seamount near Johnston Atoll, a remote spot to the west of Hawaii in the Pacific. It was unexpected. This is the first time this animal has been spotted in the Pacific. It's normally found in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The Nautilus came across two examples during the dive.A video shot at a depth of 9,823 feet (2,994 meters) shows the moment of discovery, along with commentary from excited researchers. "That looks wicked," says one of them after the ROV got a close-up shot of the creature's food-capturing tentacles. For scale, the sea pen's stalk is 6.6 feet (2 meters) long.
Sea pens are filed under cnidarians, a broad group of aquatic animals that includes corals and jellyfish. "Further review of the footage and this sample will help experts determine if this is the first Pacific S.monocephalus or potentially a new species in this ocean basin," the Nautilus team said on YouTube.The research expedition at Johnston Atoll ran from June 20 to July 13 and was focused on studying the biodiversity of the area. The nonprofit Ocean Exploration Trust operates the ship and streams many of its ROV dives.E/V Nautilus has lifted the veil on many wonders of the deep, from a rare jellyfish to a delightful "unidentified gelatinous creature." Said the team, "This huge range expansion of Solumbellula in the Pacific Ocean reminds us how important ocean exploration efforts are to understanding this diversity of our planet."
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Researchers say recent footage of jaguars near the southern border could indicate their resurgence in the United States. Recently, a researcher witnessed a male jaguar in the U.S., which likely traveled north from Mexico. However, the researcher eventually realized that there were actually two separate jaguars in the photos he was capturing, eliciting excitement for the future of the species in the U.S. SEATTLE LOANS AQUARIUM $20 MILLION TO AVOID EXPANSION PROJECT DROWNING Stunning new footage by PhD researcher Ganesh Marin shows a jaguar in Sonora just 3 miles south of the border where wall construction was paused & is now “under review.”If @POTUS doesn’t stop wall construction, this critical wildlife corridor will be severed by a 30-ft barrier. pic.twitter.com/lQBHgGUPRJ— Laiken Jordahl (@LaikenJordahl) March 23, 2021 According to reports, both of the observed animals were male. "When you have young like the ones we reported, it means the moment is not far. Males disperse first, females are slower, and female Jaguars could soon be in the United States," said Ganesh Marin, a biologist working toward his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. The animals can be identified by their unique spots, similar to human fingerprints. This way, researchers will be able to identify when they're seeing new jaguars. According to researchers, the animals were not only driven out by hunting but by habitat destruction. "Jaguars are considered a near threatened species because there has been a loss of 20% to 40% of their range," Marin said. Jaguars may be returning to the United States after being hunted out of the territory. Eraldo Peres/AP Marin, who is also a National Geographic explorer, called the sightings “like finding a needle in a haystack." The discovery has been exciting for conservationists, who hope that this means the animal is returning to the area for good. However, they remain adamant that the construction of obstacles on the southern border is harmful to the conservation efforts regarding animals such as jaguars. According to Gerardo Ceballos, a researcher with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the sighting of a young, male jaguar indicates that they “are breeding now on the doorstep of the United States" as they embark on reclaiming some of their old northern territories. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER Marin's work was funded by National Geographic's Big Cats Initiative, which works to "halt the decline of big cats in the wild."
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CNN — The small whorled pogonia, a federally threatened species of orchid, has been rediscovered in Vermont – 120 years after the plant was last spotted in the state. The plant was last documented in Vermont in 1902, Aaron Marcus, an assistant botanist at Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, told CNN. Naturalists had searched extensively for the small whorled pogonia in Vermont but come up empty-handed. The small whorled pogonia is “one of the rarest orchid species east of the Mississippi,” said Marcus. The rarity of the species may have to do with its dependence on fungi in the environment, a relationship that is still little understood by scientists. “One thing that’s really cool about our orchid species is that most of them are really, really dependent on fungal species, species we can’t see underground, connected to our root system, which makes it so hard for us to understand orchids and what they need,” Marcus said. The last known documentation of a small whorled pogonia in Vermont was a photograph of a plant that had been dug up and placed in a flower pot, Marcus said. The discovery of an outcropping of the plant in Vermont is “a really great and exciting bright light,” said Marcus. The population is “perhaps the most northerly population in the whole range of small whorled pogonia,” which are found in southern Maine south to Georgia and west to southern Ontario, Michigan, and Tennessee. The orchids are threatened by climate change, habitat loss, and collection or trampling by humans. Marcus explained that the population of small whorled pogonias in Vermont was discovered by a retired greenhouse manager who posted pictures of the orchid to iNaturalist, an online platform for amateur naturalists to identify plants and animals around them. Then Marcus and Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department Botanist Bob Popp visited the site and confirmed it was indeed a small whorled pogonia on May 25. The department made the discovery public in a news release published on June 8th. “It was very exciting” to discover the orchid, said Marcus. The “most important thing is to protect the plants where they are,” Marcus added. “That’s really our first priority, for them to be able to thrive in place.” The plants are located on publicly protected lands in Winooski Valley Park District, and the department is keeping their exact location a secret to ward off would-be collectors. For Marcus, the discovery is an “incredible and humbling” reminder of how much scientists have left to learn about the natural world. “There’s more to find out there,” Marcus said. “There’s so much right in our backyards that we just don’t know, or that we once knew and we need to relearn.” Botanist Bob Popp shared Marcus’ excitement at the “amazing find.” “Things like that don’t happen that often,” Popp told CNN. “I’ve been in my position for 32 years, and more often than not I’m documenting the decline of species,” he said. “Things going the other direction – it’s just phenomenal.” Going forward, Popp said his team members hope to monitor the population. They found evidence of damage from slugs on some of the plants, and the orchids may also face threats from browsing by animals like deer. Popp also emphasized the importance of naturalists “reporting what they see” in the outdoors. “There’s no substitute for eyes and ears in the woods,” he said.
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Scientists found a single crystal of a new phosphate mineral while analyzing lunar basalt particles, which were collected from the moon two years ago by the Chang’e-5 mission.Credit...Jin Liwang/Xinhua, via Associated PressSept. 16, 2022, 12:45 p.m. ETChinese scientists recently announced their discovery of a new lunar mineral among samples collected from the moon during a mission two years ago, adding to the body of knowledge of the Earth’s satellite that had been the focus of earlier space exploration.The scientists found a single crystal of a new phosphate mineral that they have named Changesite-(Y) while analyzing particles of lunar basalt, or hardened fragments of lava, The Global Times, a state-run newspaper and website, reported.The discovery was announced last Friday and was connected to Chang’e-5, a mission that has succeeded in retrieving lunar samples as part of more ambitious plans for space exploration by China. In December 2020, it became the first country in about four decades to bring back lunar rocks and soil, amassing several pounds of samples, experts said.The Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification, a body of the International Mineralogical Association that reviews the introduction of minerals and their naming, confirmed Changesite-(Y) as a new mineral, according to the China National Space Administration.Lunar samples are the “coin of the realm” for understanding planetary evolution, said James Head, a professor of geological sciences at Brown University.The analysis of samples that had been collected by NASA decades ago, during the era of the Apollo moon landings and then the Luna robotic landers of the Soviet Union, has helped scientists better understand what formed the moon.Scientists say that those findings, along with the results of recent computer modeling, support a theory that the moon was created out of the debris left from a collision between Earth and a Mars-size planetary body.Across the six Apollo missions, conducted between 1969 and 1972, NASA amassed 2,200 samples, or 382 kilograms of “lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface,” the agency said. NASA continues to study samples from the Apollo missions and recently unsealed one of its remaining samples in preparation for the Artemis missions to the moon, the agency said in a March news release.New samples, gathered from different locations on the moon, will expand the existing knowledge of the planet’s “volatile reservoirs and geologic evolution,” NASA said in a statement.To date, most sampling has targeted the central part of the near side of the moon, the hemisphere that faces Earth, Professor Head said.New minerals discovered on the moon are not abundant, said Clive Neal, a professor of planetary geology at the University of Notre Dame. The first was armalcolite, found during the Apollo 11 mission; the term is a portmanteau referring to the mission’s three astronauts.Upcoming expeditions, which include efforts by both China and the United States, are targeting unexplored territory on the moon. Samples from “other geologically interesting sites,” especially from younger terrain on the planet, could help broaden scientists’ understanding of how the moon evolved, Professor Neal said.“The moon is still revealing some interesting secrets,” he added.
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By Jason MatthewsUnexpected discovery may be useful in various future applications that will no longer need batteries or motors to fuel movement.Some of the greatest discoveries and inventions in history happened due to luck. We only have Velcro, Post-it notes, and vulcanized rubber due to serendipitous events, and it seems to have happened again with a new discovery that is helping researchers develop self-propelled materials. Snap instabilitiesRobots are great for many jobs, but they require power and motors to allow them to move. In some situations, this can be a problem such as when making very-small robots or when electrical power supplies are inconvenient or undesirable. A small group of researchers under the supervision of professor Al Crosby, a specialist in polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, made the discovery while carrying out a routine experiment watching a gel strip dry. As the strip dried, they observed movement. Most of the movements were slow but there were also very rapid movements that occurred periodically. After studying the phenomenon, they found that these rapid movements, which they call ‘snap instabilities’, could be controlled and even made to reset themselves repeatedly by carefully adjusting the shape of the strip.Crosby explained in a press release that several animals and plants, particularly small ones, utilize special parts that function like springs and latches to help them move very quickly, much faster than animals that only use muscles to propel themselves. Plants like the Venus flytrap are great examples of this kind of movement, as are grasshoppers and trap-jaw ants in the animal world. Snap instabilities are one way that nature combines a spring and a latch and are increasingly applied to create fast movements in small robots and other devices, as well as toys like rubber poppers. Nevertheless, Crosby added that most of these snapping devices need a motor or a human hand to continue moving. This discovery might be usable in various applications that will no longer need batteries or motors to fuel movement. Developing the technology furtherAfter working out the physics behind the movement, the researchers were able to produce shapes that could move at specific speeds and in predictable ways. These gel shapes were able to reset themselves without any external input, allowing them to carry out the movements repeatedly with nothing but the energy supplied by the surrounding environment.Crosby continues, "These lessons demonstrate how materials can generate powerful movement by harnessing interactions with their environment, such as through evaporation, and they are important for designing new robots, especially at small sizes where it's difficult to have motors, batteries, or other energy sources."Cosby and his team have secured funding to develop this technology further from the US Army’s research and development branch.Ralph Anthenien, branch chief, Army Research Office commented, "This work is part of a larger multidisciplinary effort that seeks to understand biological and engineered impulsive systems that will lay the foundations for scalable methods for generating forces for mechanical action and energy-storing structures and materials. The work will have myriad possible future applications in actuation and motive systems for the Army and DoD."If you are interested in this subject and would like to learn more about the work mentioned in this article be sure to check out the paper published in Nature Materials, listed below.Sources and Further reading:Autonomous snapping and jumping polymer gels (Nature Materials)University of Massachusetts Amhers
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Image source, Getty ImagesArchaeologists in northern Iraq have made an exciting discovery - unearthing beautiful rock carvings that are about 2,700 years old.They were found in Mosul by a US-Iraqi excavation team working to reconstruct the ancient Mashki Gate, which Islamic State (IS) militants destroyed in 2016.Iraq is home to some of the world's most ancient cities, including Babylon.But years of turmoil have seen many archaeological sites looted and damaged by militants and military action.The eight marble reliefs show finely chiselled war scenes, grape vines and palm trees.They date back to the Assyrian King Sennacherib, who ruled the ancient city of Nineveh from 705 to 681 BC, the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage said, in a statement seen by AFP. The powerful king was known for his military campaigns, including against Babylon, and his vast expansion of Nineveh.It is believed the relics once adorned his palace, and were then moved to the Mashki Gate, Fadel Mohammed Khodr, head of the Iraqi archaeological team, told AFP.The Mashki Gate was one of the largest in Nineveh, and was an icon of its size and power. The gate was reconstructed in the 1970s, but was destroyed with a bulldozer by IS militants in 2016.The militant group ransacked and demolished several ancient sites that pre-date Islam in Iraq, denouncing them as symbols of "idolatry".Mr Khodr said that when the marble slabs were positioned at the gate, they were partly buried. The sections underground were preserved and bear the carvings seen today; whatever was above-ground was wiped smooth over the centuries.The excavation team, which comprises experts from Iraq's Mosul University and the United States' University of Pennsylvania, is working to restore the Mashki Gate site to how it was before IS bulldozed it.Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, This carving shows an Assyrian soldier pulling back an arrow, ready to fireMore than 10,000 archaeological sites have been found in Iraq. Neighbouring Syria is also home to treasured ruins, including the site of the ancient city of Palmyra, where the grand Temple of Bel was destroyed by IS. in 2015.However it is not only militants, vandals and smugglers who have damaged archaeological sites in Iraq.US troops and their allies damaged the ruins of Babylon when the fragile site was used as an army camp after the US invaded Iraq in 2003.A 2009 report by Unesco, the United Nations cultural agency, found troops and their contractors "caused major damage to the city by digging, cutting, scraping, and levelling".
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The small motorboat anchors in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay. Shrieks of wintering birds assault the vessel’s five crew members, all clad in bright orange flotation suits. One of the crew slowly pulls a rope out of the water to retrieve a plastic tube, about the length of a person’s arm and filled with mud from the bottom of the bay. As the tube is hauled on board, the stench of rotten eggs fills the air. “Chesapeake Bay mud is stinky,” says Sairah Malkin, a biogeochemist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Cambridge who is aboard the boat. The smell comes from sulfuric chemicals called sulfides within the mud. They’re quite toxic, Malkin explains. Malkin and her team venture out onto the bay every couple of months to sample the foul muck and track the abundance of squiggling mud dwellers called cable bacteria. The microbes are living wires: Their threadlike bodies — thinner than a human hair — can channel electricity. Sairah Malkin, of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, cuts holes in a large sediment coring tube to sample mud collected from the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay.Clara Fuchsman Cable bacteria use that power to chemically rewire their surroundings. While some microbes in the area produce sulfides, the cable bacteria remove those chemicals and help prevent them from moving up into the water column. By managing sulfides, cable bacteria may protect fish, crustaceans and other aquatic organisms from a “toxic nightmare,” says Filip Meysman, a biogeochemist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. “They’re kind of like guardian angels in these coastal ecosystems.” Now, scientists are studying how these living electrical filaments might do good in other ways. Laboratory experiments show that cable bacteria can support other microbes that consume crude oil, so researchers are investigating how to encourage the bacteria’s growth to help clean up oil spills. What’s more, researchers have shown that cable bacteria could help slash emissions of a potent greenhouse gas — methane — into the atmosphere. There’s plenty of evidence that cable bacteria exert a strong influence over their microbial neighbors, Meysman says. The next step, he says, is to figure out how to channel that influence for the greater good. Sign Up For the Latest from Science News Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox Electric life Under the microscope, cable bacteria resemble long sausage links. Their multicellular bodies can grow up to 5 centimeters long. Embedded in the envelope of each cell are parallel “wires” of conductive proteins, which the bacteria use to channel electrons. According to Meysman, the wires are more conductive than the semiconductors found in electronics. About a decade ago, a team of scientists first discovered cable bacteria, in sediment collected from the bottom of Denmark’s Aarhus Bay. Since then, cable bacteria have been found on at least four continents, in streams, lakes, estuaries and coastal environments. “Name me a country, and I’ll show you where the cable bacteria are,” Meysman says. Most often, cable bacteria nestle shallow in the sediment, with one end positioned near the surface where there is oxygen and the other end plugged into deeper, sulfide-rich zones. Using their filamentous bodies as electrical conduits, cable bacteria snatch electrons from sulfides on one end and off-load them to oxygen — an eager electron acceptor — at the other, says Nicole Geerlings, a biogeochemist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Similar to how batteries charge and release energy by transferring electrons between an anode and cathode, cable bacteria power themselves by channeling electrons, she says. “The electron transport gives [cable bacteria] energy.” This unique lifestyle allows cable bacteria to survive in an environment that many organisms could not endure. A cable bacterium (right) has a multicellular, segmented body that can grow up to 5 centimeters. Electrically conductive, parallel fibers (visible in the close-up at left) encase the body.From left: N. Geerlings/Utrecht Univ.; Silvia Hidalgo Martinez/Univ. of Antwerp Toxic fire wall In 2015, Malkin, Meysman and colleagues reported that cable bacteria may help to counteract the onset of euxinia — a fatal buildup of sulfides in oxygen-starved bodies of water. Euxinia can trigger mass die-offs of fish, crustaceans and other aquatic life. The lethal phenomenon can occur after fertilizers or sewage are washed into the sea or lakes. That flow of nutrients can trigger algal blooms. When those nutrients are depleted, the blooms die, and large quantities of organic matter sink and accumulate on the sediment. Microbes then decompose the dead material, devouring much of the oxygen in the surrounding water in the process. When oxygen levels become critically low, sulfides may begin to leak from the sediment into the water, giving rise to euxinia. Sediments near the bottom of this core sample, taken from the Chesapeake Bay, are probably dark due to the presence of sulfides, while sediments near the top are lighter because cable bacteria have removed the sulfides.S. Malkin While studying cable bacteria in a brackish body of water in the Netherlands, Malkin and colleagues discovered a thin layer of rust coating the lake’s bottom. As the cable bacteria pulled electrons from sulfides, converting the noxious chemicals into less-harmful sulfates, the water within the sediment became more acidic, which dissolved some minerals containing iron. The now-mobile iron percolated upward in the sediment, until it interacted with oxygen to form rust. This layer of rust could capture sulfides that would otherwise flow into the water, acting as a “fire wall” that could delay euxinia for over a month, or even prevent it altogether, the researchers reported. Even when the cable bacteria’s population dropped, the rust layer persisted, protecting other aquatic creatures from sulfide exposure. The rust may explain why even though instances of nutrient pollution, algal blooms and oxygen depletion are relatively common, reports of euxinia are rare. Oil cleanup Some researchers are trying to harness the bacteria’s electrical abilities to tackle another devastating threat to coastal ecosystems — oil spills. When an oil spill happens in a body of water, booms, skimmers or sorbents are often deployed to limit the spread of hydrocarbons on the surface. But oil may also wash onto beaches, mix with sediments in shallow waters and aggregate onto sinking particles of organic debris, hitching a ride to the seafloor. Cleaning up oil at the bottom of the sea is a difficult job, says Ugo Marzocchi, a biogeochemist at Aarhus University in Denmark. “I am not aware of a very effective way to remove hydrocarbons from the seafloor,” he says. “In inland freshwater systems, what is generally done is to dig out the sediments,” he says, an expensive strategy that would be even more costly at sea. Electrical cable bacteria (white filaments) emerge from the seafloor sediment (at bottom) stretching their bodies to reach a zone of oxygen in the water. The stringy organisms use the oxygen to offload electrons they’ve harvested from harmful sulfides found in the sediment. As sulfide concentrations go down, the water becomes more habitable to microbes that can clean up oil spills. Some soil-dwelling microorganisms can use hydrocarbons to fuel their metabolism, and researchers have been studying how some of these oil burners might assist in the cleanup of contaminated sediments. But as they break down hydrocarbons, the microbes generate those concerning sulfides, which are detrimental to the microbes’ own survival, Marzocchi says. In other words, the microbes can help clean up the oil for only so long before they’re overwhelmed by their own toxic waste. Cable bacteria might be just the solution, Marzocchi thought. In 2016, researchers reported finding evidence of the electrical microbes in a tar oil-contaminated groundwater aquifer in Germany. Knowing that cable bacteria could occupy sediments contaminated with hydrocarbons, Marzocchi and colleagues reasoned that these bacteria might be able to assist oil-burning microbes and accelerate oil cleanup. The researchers filled several containers with oil-contaminated sediment from Aarhus Bay — which contained naturally occurring oil-eating bacteria. The group then injected a few containers with cable bacteria and monitored the degree of hydrocarbon degradation in all of the containers over seven weeks. By the end of the test, the concentration of alkanes — a type of hydrocarbon — in the sediment with cable bacteria had dropped from 0.125 milligrams per gram of sediment to 0.086 milligrams per gram — a 31 percent drop. That’s 23 percentage points more than the 9 percent decrease in the control samples. Cable bacteria helped accelerate the metabolic activity of their oil-eating neighbors by converting the toxic sulfides into sulfates. The sulfates didn’t harm the oil-eating microbes — in fact, they used the chemicals as fuel. To the rescue Oil-eating microbes can clean up seafloor sediments contaminated by an oil spill. But the microbes generate toxic sulfides as waste, which hampers the microbes’ activity. Cable bacteria can help by harvesting electrons from the sulfides, converting them into sulfates, which the oil-eating microbes use as fuel. Meanwhile, the cable bacteria channel the electrons up their bodies and pass them off to oxygen in the sediment. This transport powers the cable bacteria’s metabolism in the process. How cable bacteria can assist oil spill cleanups T. TibbittsT. Tibbitts The researchers are now trying to develop methods to promote cable bacteria growth in the field and see if it’s possible to enhance their effect on oil degradation. One catch is that in oil-contaminated sediment, oxygen is quickly used up by the microbes that break down hydrocarbons. That’s a problem since cable bacteria need access to oxygen. Salts that slowly release oxygen or nitrate — which cable bacteria can use in place of oxygen — might help spur the electrical organisms’ growth at oil spills. But more work is needed to identify the right chemical components and dosage, Marzocchi says. Meanwhile, scientists are investigating how cable bacteria might help reduce emission of another hydrocarbon — one that accumulates in the sky. Methane at the root Colorless, odorless methane is the simplest hydrocarbon (SN: 8/15/20, p. 8). It consists of a single carbon atom attached to a quartet of hydrogen atoms. And it’s a potent greenhouse gas — more than 25 times as effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. One major source of methane is rice paddies (SN: 9/25/21, p. 16). During the growing season, rice farmers typically flood their fields to help stave off weeds and pests. Methane-producing microbes — aptly named methanogens — thrive in these waterlogged soils. Paddy-dwelling methanogens are so prolific that rice fields are estimated to generate about 11 percent of all human-induced methane emissions. But cable bacteria like paddies too. In 2019, Vincent Scholz, a microbiologist at Aarhus University, and colleagues reported that cable bacteria could flourish among the roots of rice plants and several other aquatic plant species. In an experiment, pots of rice plants grown in soils with cable bacteria (right) developed orange layers of rust and emitted less methane than pots without cable bacteria (left).V.V. Scholz/Aarhus Univ. That discovery inspired the researchers to investigate how the bacteria interact with methanogens in soils that grow rice. The team grew its own rice plants — some potted in soils with cable bacteria, and some without — and monitored methane emissions. To the researchers’ surprise, adding cable bacteria reduced rice soil methane emissions by 93 percent. In the process of removing electrons from sulfides, the bacteria generate sulfates, which other microbes can use as fuel. These sulfate-consuming microbes outcompeted methanogens for nutrients such as hydrogen and acetate in the rice soils, the researchers found. The results were “quite amazing,” Scholz says, though the effectiveness of the electrical microbes in real rice fields has yet to be tested. There are signs that cable bacteria are already plugged into real rice paddy soils. After analyzing genetic data collected from rice paddies in the United States, India, Vietnam and China, Scholz and colleagues reported in 2021 the presence of cable bacteria at sites in all four countries. Scholz is in Northern California this summer studying how cable bacteria live in rice fields and whether they’re already impacting methane emissions. He is also exploring ways to introduce cable bacteria to rice fields where they don’t yet exist or enhance the microbes’ numbers in fields where they do. There is still much to discover about how the wispy electrical conductors influence our world, Malkin says. Back in the Chesapeake Bay, she and colleagues have found that cable bacteria tend to flourish in the spring, a surge that has also been observed in the Netherlands. The findings add to a growing body of work that suggests cable bacteria are opportunistic organisms that interact with their environments in similar ways all around the world. If cable bacteria are already hard at work across the planet, then a bit of coaxing from researchers may be all it takes to turn the mud-dwelling creatures into the most helpful neighbors that a living thing could ask for.
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Ordinary people, often in very ordinary circumstances such as gardening and dog walking, have stumbled on rare treasures from the past. They include a rusting and rare Enigma deciphering machineRoutine sewage work in Athens unearthed a bust of HermesRarely has history been brought more dramatically to life than by the discovery of centuries-old bones under a car park. Six months later experts confirmed the bent skeleton, which bore 10 wounds, was Richard III, killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, aged 32. His naked corpse had been slung over a horse, taken to nearby Leicester and buried without ceremony. The fate of the last of England’s kings to die in battle remained a mystery until writer and amateur historian Philippa Langley had a hunch about a council car park. The archaeologists ’ amazing 2012 find is the subject of a new film, The Lost King, starring Sally Hawkins as Philippa and co-written by Steve Coogan. Hawkins is already being tipped for an Oscar. Philippa Langley searching for Richard III (
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PA) The discovery of Richard III, who was reburied at Leicester Cathedral in 2015, was astonishing but the past rears its head more often than you may think. Ordinary people, often in very ordinary circumstances such as gardening and dog walking, have stumbled on rare treasures from the past. The British Museum in London has a Portable Antiquities Scheme, run with the National Museum of Wales, where many such items are dated, valued and declared “official treasure” or returned to finders – who usually metal detectorists. It is the first stop if you unearth a potentially significant find. Senior Treasure Registrar Ian Richardson said the location of an object is important “as it will tell us something about the lives of people in that region.” King Richard in a Leicester car park (
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PA) In Scotland, you must legally hand to the Crown anything of historical or archaeological interest. In the rest of the UK if a find is not declared “treasure” you can keep it. If a discovery is deemed treasure there is a reward, split 50:50, for the finder and the landowner where it was found. Experts and auction houses will estimate the treasure’s market value but the Government decides on the reward. Ian said: “It is a complicated and long-winded but very fair process. “It gives finders a lot of opportunities to have their say and has been designed to encourage people to do the right thing and declare their finds. King Richard III's coffin inside Leicester Cathedral where he will be reburied (
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PA) “People are sometimes unhappy with the valuation that is reached. They tend to think what they have found is priceless or sometimes just want to keep it.” Ian said: “We have a lot of things that could turn out to be treasure coming in all the time – five to 10 items a day. A lot of may not so interesting but you just never know.” The Portable Antiquities Scheme has 40 regional Finds officers, who you can contact through the finds.org.uk website. The lost king It was eight years before the lost bones of King Richard III were excavated from under the council’s social services car park in Leicester that Edinburgh-based Phillipa Langley had a hunch they lay buried under the Tarmac. Phillipa, who was in Leicester researching a screenplay for a film about Richard III, said: “It was a funny feeling. Like something coming up through my legs and feet. It got stronger and stronger, so I felt almost faint. There, beneath my feet, was the letter R. It was obviously for ‘Reserved’ but I felt I was standing on Richard’s grave.” A scene from The Lost King (
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Graeme Hunter) The king’s final resting place had been a mystery since his death at the Battle of Bosworth. It was believed his body had been taken to Leicester and thrown in the river or buried in haste in Greyfriars’ Church. Experts used radiocarbon dating and DNA from descendants of Richard’s sister to prove it was the king. The film came out this year (
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Graeme Hunter) Thornbury hoard In 2004 gardener Ken Allen was digging a pond at his South Gloucestershire home when he stumbled across a pile of old coins in a shard of old pottery. The 63lb pile was 11,460 Roman copper alloy coins from 260-348AD. At Bristol Museum it was declared as treasure and valued at £40,000. It was split between Thornbury Museum and the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery and is still on display. Roman coins found in a garden in March 2004 (
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Unknown) The head of Hermes Sewage workers in Athens, Greece, in 2020 became unexpected treasure finders when they uncovered an ancient marble bust of the Greek god Hermes buried in a drain duct. Dating from about 300 BC, its condition was remarkably good given its age and location. It was also significant as, unlike most depictions of Hermes, the head was of a more mature man. WW2 Enigma machine German divers working for the World Wildlife Fund in 2020 searching for abandoned fishing nets at the bottom of the Baltic sea found something very different. They found a rusting and rare Enigma deciphering machine which had been on a German U-boat and used by the Nazis to used to transmit coded messages. In 2017, a similar machine sold for £44,000. German divers found a rusting and rare Enigma deciphering machine (
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CHRISTIAN HOWE/SUBMARIS/HANDOUT/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock) The caveman in ice When German tourist Helmut Simon stumbled on a human body buried in ice in Italy in 1991, he thought he had walked into a crime scene. But once the body was recovered, an archaeologist found it had been buried in ice for 5,300 years, giving scientists great insights into his life, including the fact he’d had both arthritis and tattoos. They concluded he had bled to death after being shot in the shoulder by an arrow. The body is now on display at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. Once the body was recovered, an archaeologist found it had been buried in ice for 5,300 years (
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Leopold Nekula) The Faberge flower Two soldiers from the Worcestershire Yeomanry pitched up on the Antiques Roadshow in 2017 with a small ornament that had once been gifted to their regiment. It turned out the 6in gold, diamond and jade pear blossom sprig in a crystal vase, one of just 80 of its kind, was commissioned from Fabergé at the end of the 19th century. The soldiers told a jewellery expert they had an inkling it was valuable. It was valued at £1 million-plus.The regiment has kept the piece. The Faberge flower was found in the Black Country (
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Handout) Ichthyosaur fossil Jon Gopsill was enjoying a beach walk in Somerset when his beloved dogs, Poppy and Sam, led him to something unusual in the sand in 2019. The spaniels had spotted the fossil of an ichthyosaur – a large marine reptile experts later assessed to be around 190 million-years-old. The 167cm skeleton was found in remarkable condition. The headless prehistoric creature eventually went on display at the Museum of Somerset. The skeleton on the beach (
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Jon Gopsill/Caters News Agency) The baby mammoth Siberian reindeer herder Yuri Khudi and his son were out looking for firewood in 2007 when they tripped over the remains of an animal nobody had seen before. Experts later confirmed they had found on the banks of the frozen Yuribei River the remains of a baby mammoth that was 42,000 years old baby. It was so well preserved in the perma-frost her eyelashes were intact. The carcass of baby mammoth lyuba (
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Sovfoto/Universal Images Group/REX/Shutterstock) Ordinary person's guide to treasure hunting You will have found treasure if: It is gold or silver and more than 300 years old It is hoard of historical coins. If you find a single coin you can keep it because there have to be two or more coins to count as and be declared “treasure”. It is an artefact made from pre-historic base metals Under the 1996 Treasure Act, only a Coroner’s court can declare a find to be bona fide treasure Read More Read More Read More Read More Read More
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RASTAN, Syria -- Syria uncovered a large intact mosaic that dates back to the Roman era, describing it Wednesday as the most important archaeological discovery since the country's conflict began 11 years ago.Journalists were shown the mosaic in the central town of Rastan near Homs, Syria’s third largest city.The mosaic, at 120 square meters (around 1300 square feet), was found in an old building that Syria's General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums had been excavating. Lebanese and Syrian businessmen from the neighboring country's Nabu Museum bought the property that dates back to the 4th century and donated it to the Syrian state. Each panel was filled with square-shaped, small colorful stones measuring about half an inch on each side.Dr. Humam Saad, the associate director of excavation and archaeological research at the directorate, said among the scenes the mosaic shows is a rare portrayal of Ancient Amazon warriors in Roman mythology. “What is in front of us is a discovery that is rare on a global scale,” Saad told The Associated Press, adding that the images are “rich in details," and includes scenes from the Trojan War between the Greeks and Trojans.In Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, demigod hero Hercules slayed Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, in one of his 12 labors.The mosaic also portrays Neptune, Ancient Roman god of the sea, and 40 of his mistresses.“We can’t identify the type of the building, whether it's a public bathhouse or something else, because we have not finished excavating yet,” Saad told the AP.Sulaf Fawakherji, a famous actress in Syria and a member of the Nabu Museum’s board of trustees said she hopes they could purchase other buildings in Rastan, which she says is filled with heritage sites and artifacts waiting to be discovered.“There are other buildings, and it’s clear that the mosaic extends far wider,” Fawkherji told the AP. “Rastan historically is an important city, and it could possibly be very important heritage city for tourism.” Despite Rastan's historical significance in the country, Saad says there have not been significant excavation efforts in the town prior to the country's armed conflict.“Unfortunately, there were armed groups that tried to sell the mosaic at one point in 2017 and listed it on social media platforms,” he said. Syrian heritage sites have been looted and destroyed over the past decade of ongoing violent conflict. Among the most notable incidents was the Islamic State group taking Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that boasts 2,000-year-old towering Roman-era colonnades and priceless artifacts, and partially destroying a Roman theater. Meanwhile, Syria's cash-strapped government has slowly been rebuilding Aleppo's centuries-old bazaar after reclaiming it from armed opposition forces in 2016.Rastan was once a major opposition stronghold and was a point of intense clashes, before the Syrian government reclaimed the city in 2018.
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A 3,000-year-old canoe has been found in Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, less than a year after another historical canoe dating back more than a millennium was discovered in the same body of water.An archaeologist found the artifact in pieces before it was recovered from the lake last Thursday in collaboration with Wisconsin’s Native Nations, a press release from the Wisconsin Historical Society said.The same archaeologist discovered the 14.5ft boat close to where she had found a 1,200-year-old dugout canoe in November, the press release added.“Finding an additional historically significant canoe in Lake Mendota is truly incredible and unlocks invaluable research and educational opportunities to explore the technological, cultural and stylistic changes that occurred in dugout canoe design over 3,000 years,” a state archaeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society, James Skibo, said.Experts believe that it is the oldest canoe found in the Great Lakes region, dating back to 1000BC, according to radiocarbon dating results, NPR reported.Maritime archaeologist Tamara Thomsen found the relic in May 2022 while she was giving a scuba diving lesson, NPR added.“This is not a joke. I found another dugout canoe,” Thomsen reportedly texted her boss upon the discovery. Thomsen also had previously found the other ancient canoe while she was going for a swim on her day off.Talks soon followed on how to recover the historical relic. Archeologists and volunteers excavated the ancient canoe, with members of the Ho-Chunk Nation and Bad River Tribe present for the recovery effort.Experts believe that the found artifacts are further evidence of Native communities that existed where Lake Mendota is now, giving more insight into the history of Indigenous life in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region.“The recovery of this canoe built by our ancestors gives further physical proof that Native people have occupied Teejop (Four Lakes) for millennia, that our ancestral lands are here and we had a developed society of transportation, trade and commerce,” the Ho-Chunk Nation’s president, Marlon WhiteEagle, said.Tribal members and historical society staff will care for both canoes now that they are out of the lake.The relics will later be taken to take the State Archive Preservation Facility in Madison, where it will take approximately two years to restore them, the press release said.
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Is Captain Cook's HMS Endeavour being eaten by SHIPWORMS? Divers warn 250-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Rhode Island thought to be the legendary vessel is slowly being devoured and could soon be lost foreverHMS Endeavour was deliberately sunk in the harbour off the coast of Rhode Island in 1778In 2019, researchers found a shipwreck which the believe is Captain Cook's legendary shipDuring a recent dive, researchers recovered samples from the few remaining timbersAn analysis confirms the timbers are being eaten by shipworms and a crustacean called gribblesIf the shipwreck is left, experts worry the rest of the ship's remains could be lost forever Published: 10:44 EDT, 16 August 2022 | Updated: 11:04 EDT, 16 August 2022 Advertisement It's one of the most famous ships in naval history, having been used by Captain Cook when he discovered the East Coast of Australia more than 250 years ago.But a new study warns that a shipwreck believed to be the legendary HMS Endeavour is being devoured by shipworms.The shipwreck was found off the coast of Rhode Island in 2019, following a decades-long mission to recover the iconic vessel.But divers exploring the wreck have warned that what's left of its timber frame is gradually being eaten away by both shipworms and crustaceans known as gribbles.'The majority of the vessel has been destroyed over the past two centuries and more,' said Dr Reuben Shipway, a Lecturer in Marine Biology at the University of Plymouth, who has been exploring the shipwreck.'If it is left, the shipworms will continue to eat away at its structure and we could be left with little – or nothing – to preserve.' Divers exploring the wreck have warned that what's left of its timber frame is gradually being eaten away by both shipworms and a crustacean called gribbles It's one of the most famous ships in naval history, having been used by Captain Cook when he discovered the East Coast of Australia more than 250 years ago. But a new study warns that a shipwreck believed to be the legendary HMS Endeavour is being devoured by shipworms What are shipworms? The naval shipworm, or Teredo navalis, is not actually a worm at all. This marine mollusk has a very elongated body with a tiny, reduced shell, which covers its anterior end and is often compared to a helmet. It is a bivalve mollusk, meaning two-shelled, like clams and mussels, but unlike other bivalves, shipworms do not need hard shells to shelter their bodies because they bore into pieces of wood, which protect the animals.Source: HarvardDr Shipway travelled to Rhode Island this month to examine the shipwreck, and instantly spotted telltale signs of shipworm damage.Small holes could be seen on the outside of the wreck's timbers, while the inside of the timbers resembled honeycomb.Dr Shipway brought a sample back to a lab at Harvard University to study it in under a microscope.His analysis confirmed that Teredo navalis – commonly known as naval shipworms – were devouring the wood.Naval shipworms are not exotic and are commonly found in the area, casting doubt on whether the shipwreck could have once been to the Pacific.Sadly, Dr Shipway believes that without urgent action, the rest of the ship's remains could be lost forever.'The Endeavour was used for one of the world's earliest scientific voyages and is responsible for amassing information that has shaped human history,' he said.'Its name has since been used for pioneering voyages of space discovery.'If this wreck was on land, more would be done to preserve it but because it is under water, I believe there is a real danger of it being out of sight and out of mind.'Unfortunately, preserving the shipwreck isn't as simple as lifting it from the seabed. Dr Shipway travelled to Rhode Island this month to examine the shipwreck, and instantly spotted telltale signs of shipworm damage. Small holes could be seen on the outside of the wreck's timbers, while the inside of the timbers resembled honeycomb'As long as the timbers are exposed in the ocean, the shipworms will continue to eat away at them,' Dr Shipway explained.'However, when they are submerged in sediment the worms cannot access them, so submerging more of the wreck could offer a short-term solution.'That would only last until the region was hit by a storm and the sediments shifted, however, but it could give those seeking to preserve it time to develop a long-term plan.'We have seen with ships like the Mary Rose that you can rescue them from the seabed.'The stories you are then able to tell should be part of our enduring cultural heritage, something that unites all of us and gives us hope even though we may face uncertainty in the future. Sadly, Dr Shipway (pictured) believes that without urgent action, the rest of the ship's remains could be lost forever The HMS Endeavour is one of the most famous ships in naval history and was used for Captain Cook's discovery of the East Coast of Australia in 1770'I think it's important to preserve these monumental feats of human ingenuity from history.'The HMS Endeavour is one of the most famous ships in naval history and was used for Captain Cook's discovery of the East Coast of Australia in 1770.It was first launched in 1764 as the Earl of Pembroke, and then renamed His Majesty's Bark the Endeavour after it was purchased four years later by the British Royal Navy.It was sent out to explore the Pacific Ocean in August 1768 both to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the sun and in the search for the continent which was then called Terra Australis Incognita, or unknown Southern land.The previous transit of Venus in 1639 had provided a vast amount of the information astronomers and scientists had about the size of the solar system and universe. Captain Cook set off from England in the Endeavour in 1768 in search of Australia – then known as the 'unknown Southern Land' The last sighting of the HMS Endeavour was around 1778 and it was scuttled — or deliberately sunk — in the harbour off the coast of Rhode IslandIt was decommissioned shortly after its return to Britain and then sold by the Royal Navy into private hands and had its name changed to Lord Sandwich.She was called into action when Britain hired her as a transport vessel for troops to help fight the American War of Independence.The last sighting of the HMS Endeavour was around 1778 and it was scuttled — or deliberately sunk — in the harbour off the coast of Rhode Island.But in 2019, academics spotted a shipwreck in Newport Harbour, which is widely believed to be HMS Endeavour.Dr Shipway is currently preparing a full report about his findings, which will be sent to the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project to help them with their efforts to stabilize the shipwreck. HISTORY OF COOK'S ENDEAVOUR The HMS Endeavour was a British research vessel sailed by Captain James Cook. Captain Cook set off from England in the Endeavour in 1768 in search of Australia – then known as the 'unknown Southern Land'.The Endeavour was a small ship - less than 100ft long - and housed a crew of around 100 sailors. Before coming to Australia, Captain Cook reached New Zealand in 1769.He circumnavigated New Zealand's North and South Islands and drew the first complete chart of the country's coast.The Endeavour was the first ship to reach the East Coast of Australia, landing in Botany Bay in 1770.The vessel returned to England in 1771 and was largely forgotten before it was sold in 1775 and renamed The Lord Sandwich. It was decommissioned shortly after its return to Britain and was then sold by the Royal Navy. She was called into action when Britain hired her as a transport vessel for troops to help fight the American War of Independence. The last sighting of the HMS Endeavour was around 1778 and it was scuttled — or deliberately sunk — in the harbour off the coast of Rhode Island. The Endeavour was a small ship - less than 100ft long - and housed a crew of around 100 sailors (pictured). It was used to transport British soldiers during the American War of Independence and was deliberately sunk in 1778 Advertisement
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Archaeologists work at a dig site following the discovery of a tooth belonging to an early species of human, which was recovered from rock layers presumably dated to 1.8 million years old, near an excavation site in Dmanisi outside the village of Orozmani, Georgia, September 8, 2022. The discovery of the tooth provides yet more evidence that the mountainous south Caucasus area was likely one of the first places early humans settled after migrating out of Africa, experts said. REUTERS/David ChkhikvishviliRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comOROZMANI, Georgia, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Archaeologists in Georgia have found a 1.8-million-year-old tooth belonging to an early species of human which they say cements the region as the home of one of the earliest prehistoric human settlements in Europe, possibly anywhere outside Africa.The tooth was discovered near the village of Orozmani, around 100 km (62 miles) southwest of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, near Dmanisi where human skulls dated to 1.8 million years old, were found in the late 1990s and early 2000s.The Dmanisi finds were the oldest such discovery anywhere in the world outside Africa and one which changed scientists' understanding of early human evolution and migration patterns.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comThe latest discovery at a site 20 km away provides yet more evidence that the mountainous south Caucasus area was likely one of the first places early humans settled after migrating out of Africa, experts said."Orozmani, together with Dmanisi, represents the centre of the oldest distribution of old humans - or early Homo - in the world outside Africa," the National Research Centre of Archaeology and Prehistory of Georgia said, announcing the discovery of the tooth on Thursday.Giorgi Bidzinashvili, the scientific leader of the dig team, said he considers the tooth belonged to a "cousin" of Zezva and Mzia, the names given to two near-complete 1.8-million-year-old fossilised skulls found at Dmanisi."The implications, not just for this site, but for Georgia and the story of humans leaving Africa 1.8 million years ago are enormous," said British archaeology student Jack Peart, who first found the tooth at Orozmani."It solidifies Georgia as a really important place for paleoanthropology and the human story in general," he told Reuters.The oldest Homo fossils anywhere in the world date to around 2.8 million years ago - a partial jaw discovered in modern-day Ethiopia.Scientists believe early humans, a hunter-gatherer species named Homo erectus, likely started migrating out of Africa around two million years ago. Ancient tools dated to around 2.1 million years have been discovered in modern-day China, but the Georgian sites are home to the oldest remains of early humans yet recovered outside Africa.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by David Chkhikvishvili; writing by Jake Cordell; editing by Philippa FletcherOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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This montage shows examples of striking images of the solar system taken by Voyager 1 and 2 on their missions.NASA/JPL/InsiderAlmost 45 years after their launch, Voyager 1 and 2 are still going.But with power dwindling, the probes may soon reach the end of their scientific mission.Here are 18 pictures taken by the probes on their amazing journey.The Voyager probes are pioneers of science, making it further into space than any other object made by humans.Originally sent on a four-year mission to Jupiter and Saturn in 1977, the twin probes exceeded all expectations, and are still going 45 years later.Among their achievements are the amazing photos of the solar they beamed back before the cameras were shut down.But now, they face a terminal problem: their power is running out, and NASA scientists are starting to shut down even more instruments on board to conserve energy.As they near the end of their mission, here are 18 images from Voyager that changed science:The Voyager probes were designed to visit Jupiter and Saturn.The voyager probes wizzed through the solar system taking unprecedented pictures.NASAThe Voyager mission was made up of two probes, Voyager 1 and 2, which were launched in 1977 within a few months of each other.The launches capitalized on a rare alignment of planets that allowed them to turbocharge their journeys into space.They originally were built to last five years, but have exceeded that lifespan many times.This is what Voyager saw on its approach to Jupiter.A timelapse taken by Voyager 1 as it approached Jupiter in 1979.NASA/JPLVoyager 1 and 2 reached Jupiter in 1979. They took about 50,000 pictures of the planet altogether, which greatly exceeded the quality of the pictures taken from Earth, according to NASA.The pictures taught scientists important facts about the planet's atmosphere, magnetic forces, and geology that would have been difficult to decipher otherwise.The probes discovered two new moons orbiting Jupiter: Thebe and Metis.Jupiter and two of its moons, as seen by Voyager.NASA/JPLAs well as a thin ring around JupiterA false-color image of Jupiter's ring, discovered by Voyager.NASA/JPLThe probe captured this picture as it was looking back at the planet backlit by the Sun. Voyager 1's biggest discovery was volcanic activity at the surface of Io, Jupiter's moon.A picture taken by the Voyager probes uncovered volcanoes at the surface of Io.NASA/JPLNext stop: SaturnThree Voyager 2 images, taken through ultraviolet, violet and green filters, were combined to make this photograph.NASA/JPLIn 1980 and 1981, the probes reached Saturn. The flyby gave unprecedented insight into the planet's ring structure, atmosphere, and moons.Voyager taught scientists about the detail of Saturn's rings, here captured in false color.Saturn's rings are shown in false color in a picture taken by a Voyager probe on August 23, 1981.NASAEnceladus, Saturn's moon, was seen in unprecedented detail by Voyager.Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, is seen by Voyager.NASA/JPLThis picture, taken as the probe flew away, provided a unique view of the planet, letting us see the part in shadow.Voyager 1 looked back to Saturn on November 16 1980 to give this unique perspective on its rings.NASA/JPLBy '86, Voyager 2 had made it to UranusVoyager 2 captured these images, in true colors (left) and false-color (right) of Neptune in 1986.NASA/JPLVoyager 1 continued straight on and would not come across another planet on its journey out of the solar system.But Voyager 2 kept on its exploration of our nearest planets, passing within 50,600 miles of Uranus in January 1986.It discovered an extra two rings around Uranus, revealing the planet had at least 11, not 9.Its pictures of Uranus' largest moons revealed their complicated geological past. It also uncovered 11 previously unseen moons.Miranda, Uranus's moon.NASA/JPLHere is a picture of a Miranda, Uranus's sixth-biggest moon.Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft to observe Neptune close up.Neptune, seen in false color by Voyager 2 in 1989. Here's the red or white color means that the sunlight is going through a methane-rich atmosphere.NASA/JPLIn 1989, 12 years after its launch, Voyager 2 passed within 3,000 miles of Neptune.A picture shows the blue Neptune in full.Neptune, seen by Voyager 2 in 1989NASA/JPLA picture shows Triton's rough surface.Triton, seen by Voyager 2 in 1989NASA/JPLIt captured Triton, Neptune's moon in unprecedented detail.Another shows Triton's southern hemisphere.Neptune, seen by Voyager 2 in 1989NASA/JPLIt captured Neptune's rings.Neptune's rings.NASA/JPLHere, the crescent shape of Neptune's south pole was seen by Voyager as it departed.Neptune, seen by Voyager 2 in 1989NASA/JPLVoyager 2 would never take pictures again. Since it wouldn't come across another planet on its ongoing journey, NASA switched off its cameras after its flyby of Neptune to conserve energy for other instruments.Voyager took 60 images of the solar system from about 4 billion miles away.The solar system's portrait was provided by Voyager 1 in 1990.NASA/JPLAs its last photographic hurrah, Voyager 1 took 60 images of the solar system from 4 billion miles away in 1990.It gave us the Earth's most distant self-portrait, dubbed the "pale blue dot"This is the Earth, seen from 4 billion miles away.NASAThis is likely to remain the longest-ranging selfie in the history of humankind for some time, a portrait of the Earth from 4 billion miles away.After this picture, Voyager 1's cameras were also switched off to save energy. It is possible for the probes' cameras to be switched back on, but it is not a priority for the mission.Beyond the solar systemThis artist's concept shows the general locations of NASA's two Voyager spacecraft. Voyager 1 (top) has sailed beyond our solar bubble into interstellar space, the space between stars.NASA/JPL-CaltechThough the probes are no longer sending pictures, they haven't stopped sending crucial information about space.In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made instrument to cross into interstellar space by passing the heliopause, the boundary between our solar system and the rest of the universe.Voyager 2 was the second, crossing the boundary in 2018. It then revealed there was an extra boundary surrounding our solar bubble.The probes keep sending back measurements from interstellar space, like weird hums likely coming from vibrations made by neighboring stars.Even after their instruments are switched off, the probes' mission continuesA collage shows the two sides of NASA's golden record, which is onboard the Voyager probes.NASA/InsiderNow NASA is starting to switch off the probes' last instruments with the hope of extending their life to the 2030s.But even after all instruments become quiet, the probes will still drift off carrying the golden record, which could provide crucial information about humanity should intelligent extraterrestrial life exist and should it come across the probes.Read the original article on Business Insider
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LONDON (AP) — A previously unknown self-portrait of Vincent Van Gogh has been discovered behind another of the artist’s paintings, the National Galleries of Scotland said Thursday. The self-portrait was found on the back of Van Gogh’s “Head of a Peasant Woman” when experts at the Edinburgh gallery took an X-ray of the canvas ahead of an upcoming exhibition. The work is believed to have been hidden for over a century, covered by layers of glue and cardboard when it was framed in the early 20th century.Van Gogh was known for turning canvases around and painting on the other side to save money. The portrait shows a bearded sitter in a brimmed hat. Experts said the subject was instantly recognizable as the artist himself, and is thought to be from his early work. The left ear is clearly visible and Van Gogh famously cut his off in 1888.Frances Fowle, a senior curator at the National Galleries of Scotland, said the discovery was “thrilling.”“Moments like this are incredibly rare,” she said. “We have discovered an unknown work by Vincent Van Gogh, one of the most important and popular artists in the world.”The gallery said experts are evaluating how to remove the glue and cardboard without harming “Head of a Peasant Woman.”Visitors to an upcoming Impressionist exhibit at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh can see an X-ray image of the self-portrait through a lightbox.“A Taste for Impressionism” runs from Jul. 30 to Nov. 13.
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It has been quite some time since the last record-breaking finding of a distant star. However, in 2022, astronomers broke all records when they detected a star that existed within the first billion years after the birth of the Universe. It is the most distant known star today. The light originating from this star (now dubbed Earendel) took 12.9 billion years to reach us. During these billions of years, the Universe has expanded so much that the star is now located at a mind-bending comoving distance of 28 billion light-years (or 8.6 billion parsecs) from Earth. These kinds of distances are hard to wrap your mind around. However, if you'd like to give it a try, be sure to check out our article that attempts to explain cosmic distances from a human point of view. "We almost didn't believe it at first, it was so much farther than the previous most distant, highest redshift star," said astronomer Brian Welch, lead author of the underlying paper.Earendel versus IcarusEarendel, meaning 'morning star,' was discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope. It appeared to astronomers as it did when the Universe was only about 1 billion years old, or 7 percent of its present age. To put into perspective how giant this leap actually is, we need to look at the previous record-breaking discovery dating back to 2018. That discovery focused on a star (dubbed Icarus) that existed when the Universe was 4.4 billion years old or 30 percent of its current age—located about 14 billion light-years from Earth. "Normally, at these distances, entire galaxies look like small smudges, the light from millions of stars blending together" said Welch. Earendel is located almost double as far away as Icarus. So how did astronomers make such a giant leap compared to a few years ago?The answer lies with a phenomenon called 'gravitational lensing.' A gravitational lens can be seen as some sort of cosmic magnifying glass. It bends the light from distant objects. Gravitational lenses form due to a distribution of matter (in this case, a huge cluster of galaxies) between a distant light source (in this case, Earendel) and an observer (in this case, the Hubble Space Telescope) that is capable of bending the light from the source as it travels toward the observer.The galaxy hosting Earendel has been magnified and warped by gravitational lensing into a long crescent that astronomers dubbed the Sunrise Arc. The research team estimates that Earendel has at least 50 times the mass of our sun and is millions of times brighter. It means it can contend with the heaviest stars we know. But even such a bright, massive star would be impossible to see at such a great distance without the aid of a gravitational lens caused by a huge cluster of stars that sits between Earendel and us. Astronomers expect Earendel to remain highly magnified for years to come.Improving our understanding of the history of the UniverseThis discovery means we can better understand a still unknown era in the history of our Universe. As Welch explains: 'Earendel existed so long ago that it may not have had all the same raw materials as the stars around us today.' Further studying it will open up a window onto an era of the Universe that we are still unfamiliar with, but that led to everything we do know.'It's like we've been reading a really interesting book, but we started with the second chapter, and now we will have a chance to see how it all got started.' Welch said.Legendary population III starsLater this year, the recently launched James Webb Telescope will have a look at the Earendel. The hope is that Webb can reveal more information about the distant star, including its age, temperature, mass, and radius. Suppose further research shows that Earendel is only made up of hydrogen and helium. In that case, it could provide the first evidence for the legendary Population III stars, believed to have been the very first stars to form after the Big Bang...Sources and Further reading:A highly magnified star at redshift 6.2 (Nature)Science Release - A Record Broken: Hubble Finds the Most Distant Star Ever Seen (ESA/Hubble)Putting unfathomable astronomical distances into human perspective (Universal-Sci)Comoving and proper distancesGravitational lensWHL0137-LSMACS J1149 Lensed Star 1
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Israeli archaeologists announce 'once in a lifetime' discovery of Rameses II-era burial cave A burial cave from the era of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II has been discovered in Israel. Bowls, chalices, cooking pots, storage jars, lamps and bronze arrowheads or spearheads could be seen in the cave [Getty] Israeli archaeologists on Sunday announced the "once-in-a-lifetime" discovery of a burial cave from the time of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II, filled with dozens of pottery pieces and bronze artefacts. The cave was uncovered on a beach Tuesday, when a mechanical digger working at the Palmahim national park hit its roof, with archaeologists using a ladder to descend into the spacious, man-made square cave. In a video released by the Israel Antiquities Authority, gobsmacked archaeologists shine flashlights on dozens of pottery vessels in a variety of forms and sizes, dating back to the reign of the ancient Egyptian king who died in 1213 BC. Bowls -- some of them painted red, some containing bones -- chalices, cooking pots, storage jars, lamps and bronze arrowheads or spearheads could be seen in the cave. The objects were burial offerings to accompany the deceased on their last journey to the afterlife, found untouched since being placed there about 3,300 years ago. At least one relatively intact skeleton was also found in two rectangular plots in the corner of the cave. "The cave may furnish a complete picture of the Late Bronze Age funerary customs," said Eli Yannai, an IAA Bronze Age expert. It is an "extremely rare... once-in-a-lifetime discovery", Yannai said, pointing to the extra fortune of the cave having remained sealed until its recent uncovering. - 'Like an Indiana Jones movie' - The findings date to the reign of Rameses II, who controlled Canaan, a territory that roughly encompassed modern day Israel and the Palestinian territories. The provenance of the pottery vessels -- Cyprus, Lebanon, northern Syria, Gaza and Jaffa -- is testimony to the "lively trading activity that took place along the coast", Yannai said in an IAA statement. Another IAA archaeologist, David Gelman, theorised as to the identity of the skeletons in the cave, located in what is today a popular beach in central Israel. "The fact that these people were buried along with weapons, including entire arrows, shows that these people might have been warriors, perhaps they were guards on ships -- which may have been the reason they were able to obtain vessels from all around the area," he said. Regardless of who the inhabitants of the cave were, the find was "incredible," said Gelman. "Burial caves are rare as it is, and finding one that hasn't been touched since it was first used 3,300 years ago is something you rarely ever find," he said. "It feels like something out of an Indiana Jones movie: just going into the ground and everything is just laying there as it was initially -- intact pottery vessels, weapons, vessels made out of bronze, burials just as they were." The cave has been resealed and is under guard while a plan for its excavation is being formulated, the IAA said. It noted that "a few items" had been looted from it in the short period of time between its discovery and closure.
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Swedish maritime archaeologists have discovered the long-lost sister vessel of the iconic 17th-century warship "Vasa", which sank on its maiden voyage, the Swedish Museum of Wrecks said on Monday. Launched in 1629, "Applet" (The Apple) was built by the same shipbuilder as the famed 225-foot "Vasa," which is now on display in Stockholm after being salvaged in the 1960s."Our pulses raced when we saw how similar the wreck was to Vasa," said Jim Hansson, maritime archaeologist at the museum, which posted video of the shipwreck on its website and images on social media.The huge shipwreck was discovered in December in a strait off the island of Vaxholm just outside the capital, Stockholm, according to the museum.Hansson said the construction and the dimensions seemed "very familiar" to them, sparking hope it could be one of Vasa's sister ships.While parts of the ship's sides had fallen off, the hull was preserved up to the lower gundeck, and the parts that had fallen off showed gunports on two levels.A more thorough survey of the wreck was carried out in the spring of 2022, which revealed ship details that had previously only been seen on the Vasa.The museum said technical details as well as measurements and wood samples confirmed that it was "indeed Applet, Vasa's sister ship."There is now a diving ban in the area where the wreck is located, the museum said.In 2019, the same museum reported the discovery of two other warships in the same area.Archaeologists at the time believed that one of them could have been Applet, but further investigations showed that those vessels instead were two medium-sized warships from 1648 — named "Apollo" and "Maria.""With 'Applet', we can add another key piece of the puzzle in the development of Swedish shipbuilding," Hansson said, adding that this enabled researchers to study the differences between Applet and Vasa."This will help us understand how the large warships evolved, from the unstable Vasa to seaworthy behemoths that could control the Baltic Sea — a decisive factor in Sweden's emergence as a great power in the 1600s," Patrik Hoglund, another maritime archeologist at the museum, said.Named after one of Sweden's kings, "Vasa" was originally meant to serve as a symbol of Sweden's military might but instead capsized after sailing just over 1,000 yards.It was salvaged in 1961 and is currently on display at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, one of Sweden's most popular tourist spots.According to the museum, the designer of both ships, Hein Jakobsson, realized that Vasa's proportions could lead to instability even before she was launched and therefore built Applet wider than her ill-fated sister.When Sweden joined the Thirty Years' War, Applet was among the ships sailing towards Germany with about 1,000 men on board, the museum said. After the war, the ship was no longer deemed seaworthy."Applet was sunk off Vaxholm in 1659 to become part of an underwater barrier that would prevent the enemy from reaching Stockholm by sea," the museum said.Two other ships were also ordered from the same shipwright: Kronan (the Crown) and Scepter, and like Applet they also served in the Swedish navy and participated in naval battles.Ina Garten: "I'm just having fun here" | 60 MinutesClimate activists cover waxwork model of King Charles III with chocolate cakePowerball jackpot climbs to $625 million
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Antarctica holds an almost mythical appeal. Detached from the rest of the world, its beauty is unique. It is a continent that has never seen a war, and where testing military capabilities is strictly forbidden. It is, as the Antarctic Treaty reminds us, “a natural reserve devoted to peace and science”.And this impressive wilderness is the place I will be calling home for the next five months, as I embark on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work for the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) at Port Lockroy, Antarctica. As a conservation biologist, I’m drawn to Antarctica for lots of reasons, not least my interest in the major role it plays in our climate system, and the opportunity to monitor the gentoo penguin colony that calls Port Lockroy home.I’ll live and work on this small island on the Antarctic peninsula until March next year. It is a place with astonishingly rich wildlife. Here, the gentoos are kept company by numerous species of sea bird, seals and visiting whales. It’s the stuff of dreams for wildlife enthusiasts like myself.My love of wildlife and exploration began years ago, cemented while studying geography at Glasgow, where I was able to travel to far-flung destinations to conduct wildlife research. Since then, my work has taken me to Peru, Australia and the Caribbean. But until now, opportunities to work alongside spectacular wildlife in the white expanse of Antarctica have been few and far between.The continent’s desolate, challenging landscape has a rich history offering heroic tales of exploration, jeopardy, discovery and scientific advancement. These tales include the first-hand experiences of those that lived and worked on the Antarctic decades ago; these now sit at the heart of UKAHT’s work.Working with the other members of this year’s Port Lockroy team – base leader Lucy Bruzzone, postmaster Clare Ballantyne and shop manager Natalie Corbett – I’ll spend the season welcoming visitors to this tiny spot on the world map. Now a historic site and museum, and home to the world’s most remote public post office, the site is completed by a small gift shop. Here, visitors can buy a souvenir to take home, their purchases directly supporting the trust’s important work in heritage conservation in one of the most challenging environments on the planet. A Nissen hut completes the site and will play bunkhouse for our small team during the austral summer. The site has no running water, flushing toilet or wifi, but forgoing these basic facilities seems like a fair trade, to me at least.Port Lockroy, Antartica. Photograph: UK Antarctic Heritage Trust/PAAside from the penguins, museum and post office, as a conservationist, climate change is always on my mind. Certainly no more than when I’m about to relocate to the continent that gave birth to climate science. Why is Antarctica such an important piece of the climate jigsaw puzzle? Antarctica’s vast white surface helps to reflect the sun’s rays, reducing the amount of heat that is absorbed, known as the albedo effect. The Southern Ocean around Antarctica absorbs a significant amount of carbon dioxide, and so Antarctica plays an important part in regulating climate change. The melting of the Antarctic ice sheets could also have devastating consequences for coastal communities across the globe. Antarctica reminds us all of the urgent need to take action to limit and mitigate climate change.If you caught the most recent episode of Frozen Planet II, you’ll have seen the consequences of climate inaction on the wildlife in polar regions. Warming temperatures means more rain instead of snow, with deadly consequences for penguin chicks whose downy feathers only provide protection against dry cold. Penguins are a bioindicator species, which means that changes to their population indicate changes to the broader health of the environment. During my time at Port Lockroy, I’ll be working on a long-term penguin study of the gentoo colony. The information collected will help us better understand environmental changes and the potential broader impact on both wildlife and the environment.As I make my final preparations ahead of the long journey, my mind races thinking of the wonderful sights I’ll see, the history I’ll encounter and the wildlife I’ll observe first-hand. The chance to live alongside charismatic, unique species in such an awe-inspiring natural habitat overrides any concerns of being far from home with no shower or flushing toilet for weeks on end. How bad can it be?David Attenborough once said that Antarctica “is the loneliest and coldest place on Earth, the place that is most hostile to life. And yet, in one or two places, it is astonishingly rich”. I can only hope to be as captivated by Antarctica, its heritage and by my 1,000 or so new neighbours, smelly as they may be. I of course won’t truly know what awaits me at the bottom of the world, until I step foot on the snow covered rocks of Goudier Island. I’ll let you know. Dr Mairi Hilton is a conservation biologist and researcher. Follow Mairi and team throughout the season via the Port Lockroy blog
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Within 24 hours of accessing the first stage of Australia’s newest supercomputing system, researchers have processed a series of radio telescope observations, including a highly detailed image of a supernova remnant.The very high data rates and the enormous data volumes from new-generation radio telescopes such as Askap (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder) need highly capable software running on supercomputers. This is where the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre comes into play, with a newly launched supercomputer called Setonix – named after Western Australia’s favourite animal, the quokka (Setonix brachyurus).Askap, which consists of 36 dish antennas that work together as one telescope, is operated by Australia’s national science agency CSIRO. The observational data it gathers is transferred via high-speed optical fibres to the Pawsey centre for processing and converting into science-ready images.The Askap radio telescope is owned and operated by CSIRO on Wajarri Yamatji Country in Western Australia. Photograph: CSIROIn a major milestone on the path to full deployment, we have now demonstrated the integration of our processing software ASKAPsoft on Setonix, complete with stunning visuals.Traces of a dying starAn exciting outcome of this exercise has been a fantastic image of a cosmic object known as a supernova remnant G261.9+5.5.Estimated to be more than a million years old, and located 10,000-15,000 light-years away from us, this object in our galaxy was first classified as a supernova remnant by CSIRO radio astronomer Eric R Hill in 1967, using observations from CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope.Supernova remnants (SNRs) are the remains of powerful explosions from dying stars. The ejected material from the explosion ploughs outwards into the surrounding interstellar medium at supersonic speeds, sweeping up gas and any material it encounters along the way, compressing and heating them up in the process.Additionally, the shockwave would also compress the interstellar magnetic fields. The emissions we see in our radio image of G261.9+5.5 are from highly energetic electrons trapped in these compressed fields. They bear information about the history of the exploded star and aspects of the surrounding interstellar medium.The structure of this remnant revealed in the deep array radio image opens up the possibility of studying this remnant and the physical properties (such as magnetic fields and high-energy electron densities) of the interstellar medium in unprecedented detail.Putting a supercomputer through its pacesThe image of SNR G261.9+05.5 might be beautiful to look at, but the processing of data from Askap’s astronomy surveys is also a great way to stress-test the supercomputer system, including the hardware and the processing software.We included the supernova remnant’s dataset for our initial tests because its complex features would increase the processing challenges.Data processing even with a supercomputer is a complex exercise, with different processing modes triggering various potential issues. For example, the image of the SNR was made by combining data gathered at hundreds of different frequencies (or colours), allowing us to get a composite view of the object.But there is a treasure trove of information hidden in the individual frequencies as well. Extracting that information often requires making images at each frequency, requiring more computing resources and more digital space to store.While Setonix has adequate resources for such intense processing, a key challenge would be to establish the stability of the supercomputer when lashed with such enormous amounts of data day in and day out.More to comeThis is only the first of two installation stages for Setonix, with the second expected to be completed later this year.This will allow data teams to process more of the vast amounts of data coming in from many projects in a fraction of the time. In turn, it will not only enable researchers to better understand our universe but will undoubtedly uncover new objects hidden in the radio sky. The variety of scientific questions that Setonix will allow us to explore in shorter time frames opens up many possibilities.This increase in computational capacity benefits not just Askap, but all Australia-based researchers in all fields of science and engineering that can access Setonix.While the supercomputer is ramping up to full operations, so is the array pathfinder, which is currently wrapping up a series of pilot surveys and will soon undertake even larger and deeper surveys of the sky.The supernova remnant is just one of many features we’ve now revealed, and we can expect many more stunning images, and the discovery of many new celestial objects. Wasim Raja is a research scientist at CSIRO Pascal Jahan Elahi is a supercomputing applications specialist at CSIRO’s Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre This article was originally published in the Conversation
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Archaeologists in Pompeii have discovered the remains of a pregnant tortoise that sought refuge in the ruins of a home destroyed by an earthquake in AD62 only to be covered by volcanic ash and rock when Mount Vesuvius erupted.The 14cm (5.5in) long Hermann’s tortoise and her egg were discovered during excavations of an area of the ancient city that, after being levelled by the quake, was being rebuilt for the construction of public baths, officials said Friday. Pompeii was then destroyed after the volcanic eruption in AD79.Archaeologists suspect that the tortoise, of a species that is common in southern Europe, sought refuge in the rubble of a home that was too badly damaged by the quake to be rebuilt.Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BSTThe director of the Pompeii archaeological park, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said the fact that the animal still had her egg suggested she died before finding a safe, hospitable place to lay it.“This lets us reflect on Pompeii in this phase after the earthquake but before the eruption, when many homes were being rebuilt, the whole city was a construction site, and evidently some spaces were so unused that wild animals could roam, enter and try to lay their eggs,” he said.It is not the first tortoise to be found in Pompeii, and Zuchtriegel said an important focus of current excavations and research concerned the organic and agricultural materials found outside Pompeii’s urban centre.The discovery of the tortoise adds to “this mosaic of relations between culture and nature, community and environment that represents the history of ancient Pompeii”, he said.The excavations in the Stabiane baths section of Pompeii are being carried out by the Free University of Berlin, the University of Napoli L’Orientale and the University of Oxford alongside the Pompeii archeological site.
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For the first time, scientists are getting a closer look into the social lives of reef manta rays, debunking the age-old misconception that they don't form close bonds.Sharks and rays are often perceived as cold fish, but at least one species of manta ray has a surprisingly complex social life, a new study says.A majestic species that can reach widths of 18 feet, reef manta rays (Mobula alfredi) are often seen gliding over tropical reefs in large numbers, notes study leader Rob Perryman, a researcher for the Marine Megafauna Foundation.Their feeding and courtship activities also occur in groups, which gave Perryman reason to suspect these animals are actually social butterflies. (Go inside the underwater world of manta rays with a National Geographic photographer.)What’s more, their big brains—the related giant manta ray has the largest brain of all fish—hinted that reef mantas are “reasonably intelligent animals,” he says.Five years of observation and study later, the study reveals that reef mantas actively choose “to socialize with other individuals that they know, and they remember their social contact with those individuals,” says Perryman, whose study was published recently in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.“They have friends, to put it in quite an anthropomorphic way.”The study, one of the first to illuminate the animal’s social life in depth, also “adds to the growing evidence in recent years that sharks and rays are not the solitary, mindless, socially bereft animals that we perhaps thought them to be in the past,” he adds.Picking partnersPerryman and colleagues work in Indonesia’s hyper-diverse Raja Ampat Marine Park, a mostly undisturbed habitat where reef mantas behave naturally.During the research, the team regularly snorkelled or scuba dived to photograph and identify individual manta rays at their congregation sites. Reef mantas have patterns of unique belly spots that stay the same throughout their lives.The researchers recorded 3,400 encounters with nearly 600 different mantas, plugging them into a database that logged where and which mantas were seen, and with whom. Further analyzing this data, the researchers eliminated non-social reasons some mantas might congregate in specific places, such as habitat preferences. (Read about the discovery of a rare manta ray nursery.)The results revealed mantas formed two types of social circles, with mature females grouping together, and another clique consisting of males, females, and juveniles. Perryman thinks that the aggregations of females might be a defense against unwanted mating attempts from males.Whether closely related rays spend more time together is one of Perryman’s future research questions.Bright and extroverted—for a fishCsilla Ari, a behavioral neuroscientist at the University of South Florida, says the findings mesh well with her own research, which has suggested the fish are clever, interacting with their reflections in mirrors. Mantas can also quickly brighten the white markings on their back during intense social interactions, according to Ari, who is not involved with the study.This signal may reinforce social hierarchies between mantas, or simply convey excitement, Ari says by email, noting the new study “adds a new level of understanding about the social behavior of manta rays.”Joshua Stewart, a conservation ecologist with the U.K.-based nonprofit Manta Trust, praised the study’s findings, but cautioned against placing our own, mammalian expectations of social behavior on the mantas. (Learn why manta rays swim in mesmerizing circles.)Both Stewart and the study authors acknowledge that the mantas’ bonding is not the tight-knit, lifelong phenomenon that many whales experience, for example. Manta alliances last weeks to months, not decades.Friendlier watersUnderstanding this newly identified social world could help scientists better conserve the species, which is listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Reef mantas face many threats, from plastic pollution to overfishing.For instance, the mantas’ social networks may be crucial for their reproduction or ability to find food, says Perryman.Because it’s very popular for people to see or swim alongside manta rays, such research could inform tourism operations about more responsible practices.For example, the data could help governments develop guidelines on the number of boats and tourists allowed in the water with mantas. (See the best places to spot mantas in the wild.)Overall, he hopes his research on manta “friendships” can easier connect the public to these regal creatures, and drive enthusiasm for their protection.
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Earlier today, NASA briefed the public on the Perseverance rover’s current status on Mars, discussed highlights from the mission so far, and announced the discovery of organic molecules that could be associated with life. But this discovery comes with an 82 million-mile caveat. NASA’s Perseverance rover has spent the last year and a half on Mars exploring an ancient lake bed called the Jezero Crater. Percy’s primary task is to collect rock-core samples from features within a 28 mile (45 kilometer) wide area long considered by scientists to be a prime location for finding signs of microbial life that may have existed 3.5 billion years ago. “This mission is not looking for extant life things that are alive today,” Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist, stated. “Instead, we’re looking into the very distant past when Mars climate was very different than it is today, much more conducive to life.” “Wildcat Ridge” is the name of a rock about 3 feet (1 meter) wide in the Martian Jezero Crater and is believed to be an ancient delta formed by the convergence of a river and a lake. “In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could have thrived. The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock — known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth — is important, said Farley.” Photo taken after Perceverence collected two core samples from Wildcat Ridge. Abraded a round patch seen on the upper right to inspect the rock with its SHERLOC instrument. At this location, scientists say Percy abraded some of the surface on Wildcat Ridge before taking a sample and analyzing it using the rover’s Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC. According to NASA’s press release, “SHERLOC’s analysis indicates the samples feature a class of organic molecules that are spatially correlated with those of sulfate minerals.” Not only did Percy’s analysis indicate organic molecules, but what the team found was the largest concentration of organic matter yet during the mission. Organic molecules make up organic matter and are considered a key indicator of life and, by definition, any material produced originally by living organisms. So, what’s the 88 million-mile caveat? Perseverance rover isn’t equipped with the necessary equipment to give a definitive answer if it has evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars. “The reality is the burden of proof for establishing life on another planet is very, very high,” said Farley during the NASA press conference on Thursday. “For that, we need to examine Mars rocks up close and in person in Earth labs.” Earth seen from Mars. Taken by the Curiosity rover. The good news is that NASA has a plan to retrieve Percy’s samples in 2030. If all goes to plan, we could see them back on Earth in 2033. Until then, we’re only left to speculate the question on everyone’s mind. “Was there ever life on the red planet?”
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History & CultureNewsAn analysis of wood from L’Anse aux Meadows zeroes in on a cosmic event to reveal that the European seafarers were felling trees in Newfoundland in A.D. 1021.In A.D. 993, a storm on the sun released an enormous pulse of radiation that was absorbed and stored by trees all over the Earth. Now, that solar event has proved a critical tool in pinpointing an exact year the Vikings were present in the Americas.Since the discovery of a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Canada's Newfoundland more than 50 years ago, most scholars accept that Viking sailors, who explored the seas beginning in the late 700s to around 1100, were the first Europeans to reach the Americas. The timing of the Viking forays to what they called “Vinland,” however, remained unclear. Based on artifact finds, radiocarbon dating, and Viking sagas, the settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows was thought to have briefly thrived somewhere between 990 and 1050.Read more about the diverse genetic backgrounds of the Vikings. Now, thanks to that cosmic storm in 993, researchers can assuredly say that Vikings were working away at their tiny outpost in the north Atlantic exactly 1,000 years ago, in 1021, according to a study published today in the journal Nature.While the new, more precise date will not radically alter our current understanding of the Viking presence in the Americas, it “confirms what archaeologists and previous evidence have suggested,” says Ulf Büntgen, a geographer at the University of Cambridge who was not part of the research team. “I’m really happy to see such a paper—20 years ago we wouldn’t have been able to get such data.”Besides providing the first exact date for Viking settlement in North America, the dates also provide confirmation for tales of early voyages written down hundreds of years after the fact. “We always knew we were right around 1000, but 1021 is a huge deal,” says Davide Zori, an archaeologist at Baylor University who was not involved in the research. “This shows the [Viking] sagas are correct to within a decade. That’s pretty impressive.”'Like a gold mine'The new evidence comes from old samples. Dozens of radiocarbon dates taken from wooden artifacts excavated at L’Anse aux Meadows in the 1960s showed the site was about 1,000 years old. But radiocarbon dating was in its infancy at the time, and the margin of error was often measured in decades or even centuries.Explore the realm of the Vikings. Fortunately, forward-thinking archaeologists anticipated better dating methods might be developed in the future, so they recovered and preserved hundreds of additional pieces of wood found in and around the site, storing many in deep freezers in a Canadian warehouse to prevent decay. When University of Groningen archaeologist Margot Kuitems, a co-author of the study, visited the warehouse a few years ago, she was stunned. Millennia-old wood “looked perfectly fresh, like it was put in yesterday,” she says. “It was like a gold mine.”Kuitems wasn’t looking for the prettiest pieces, though. She and Michael Dee, a radiocarbon dating expert also at the University of Groningen, were searching for sites to test a new dating method based on tree rings. To see if they could narrow down the age of L’Anse aux Meadows, Kuitems picked four fir and juniper logs with bark still attached, all of which had been chopped and left near one of the Norse longhouses. “They’re not really artifacts or beautiful pieces made by Vikings,” Kuitems says of the pivotal samples. “They’re discarded bits of wood.”Walk a lost Viking ‘highway’ revealed by melting ice.All four samples had a few things in common that made them perfect for Dee and Kuitems’s purposes. They were found in layers of soil alongside other Viking artifacts, connecting them to the Viking activity. They had been cut or worked with metal tools—otherwise unknown in North America at the time, and more evidence for Viking handiwork. And they all had bark still attached, clearly showing when the tree stopped growing.There was one more thing that stood out: Three of the wood samples were from trees alive during the solar event of 993, when the cosmic storm released a pulse of radiation so powerful that it was recorded in the rings of the world’s trees. Referred to by researchers as a “cosmogenic radiocarbon event,” the phenomenon has only happened twice in the last 2,000 years.The cosmic storm, along with a similar event in 775, left behind “spikes” that skew radiocarbon dates from wood by about a century, a fact that researchers first identified in 2012. Identifiable only by comparing radiocarbon dates from individual tree rings, the resulting anomaly creates a sort of tree ring time stamp. “When you hit the spikes it’s really clear,” says Dee, who led the new study.Learn how a Viking ‘amulet factory’ forced the rethink of enigmatic artifacts.The team painstakingly sampled and radiocarbon dated more than 100 tree rings, some less than a millimeter wide, hoping to find the 993 spike in the radiocarbon age. In three of the pieces of wood they found the sharp jump they were looking for. Simple arithmetic then made it possible to figure out when Vikings felled the tree. “If you have a tree with lots of rings and have the bark edge, it’s just a question of counting,” Dee says. In this case, 28 rings separated the bark from the tree ring in which the 993 solar pulse is recorded.“The [previous] radiocarbon dates stretch between the beginning and the end of the Viking Age,” says Dee. “We’re proving it happened by 1021 at the latest.”Furthermore, this date corroborates two Icelandic sagas, the “Saga of the Greenlanders” and the “Saga of Erik the Red,” that recorded attempts to establish a permanent settlement in “Vinland” on the far western edge of the Viking world. Though written down in the 1200s, both sagas refer to historic events and people, allowing scholars to reconstruct a rough timeline for the voyages around 1000.Zori agrees that the new date won’t revolutionize what we know about the Vikings in the Americas. But using the 993 cosmic radiation spike to date other sites could offer new insights, particularly where historical records can’t be easily tied to archaeological discoveries. “When you want to connect specific events with monuments or buildings, having a precise date really might change our understanding,” Zori says.For Dee, pinning down the date creates a tangible link to the time when humanity completed its expansion around the world and met in a thickly wooded forest on the shores of the North Atlantic. “The moment the Atlantic was crossed was sort of the last step,” he says. “The date we’ve got substantiates the fact that it was real.”
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Circular vision: NASA's Swift’s X-Ray Telescope managed to capture the afterglow of GRB 221009A about an hour after it was first detected (Courtesy: NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore (University of Leicester)) Several orbiting space telescopes scanning the skies for powerful cosmic explosions have spotted one of the brightest gamma-ray bursts ever detected. Initial evidence suggests that the blast of high-energy radiation occurred when an extremely massive star collapsed – a process that results in an immense flood of gamma-rays and X-rays. Astronomers have been racing to follow-up the discovery with one researcher suggesting it will become the “best studied gamma-ray burst in history”.
The first reports of the explosion, catalogued as GRB 221009A, came from the Neil Gehrels Swift observatory and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which both monitor the universe at gamma-ray and X-ray wavelengths. Their systems noticed a bright source appear in the constellation Sagitta on 9 October. The blast was also picked up by the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter mission and since then numerous other observatories – including those looking at visible wavelengths – have scrutinized the fading fireball from the event, which is known as the “afterglow”.
One of the most striking aspects about GRB 221009A is its proximity. The blast appears to have happened in a galaxy about two billion light years away, which is considerably closer than an “average” gamma-ray burst event that may lie some 10 billion light years away. Leicester University astronomer Kim Page, who works on NASA’s Swift mission, says that such closeness had “a big part to play” in why this burst appeared so bright.
The bright and nearby nature of GRB 221009A should give scientists plenty to study. “We have a lot photons across the electromagnetic spectrum, and this will allow us to slice up the data more finely,” adds Page. Researchers will also be hoping to examine how the chemical signature, or spectrum, of the explosion evolves – information that can reveal clues about the composition of the phenomenon.
A ‘unique’ measurement
While initial analyses are still ongoing, astronomers are already marvelling at some of the early observations. X-ray imagery from the Swift observatory shows prominent, glowing rings around the location of GRB 221009A. These features are not physically part of the blast but “light echoes” that are caused when X-ray radiation streaming towards us from the event scatters off microscopic grains suspended within dust clouds inside our own galaxy.
GRB 221009A is going to be the best studied gamma-ray burst in history
Andrea Tiengo
“This is by far the best set of rings seen around a gamma-ray burst, thanks partly to its brightness in X-rays and its closeness to the Galactic plane,” explains Leicester astronomer Andrew Beardmore, who works on the Swift mission.
Beardmore says analysis of the rings will allow scientists to investigate the nature of the interstellar dust grains and even probe the locations of the Milky Way dust clouds where they reside. “Because [the rings] are so bright, the distance to the dust-layers responsible for [them] will likely be known with great precision. This makes it quite a unique measurement,” he adds. Read more Why are gamma-ray bursts so extremely interesting? Indeed, that measurement is something that Andrea Tiengo from the Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS di Pavia, in Italy, and colleagues have already been working on. “We have compared our measurements with the distances derived from other methods and we confirm that they are compatible,” he says. “But we detect more clouds up to a larger distance and determine their distance with higher accuracy.”
The dust responsible for the rings has also scattered a particular kind of X-ray light from the early stages of the blast. These so-called “soft” X-rays – with energies of between 0.3 and 10 keV – aren’t usually emitted towards us during these events, but they can be studied for details about the star that formed the gamma-ray burst.
“Since GRB 221009A is going to be the best studied gamma-ray burst in history, this is a fundamental piece of information that would otherwise be missing and it will certainly help us to better understand the physics of the most powerful explosions in the universe,” says Tiengo.
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Earth-sized exoplanets may well be a lot more common than previously thought. Scientists expect that many of them may be hiding in binary star systemsBack in 1992, astronomers Dale Frail and Aleksander Wolszczan published the identification of two exoplanets orbiting a rapidly rotating neutron star. This discovery is generally deemed to be the first conclusive discovery of exoplanets. Since then, a lot has happened in the world of exoplanet hunting. Currently, the tally stands at a whopping 4424 confirmed exoplanets, and that amount is rapidly growing, with over 7000 NASA candidate exoplanets in the current pipeline. How many Earth-sized exoplanets have been discoveredOf those aforementioned, 4424 confirmed exoplanets, 1494 are 'Neptune-like' exoplanets (exoplanets with a size roughly the same as Neptune and Uranus, with Helium/Hydrogen atmospheres). 1403 are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, or even larger. 1357 are so-called 'Super-Earths' (a class of planets that is not found in our own solar system, they are positioned between Neptune-like exoplanets and terrestrial exoplanets like Earth. Super-Earths can consist of rock or gas or a mixture of both. In that sense, Mini-Neptune would have been just as good a name as Super-Earth.Finally, 165 confirmed exoplanets are terrestrial exoplanets. Exoplanets that range between half the size of Earth to twice its radius are qualified as terrestrial. Generally speaking, these are the exoplanets that are often considered Earth-like exoplanets in popular media. That number seems to be pretty low compared to the other types of exoplanets discovered in recent years. This is in part because smaller exoplanets are simply more challenging to find than larger ones. Yet, in a recent study, a group of astronomers claims that we are overlooking something very important. There may be many more Earth-sized planets than previously thought.The downside of the transit method of exoplanet detectionOver 75% of all exoplanet discoveries happen via the so-called Transit Method. When an exoplanet passes exactly between its host star and an observer, it dims the star's light, and thus the planet reveals itself. According to new research, the transit method of detection has a significant downside as binary stars (a binary star is a star system comprised of 2 stars orbiting around their shared center of mass) that are relatively close to Earth can easily be mistaken for individual stars. This has far-reaching consequences because about half of all stars are part of a binary system!The researchers first decided to establish whether exoplanets host stars identified by NASA's TESS exoplanet-hunting mission were unidentified binary stars. Physical sets of stars that are in close proximity of each other can easily be mistaken for single stars unless they are detected at an exceptionally high resolution. So the astronomers used two high-end telescopes to examine a sample of previously observed host stars in extreme detail. The team found out that 91 stars in their sample (previously detected as single stars) were actually binary star systems. Afterward, researchers contrasted the sizes of the discovered planets in the binary star systems to those in single-star systems. The team noticed that the TESS exoplanet-hunting mission uncovered both small and large exoplanets circling single stars but only larger-sized planets in binary star systems. This discovery implies that a large population of Earth-sized planets may be hidden from us within common binary star systems, unperceived utilizing our conventional detection methods. Katie Lester, NASA scientist and lead researcher for this study, stated in a press release that, since approximately 50% of stars are situated in binary systems, astronomers could be missing the discovery of - and the chance to investigate - countless Earth-like exoplanets.The plausibility of these missing worlds suggests that scientists will need to use various observational methods before conclusively determining that a presented binary star system has no Earth-like planets. According to Lester, astronomers need to determine whether a specific star is a single star or part of a binary system before they assert that no terrestrial planets exist within that star system.These new findings are predicted to have a significant impact on the development of our understanding of planetary systems. We, for one, can't wait to find out what lies hidden within these binary star systems upon closer inspection with better technology in the future.Further reading:Exoplanet discovery counterWhat in the World is an 'Exoplanet?'Stellar Companions at 1-1000 AU and Implications for Small Planet DetectionGeneral information on exoplanetsNOIRLab
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Image source, Getty ImagesArchaeologists in northern Iraq have made an exciting discovery - unearthing beautiful rock carvings that are about 2,700 years old.They were found in Mosul by a US-Iraqi excavation team working to reconstruct the ancient Mashki Gate, which Islamic State (IS) militants destroyed in 2016.Iraq is home to some of the world's most ancient cities, including Babylon.But years of turmoil have seen many archaeological sites looted and damaged by militants and military action.The eight marble reliefs show finely chiselled war scenes, grape vines and palm trees.They date back to the Assyrian King Sennacherib, who ruled the ancient city of Nineveh from 705 to 681 BC, the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage said, in a statement seen by AFP. The powerful king was known for his military campaigns, including against Babylon, and his vast expansion of Nineveh.It is believed the relics once adorned his palace, and were then moved to the Mashki Gate, Fadel Mohammed Khodr, head of the Iraqi archaeological team, told AFP.The Mashki Gate was one of the largest in Nineveh, and was an icon of the city's size and power. The gate was reconstructed in the 1970s, but was destroyed with a bulldozer by IS militants in 2016.The militant group ransacked and demolished several ancient sites that pre-date Islam in Iraq, denouncing them as symbols of "idolatry".Mr Khodr said that when the marble slabs were positioned at the gate, they were partly buried. The sections underground were preserved and bear the carvings seen today; whatever was above-ground was wiped smooth over the centuries.The excavation team, which comprises experts from Iraq's Mosul University and the United States' University of Pennsylvania, is working to restore the Mashki Gate site to how it was before IS bulldozed it.Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, This carving shows an Assyrian soldier pulling back an arrow, ready to fireMore than 10,000 archaeological sites have been found in Iraq. Neighbouring Syria is also home to treasured ruins, including the site of the ancient city of Palmyra, where the grand Temple of Bel was destroyed by IS. in 2015.However it is not only militants, vandals and smugglers who have damaged archaeological sites in Iraq.US troops and their allies damaged the ruins of Babylon when the fragile site was used as an army camp after the US invaded Iraq in 2003.A 2009 report by Unesco, the United Nations cultural agency, found troops and their contractors "caused major damage to the city by digging, cutting, scraping, and levelling".
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The skeleton was found in pieces by a diver in a cave in the Tulum area. Based on its location, it's likely to be between 8,000 and nearly 14,000 years old. Screen capture/social media A human skeleton that is believed to be over 8,000 years old has been found in an underwater cave, or cenote, near the proposed Playa del Carmen-Tulum section of the Maya Train railroad.
Speleologist and archaeologist Octavio del Río said that he and diver Peter Broger saw the skeleton under sediment in a cave system that was flooded at the end of the last ice age 8,000 years ago. The skeleton, including the skull, is broken into small pieces, del Río said.
Broger led the archaeologist to the skeleton last weekend after discovering it during a prior diving expedition.
Del Río – who has collaborated with the underwater archeology division of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) for almost three decades – told the Associated Press that the remains are at a depth of about eight meters some 500 meters from the entrance to the cave system.
“Because of where it was found [and] the depth, it could only have arrived there when the cave was dry. This was at least 8,000 years ago,” del Río said.
He said it was unclear whether the body was deposited in the cave after death or whether the person died where the skeleton was found. In an interview with the Reforma newspaper, del Río said that the gender of the person is also unknown.
“We don’t yet know the sex or the size [of the person], how much he or she weighed, whether the person had a disease. We don’t know how he or she died,” he said.
Del Río said that laboratory analysis would determine such details after the remains have been removed from the cave. “A long study that could last months or years starts now,” he said.
The archaeologist hasn’t revealed the exact location of the cave where the skeleton was found but said in a post to his personal Facebook account that it’s in the Tulum area. He noted that it was the 11th discovery of ancient human remains in the area.
“They date from the origin of man in America, with a chronology that ranges from 13,700 years ago to 8,000 years ago,” del Río wrote. “The caves were their homes in life and their tombs in death.”
The archaeologist was involved in the discovery and cataloguing of the skeleton of Eve of Naharon, which was found in an underwater cave near Tulum about 20 years ago and has been carbon-dated to 13,600 years ago.
Del Río told AP that he notified INAH of the most recent discovery and was told by INAH archaeologist Carmen Rojas that the site was registered and would be investigated by the institute’s Quintana Roo division.
Del Río warned that construction of the Maya Train could collapse, contaminate or close off the cave system where the skeleton is located.
The #SelvameDelTren (Save me from the Train/Save the Jungle from the Train) collective, an outspoken critic of construction of the controversial Playa del Carmen-Tulum section (Tramo 5 Sur) of the Maya Train, said that the discovery emphasized the importance of protecting caves in the area.
The cave where the ancient skeleton was found and other archaeological and paleontological relics “could be affected by the train work,” the collective said in a statement. It called for Tramo 5 Sur to be built parallel to Federal Highway 307, as was originally planned, in order to “protect the history of our country.”
The federal government decided to move the route inland earlier this year after the Playa del Carmen business community complained that the construction of the railroad parallel to the highway would effectively divide the city in two. Large swaths of the Mayan Jungle have been cut down to create a passage for the rerouted section.
Del Río said that “the train will go through a 60-kilometer area that is a unique archaeological site” if construction of Tramo 5 Sur continues as planned.
“What we want is for them to change to route at this spot, because of the archaeological finds that have been made there, and their importance,” he told AP.
“They should take the train away from there and put it where they said they were going to build before, on the highway, … an area that has already been affected.”
With reports from AP, Reforma and 24 Horas
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People look at a large mosaic that dates back to the Roman era in the town of Rastan, Syria, on Wednesday. Omar Sanadiki/AP hide caption toggle caption Omar Sanadiki/AP People look at a large mosaic that dates back to the Roman era in the town of Rastan, Syria, on Wednesday. Omar Sanadiki/AP RASTAN, Syria — Syria uncovered a large intact mosaic that dates back to the Roman era, describing it Wednesday as the most important archaeological discovery since the country's conflict began 11 years ago. Journalists were shown the mosaic in the central town of Rastan near Homs, Syria's third largest city. The mosaic, at 120 square meters (around 1,300 square feet), was found in an old building that Syria's General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums had been excavating. Lebanese and Syrian businessmen from the neighboring country's Nabu Museum bought the property that dates back to the 4th century and donated it to the Syrian state. Each panel was filled with square-shaped, small colorful stones measuring about half an inch on each side. Dr. Humam Saad, the associate director of excavation and archaeological research at the directorate, said among the scenes the mosaic shows is a rare portrayal of Ancient Amazon warriors in Roman mythology. "What is in front of us is a discovery that is rare on a global scale," Saad told The Associated Press, adding that the images are "rich in details," and includes scenes from the Trojan War between the Greeks and Trojans. In Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, demigod hero Hercules slayed Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, in one of his 12 labors. The mosaic also portrays Neptune, Ancient Roman god of the sea, and 40 of his mistresses. A detail of a large mosaic that dates back to Roman era is seen in Rastan. Omar Sanadiki/AP hide caption toggle caption Omar Sanadiki/AP A detail of a large mosaic that dates back to Roman era is seen in Rastan. Omar Sanadiki/AP "We can't identify the type of the building, whether it's a public bathhouse or something else, because we have not finished excavating yet," Saad told the AP. Sulaf Fawakherji, a famous actress in Syria and a member of the Nabu Museum's board of trustees said she hopes they could purchase other buildings in Rastan, which she says is filled with heritage sites and artifacts waiting to be discovered. "There are other buildings, and it's clear that the mosaic extends far wider," Fawkherji told the AP. "Rastan historically is an important city, and it could possibly be very important heritage city for tourism." Despite Rastan's historical significance in the country, Saad says there have not been significant excavation efforts in the town prior to the country's armed conflict. Syrian officials said the mosaic is the most important archaeological discovery since the conflict began 11 years ago. Omar Sanadiki/AP hide caption toggle caption Omar Sanadiki/AP Syrian officials said the mosaic is the most important archaeological discovery since the conflict began 11 years ago. Omar Sanadiki/AP "Unfortunately, there were armed groups that tried to sell the mosaic at one point in 2017 and listed it on social media platforms," he said. Syrian heritage sites have been looted and destroyed over the past decade of ongoing violent conflict. Among the most notable incidents was the Islamic State group taking Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that boasts 2,000-year-old towering Roman-era colonnades and priceless artifacts, and partially destroying a Roman theater. Meanwhile, Syria's cash-strapped government has slowly been rebuilding Aleppo's centuries-old bazaar after reclaiming it from armed opposition forces in 2016. Rastan was once a major opposition stronghold and was a point of intense clashes, before the Syrian government reclaimed the city in 2018.
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Syria uncovered a large intact mosaic that dates back to the Roman era, describing it Wednesday as the most important archaeological discovery since the country’s conflict began 11 years ago.Journalists were shown the mosaic in the central town of Rastan near Homs, Syria’s third largest city.The mosaic, at 120 square meters (around 1300 square feet), was found in an old building that Syria’s General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums had been excavating. Lebanese and Syrian businessmen from the neighboring country’s Nabu Museum bought the property that dates back to the 4th century and donated it to the Syrian state. Each panel was filled with square-shaped, small colorful stones measuring about half an inch on each side.Dr. Humam Saad, the associate director of excavation and archaeological research at the directorate, said among the scenes the mosaic shows is a rare portrayal of Ancient Amazon warriors in Roman mythology.ANCIENT ROMAN 'REFRIGERATOR' DISCOVERED IN MILITARY BARRACK WITH PRESERVED BONES: 'SHROUDED IN MYSTERY'"What is in front of us is a discovery that is rare on a global scale," Saad told The Associated Press, adding that the images are "rich in details," and includes scenes from the Trojan War between the Greeks and Trojans. People look at a large mosaic that dates back to Roman era in the town of Rastan, Syria, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. Syrian officials said it is the most important archaeological discovery since the conflict began 11 years ago. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)In Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, demigod hero Hercules slayed Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, in one of his 12 labors.The mosaic also portrays Neptune, Ancient Roman god of the sea, and 40 of his mistresses.ANCIENT CEREMONIAL CHARIOT EXCAVATED IN POMPEII: 'EXTRAORDINARY FIND'"We can’t identify the type of the building, whether it’s a public bathhouse or something else, because we have not finished excavating yet," Saad told the AP. People look at a large mosaic that dates back to Roman era in the town of Rastan, Syria, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. Syrian officials said it is the most important archaeological discovery since the conflict began 11 years ago. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)Sulaf Fawakherji, a famous actress in Syria and a member of the Nabu Museum’s board of trustees said she hopes they could purchase other buildings in Rastan, which she says is filled with heritage sites and artifacts waiting to be discoveredLOS ANGELES MUSEUM RETURNS 'ILLEGALLY EXCAVATED' ITALIAN ART TO MINISTRY"There are other buildings, and it’s clear that the mosaic extends far wider," Fawkherji told the AP. "Rastan historically is an important city, and it could possibly be very important heritage city for tourism."Despite Rastan’s historical significance in the country, Saad says there have not been significant excavation efforts in the town prior to the country’s armed conflict. A detail of a large mosaic that dates back to Roman era is seen in the town of Rastan, Syria, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. Syrian officials said it is the most important archaeological discovery since the conflict began 11 years ago. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)"Unfortunately, there were armed groups that tried to sell the mosaic at one point in 2017 and listed it on social media platforms," he said.Syrian heritage sites have been looted and destroyed over the past decade of ongoing violent conflict.WORLD'S OLDEST SHARK VICTIM ON RECORD GETS DECODED BY SCIENTISTS Among the most notable incidents was the Islamic State group taking Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that boasts 2,000-year-old towering Roman-era colonnades and priceless artifacts, and partially destroying a Roman theater. Meanwhile, Syria’s cash-strapped government has slowly been rebuilding Aleppo’s centuries-old bazaar after reclaiming it from armed opposition forces in 2016.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPRastan was once a major opposition stronghold and was a point of intense clashes, before the Syrian government reclaimed the city in 2018.
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There’s a supermassive black hole at the center of almost every galaxy in the Universe. How did they get there? What’s the relationship between these monster black holes and the galaxies that surround them?Every time astronomers look farther out in the Universe, they discover new mysteries. These mysteries require all new tools and techniques to understand. These mysteries lead to more mysteries. What I’m saying is that it’s mystery turtles all the way down.One of the most fascinating is the discovery of quasars, understanding what they are, and the unveiling of an even deeper mystery, where do they come from?As always, I’m getting ahead of myself, so first, let’s go back and talk about the discovery of quasars.Back in the 1950s, astronomers scanned the skies using radio telescopes, and found a class of bizarre objects in the distant Universe. They were very bright, and incredibly far away; hundreds of millions or even billion of light-years away. The first ones were discovered in the radio spectrum, but over time, astronomers found even more blazing in the visible spectrum.The astronomer Hong-Yee Chiu coined the term “quasar”, which stood for quasi-stellar object. They were like stars, shining from a single point source, but they clearly weren’t stars, blazing with more radiation than an entire galaxy.Over the decades, astronomers puzzled out the nature of quasars, learning that they were actually black holes, actively feeding and blasting out radiation, visible billions of light-years away.But they weren’t the stellar mass black holes, which were known to be from the death of giant stars. These were supermassive black holes, with millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun.As far back as the 1970s, astronomers considered the possibility that there might be these supermassive black holes at the heart of many other galaxies, even the Milky Way. The Whirlpool Galaxy (Spiral Galaxy M51, NGC 5194), a classic spiral galaxy located in the Canes Venatici constellation, and its companion NGC 5195. - Image Credit: NASA/ESA In 1974, astronomers discovered a radio source at the center of the Milky Way emitting radiation. It was titled Sagittarius A*, with an asterisk that stands for “exciting”, well, in the “excited atoms” perspective.This would match the emissions of a supermassive black hole that wasn’t actively feeding on material. Our own galaxy could have been a quasar in the past, or in the future, but right now, the black hole was mostly silent, apart from this subtle radiation.Astronomers needed to be certain, so they performed a detailed survey of the very center of the Milky Way in the infrared spectrum, which allowed them to see through the gas and dust that obscures the core in visible light.They discovered a group of stars orbiting Sagittarius A-star, like comets orbiting the Sun. Only a black hole with millions of times the mass of the Sun could provide the kind of gravitational anchor to whip these stars around in such bizarre orbits.Further surveys found a supermassive black hole at the heart of the Andromeda Galaxy, in fact, it appears as if these monsters are at the center of almost every galaxy in the Universe.But how did they form? Where did they come from? Did the galaxy form first, and cause the black hole to form at the middle, or did the black hole form, and build up a galaxy around them?Until recently, this was actually still one of the big unsolved mysteries in astronomy. That said, astronomers have done plenty of research, using more and more sensitive observatories, worked out their theories, and now they’re gathering evidence to help get to the bottom of this mystery.Astronomers have developed two models for how the large scale structure of the Universe came together: top down and bottom up.In the top down model, an entire galactic supercluster formed all at once out of a huge cloud of primordial hydrogen left over from the Big Bang. A supercluster’s worth of stars.As the cloud came together it, it spun up, kicking out smaller spirals and dwarf galaxies. These could have combined later on to form the more complex structure we see today. The supermassive black holes would have formed as the dense cores of these galaxies as they came together. Hubble image of Messier 54, a globular cluster located in the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. - Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA If you want to wrap your mind around this, think of the stellar nursery that formed our Sun and a bunch of other stars. Imagine a single cloud of gas and dust forming multiple stars systems within it. Over time, the stars matured and drifted away from each other.That’s top down. One big event that leads to the structure we see today.In the bottom up model, pockets of gas and dust collected together into larger and larger masses, eventually forming dwarf galaxies, and even the clusters and superclusters we see today. The supermassive black holes at the heart of galaxies were grown from collisions and mergers between black holes over eons.In fact, this is actually how astronomers think the planets in the Solar System formed. By pieces of dust attracting one another into larger and larger grains until the planet-sized objects formed over millions of years.Bottom up, small parts coming together.Shortly after the Big Bang, the entire Universe was incredibly dense. But it wasn’t the same density everywhere. Tiny quantum fluctuations in density at the beginning evolved over billions of years of expansion into the galactic superclusters we see today.I want to stop and let this sink into your brain for a second. There were microscopic variations in density in the early Universe. And these variations became the structures hundreds of millions of light-years across we see today.Imagine the two forces at play as the expansion of the Universe happened. On the one hand, you’ve got the mutual gravity of the particles pulling one another together. And on the other hand, you’ve got the expansion of the Universe separating the particles from one another. The size of the galaxies, clusters and superclusters were decided by the balance point of those opposing forces.If small pieces came together, then you’d get that bottom up formation. If large pieces came together, you’d get that top down formation.When astronomers look out into the Universe at the largest scales, they observe clusters and superclusters as far as they can see – which supports the top down model.On the other hand, observations show that the first stars formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, which supports bottom up.So the answer is both?No, the most modern observations give the edge to the bottom up processes.The key is that gravity moves at the speed of light, which means that the gravitational interactions between particles spreading away from each other needed to catch up, going the speed of light.In other words, you wouldn’t get a supercluster’s worth of material coming together, only a star’s worth of material. But these first stars were made of pure hydrogen and helium, and could grow much more massive than the stars we have today. They would live fast and die in supernova explosions, creating much more massive black holes than we get today. This illustration shows the final stages in the life of a supermassive star that fails to explode as a supernova, but instead implodes to form a black hole. - Image Credit: NASA/ESA/P. Jeffries (STScI) The first protogalaxies came together, collecting together these first monster black holes and the massive stars surrounding them. And then, over millions and billions of years, these black holes merged again and again, accumulating millions and even billions of times the mass of the Sun. This was how we got the modern galaxies we see today.There was a recent observation that supports this conclusion. Earlier this year, astronomers announced the discovery of supermassive black holes at the center of relatively tiny galaxies. In our own Milky Way, the supermassive black hole is 4.1 million times the mass of the Sun, but accounts for only .01% of the galaxy’s total mass.But astronomers from the University of Utah found two ultra compact galaxies with black holes of 4.4 million and 5.8 million times the mass of the Sun respectively. And yet, the black holes account for 13 and 18 percent of the mass of their host galaxies.The thinking is that these galaxies were once normal, but collided with other galaxies earlier on in the history of the Universe, were stripped of their stars and then were spat out to roam the cosmos.They’re the victims of those early merging events, evidence of the carnage that happened in the early Universe when the mergers were happening.We always talk about the unsolved mysteries in the Universe, but this is one that astronomers are starting to puzzle out.It seems most likely that the structure of the Universe we see today formed bottom up. The first stars came together into protogalaxies, dying as supernova to form the first black holes. The structure of the Universe we see today is the end result of billions of years of formation and destruction. With the supermassive black holes coming together over time.Once telescopes like James Webb get to work, we should be able to see these pieces coming together, at the very edge of the observable Universe.Source: Universe Today If you enjoy our selection of content please consider following Universal-Sci on social media:
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1.6 billion stars. 11.4 million galaxies. 158,000 asteroids. One spacecraft. The European Space Agency’s Gaia space observatory, which launched in 2013, has long surpassed its goal of charting more than a billion stars in the Milky Way (SN: 10/15/16). On June 13, the mission extended that map into new dimensions, releasing more detailed measurements of hundreds of millions of stars, plus — for the first time — asteroids, galaxies and the dusty medium between stars. Sign Up For the Latest from Science News Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox “Suddenly you have a flood of data,” says Laurent Eyer, an astrophysicist at the University of Geneva who has worked on Gaia for years. For some topics in astronomy, the new results effectively replace all the observations that were taken before, Eyer says. “The data is better. It’s amazing.” Data in the new survey, which were collected from 2014 to 2017, are already leading to some discoveries — including the presence of surprisingly massive “starquakes” on the surfaces of thousands of stars (SN: 8/2/19). But more than anything, the release is a new tool for astronomers, one that will aid their efforts to understand how stars, planets and entire galaxies form and evolve. Here are a few of the long-standing puzzles the data could help solve. Asteroid mishmash The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is a mess of history. After the Earth and other planets formed, the rocky building blocks that were left over smashed into each other, leaving behind jumbled fragments. But if scientists know enough about individual asteroids, they can reconstruct when and where they came from (SN: 4/13/19). And that can provide a peek into the solar system’s earliest days. Using new Gaia data, astronomers plotted the June 13, 2022, positions of 156,000 asteroids. The trails show their orbits for the last 10 days, and the colors mark different groups of asteroids based on their location (blue, inner solar system; green, the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter; orange, the Trojan asteroids near Jupiter).DPAC/Gaia/ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Gaia’s massive new dataset may help solve this puzzle, says Federica Spoto, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. It includes data on the chemical makeup of over 60,000 asteroids — six times more than researchers had such details on before using other tools. That information can be essential for tracing asteroids back to their shattering origins. “You can go back in time and try to understand all the formation and evolution of the solar system,” says Spoto, a Gaia collaborator. “That’s something huge that before Gaia we couldn’t even think about.” Asteroids aren’t just pieces of the past, though; they’re also dangerous. The new data could reveal asteroids that are next to impossible to spot from Earth because they orbit too close to the sun, says Thomas Burbine, a planetary scientist at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., who is not involved with the mission (SN: 2/15/20). Since these asteroids would have originally come from farther out (say, the asteroid belt), they can tell us about the rocks going past Earth that can potentially hit us. “We’ll know our neighborhood better,” Burbine says. Dating a star It is notoriously difficult to measure the age of stars (SN: 7/23/21). “It’s not uncommon to have uncertainty of more than a billion years,” says Alessandro Savino, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley who is not involved with Gaia. Unlike brightness or location, age is not directly visible. Astronomers have to rely on theories of how stars evolve to predict ages from what they can measure. If past versions of the Gaia survey were like a photograph of stars, the new release is like shifting the photograph from black and white to color. It provides a deeper look at hundreds of millions of stars by measuring their temperature, gravity and chemistry. “You imagine the star as this point in space, but then they have so many properties,” Spoto says. “That’s what Gaia is giving you.” Although these kinds of measurements are far from new, they have never been collected in the Milky Way on such a scale before. Those data could provide more insight into how stars evolve. “We can improve the resolution of our clocks,” Savino says. Milky Way snacks Though it may seem unchanging, the Milky Way is actually gorging on a steady diet of smaller galaxies —it’s even in the process of eating one right now. But for decades, predictions of when and how these cosmic mergers happen have been at odds with evidence from our galaxy, says Bertrand Goldman, an astrophysicist at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, who is not involved in the Gaia data release. “That has been controversial for a long time,” Goldman says, “but I think that Gaia will certainly shed light.” The key is to be able to pick apart different structures in the Milky Way and see how old they are (SN: 1/10/20). Gaia’s latest release helps in two ways: By mapping the chemistry of stars and by measuring their motion. Previous versions of the survey described how millions of stars were moving, but mostly in two dimensions. The new catalog quadruples the number of stars with full 3-D trajectories from 7 million to 33 million. This has implications beyond our neighborhood. Most of the mass in the universe is contained in galaxies like the Milky Way, so knowing how our own galaxy works goes a long way to understanding space on the largest scales. And the more scientists understand the parts of galaxies they can see, the more they can learn about dark matter, the mysterious substance that exerts gravity but doesn’t interact with light (SN: 6/25/21). Even as astronomers mine this latest dataset, they are already looking ahead to future treasure hunts. The next round is years off, but it is expected to enable the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, produce rare measurements of black holes and help astronomers clock how fast the universe is expanding. In part, this is because Gaia is designed to track the motion of objects in space, and that gets easier as more time passes. So Gaia’s observations can only get more powerful. “Like good wine, they age very, very well,” Savino says.
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Within 24 hours of accessing the first stage of Australia’s newest supercomputing system, researchers have processed a series of radio telescope observations, including a highly detailed image of a supernova remnant.The very high data rates and the enormous data volumes from new-generation radio telescopes such as Askap (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder) need highly capable software running on supercomputers. This is where the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre comes into play, with a newly launched supercomputer called Setonix – named after Western Australia’s favourite animal, the quokka (Setonix brachyurus).Askap, which consists of 36 dish antennas that work together as one telescope, is operated by Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO. The observational data it gathers is transferred via high-speed optical fibres to the Pawsey centre for processing and converting into science-ready images.The Askap radio telescope is owned and operated by CSIRO on Wajarri Yamatji Country in Western Australia. Photograph: CSIROIn a major milestone on the path to full deployment, we have now demonstrated the integration of our processing software ASKAPsoft on Setonix, complete with stunning visuals.Traces of a dying starAn exciting outcome of this exercise has been a fantastic image of a cosmic object known as a supernova remnant G261.9+5.5.Estimated to be more than a million years old, and located 10,000 to 15,000 light-years away from us, this object in our galaxy was first classified as a supernova remnant by CSIRO radio astronomer Eric R Hill in 1967, using observations from CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope.Supernova remnants (SNRs) are the remains of powerful explosions from dying stars. The ejected material from the explosion ploughs outwards into the surrounding interstellar medium at supersonic speeds, sweeping up gas and any material it encounters along the way, compressing and heating them up in the process.Additionally, the shockwave would compress the interstellar magnetic fields. The emissions we see in our radio image of G261.9+5.5 are from highly energetic electrons trapped in these compressed fields. They bear information about the history of the exploded star and aspects of the surrounding interstellar medium.The structure of this remnant revealed in the deep array radio image opens up the possibility of studying this remnant and the physical properties (such as magnetic fields and high-energy electron densities) of the interstellar medium in unprecedented detail.Putting a supercomputer through its pacesThe image of SNR G261.9+05.5 might be beautiful to look at, but the processing of data from Askap’s astronomy surveys is also a great way to stress-test the supercomputer system, including the hardware and the processing software.We included the supernova remnant’s dataset for our initial tests because its complex features would increase the processing challenges.Data processing even with a supercomputer is a complex exercise, with different processing modes triggering various potential issues. For example, the image of the SNR was made by combining data gathered at hundreds of different frequencies (or colours), allowing us to get a composite view of the object.But there is a treasure trove of information hidden in the individual frequencies as well. Extracting that information often requires making images at each frequency, requiring more computing resources and more digital space to store.While Setonix has adequate resources for such intense processing, a key challenge would be to establish the stability of the supercomputer when lashed with such enormous amounts of data day in and day out.More to comeThis is only the first of two installation stages for Setonix, with the second expected to be completed later this year.This will allow data teams to process more of the vast amounts of data coming in from many projects in a fraction of the time. In turn, it will not only enable researchers to better understand our universe but will undoubtedly uncover new objects hidden in the radio sky. The variety of scientific questions that Setonix will allow us to explore in shorter time frames opens up many possibilities.This increase in computational capacity benefits not just Askap, but all Australia-based researchers in all fields of science and engineering that can access Setonix.While the supercomputer is ramping up to full operations, so is the array pathfinder, which is currently wrapping up a series of pilot surveys and will soon undertake even larger and deeper surveys of the sky.The supernova remnant is just one of many features we’ve now revealed, and we can expect many more stunning images, and the discovery of many new celestial objects. Wasim Raja is a research scientist at CSIRO. Pascal Jahan Elahi is a supercomputing applications specialist at CSIRO’s Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre. This article was originally published in the Conversation
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The tomb of Saint Nicolas, the inspiration behind Santa Claus, has been discovered after archaeologists uncovered the remains of an ancient church in Turkey that was submerged by rising sea levels in the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages.The holy figure, who lived between 270 and 343 AD, is most famous for inheriting money that he gave away to the poor and specifically the story about how he gifted three girls with bags of gold to save them from a life of prostitution.Another church was built on top of the ancient basilica's foundation to protect the saint's tomb, but it was not until recently did archaeologists uncover mosaic and stone flooring from the previous sanctuary under the one that stands today that led them to St Nicholas' final resting place.The discovery support claims that St Nicolas lived and died in Turkey and the team also announced that the same stone flooring found hiding beneath layers of sediment was also walked upon by the Christian figure, Demirören News Agency reports.The Byzantine church (pictured) built over the ancient foundation was a place of worship for Orthodox Christians between the 5th and 12th centuries Archaeologist have been working at the site for years, carefully removing flooring of the St Nicholas church that stands in Turkey. The removal revealed flooring of the original church that was built after St Nicholas died in 343 AD The original foundation was discovered in 2017 when researchers found gaps under the floor of the church using electronic surveys. Pictures is the original foundation peaking out from the mosaic flooring of the church that stands at the site todayThe Byzantine church built over the ancient foundation was a place of worship for Orthodox Christians between the 5th and 12th centuries and is surrounded by statues of St Nicholas.It was also added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1982.The ancient church was first believed to have been discovered in 2017 by researchers who conducted electronic surveys under St Nicholas church, which revealed gaps between the floor and the ground.The team had announced that they may have found the tomb of Saint Nicholas, but were still working to carefully remove the Byzantine church's flooring to not damage it. Osman Eravsar, the head of the provincial cultural heritage preservation board in Antalya, told Demirören News Agency last week: 'The first church was submerged with the rise of the Mediterranean Sea, and some centuries later, a new church was built above.'Now we have reached the remains of the first church and the floor on which Saint Nicholas stepped,' he noted. 'The tiling of the floor of the first church, on which Saint Nicholas walked, has been unearthed.' The newest church (pictured) was built on top of the ancient foundation to protect the tomb of St Nicholas The grey-stone building sits in a depression which is several miles deep. Although it is weathered, many of the marble columns that once stood around the church are still found on the grounds St Nicholas, who lived between 270 and 343 AD, is most famous for inheriting money that he gave away to the poor and specifically the story about how he gifted three girls with bags of gold to save them from a life of prostitutionThe team also announced that the same stone flooring was once walked upon by St Nicholas. Pictures is the original foundation recently uncovered by archaeologists working at the site in TurkeySt Nicholas, who is famous for his gift-giving and charity to the poor, was born in the village of Patara to wealthy parents who died in an epidemic and left their son a large fortune. St Nicholas is the inspiration behind the story of Santa ClausAs a devout Christian, St Nicholas followed Jesus' teaching of selling all worldly possessions and giving to the poor - and that is what he did.However, these ideas are not presented in historical documents, but have been shared in stories.He did become bishop of Myra in the 4th century, but was imprisoned shortly after by the Roman emperor Diocletian at a time when Christians were persecuted and then released under the rule of Constantine the Great. Records do show that St Nicholas was buried at the church built in his name.However his body's exact whereabouts has always been a mystery.Researchers now believe at the time of his death in 343 AD, St Nicholas was interred at the church in Demre, where he lay undisturbed until the 11th century.Previously, it was believed the 1,674-year-old remains were smuggled to the Italian city of Bari by merchants in the year 1087.However, Turkish archaeologists are now suggesting the wrong bones were removed - and the ones that went to Italy belonged to an anonymous priest.He was buried in his church at Myra, and by the 6th century his shrine there had become well known. In 1087 Italian sailors or merchants stole his alleged remains from the tomb and took them to Bari, Italy. The team also uncovered the fresco of Jesus recently. The discovery of the tomb puts to rest the mystery of where the saint was laid to rest The Byzantine church was also damaged and restored several times through the 8th and 9th centuries. It was also flooded and buried, leaving it hidden for decades until it was rediscovered in 1956Nicholas’s relics remain enshrined in the 11th-century basilica of San Nicola at Bari, though fragments have been acquired by churches around the world. Santa Claus is based on stories about St Nicholas who built a reputation for performing miracles and secretly giving gold to the needy.The name Santa Claus evolved from Nick's Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas, a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas, which is Dutch for Saint Nicholas. The Byzantine church was also damaged and restored several times through the 8th and 9th centuries, according to the heritage preservation board in Antalya.The organization notes that it had major rebuilds by Constantine IX in 1043 and Tsar Nicholas I in 1862, who added a tower.The church was also flooded by the Demre River and eventually buried until it was rediscovered in 1956 and is now a destination for many pilgrims seeking to pay homage to St Nicholas. THE ORIGINS OF SANTA CLAUS St Nicholas was Bishop of Myrna, in what is now Turkey, in the 4th century, and was known for his generosity towards children.He was known for his secret gift giving, such as putting coins into the shoes of people who left them out for him.This practice is still celebrated on his national feast day, December 6.The bishop was popularized in 6th century Europe as Father Christmas, who secretly gave gifts to young children.Young Dutch arrivals to the United States called Saint Nicholas 'Sinterklaas', which later became Santa Claus.In modern depictions, Saint Nicholas is presented as a portly old man dressed in red and white with a bushy beard.But some have suggested the original character wore green, and that his modern red-and-white colors are the result of a 1930s marketing campaign from soft drinks brand Coca Cola.
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NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Archeologists have discovered four new rooms in a house in Pompeii filled with household objects giving a rare glimpse into the final moments of life in middle-class homes before Mount Vesuvius' furious eruption.Pompeii's archeological park, one of Italy's top tourist attractions, announced the recent finds on Saturday. Its director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said the excavation of rooms in a "domus," or home, first unearthed in 2018 had revealed precious details about the domestic environment of ordinary citizens of the city. Archeologists found four rooms in a home in the Pompeii ruins. (Parco Archeologico di Pompei via AP)A HISTORY OF US PRESIDENTS WHO HAVE BEEN ASSASSINATEDThe finds revealed the final moments of life captured by furnishing shattered by the eruption in AD 79 and objected hastily abandoned during the deadly disaster. Plates, vases, amphorae, glass and terracotta objects left in chests and cabinets, hastily abandoned during the disaster.The home found was dubbed the House of the Larario for an area of a home devoted to domestic spirits known as lares. next The director of the archaeological site, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022, that excavations of rooms in a home first unearthed in 2018, revealed the environment of ordinary citizens of the city, which was flourishing before being destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. (Parco Archeologico di Pompei via AP) prev next A picture provide by the Pompeii Archeological site press office, showing the latest discoveries in the ancient city of Pompeii which is enriching knowledge about the everyday lives of middle-class households. (Parco Archeologico di Pompei via AP) prev A picture provide by the Pompeii Archeological site press office, showing the latest discoveries in the ancient city of Pompeii which is enriching knowledge about the everyday lives of middle-class households. (Parco Archeologico di Pompei via AP)"A large slice of the population in the Roman Empire were people who sweated for their daily bread but were also anxious to raise their social status," Zuchtriegel said.In past decades, excavation largely concentrated on sumptuous, elaborately frescoed villas of the Pompeii's upper-class residents. But archeology activity in the sprawling site, near modern-day Naples, has increasingly focused on the lives of the middle class as well as of servants and other enslaved people.Zuchtriegel noted that while the courtyard also had an exceptionally well-adorned cistern, "evidently, the (financial) resources weren't enough to decorate the five rooms of the home.'' One room had unpainted walls and an earthen floor apparently used for storage.FOSSILS OF EUROPE'S LARGEST MEAT-EATING DINOSAUR FOUND ON ISLE OF WIGHT next The director of the archaeological site, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, said on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2022, that excavations of rooms in a home first unearthed in 2018, revealed the environment of ordinary citizens of the city, which was flourishing before being destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. (Parco Archeologico di Pompei via AP) prev In this image provide by the Pompeii Archeological site press office, an archeologist works on the site of a new discovery. (Parco Archeologico di Pompei via AP)In a bedroom, archeologists found the remains of a bed frame with a trace of fabric from the pillow. The kind of bed is identical to three, cot-like beds unearthed last year in a tiny room in another residence that archaeologists believe doubled as a storeroom and sleeping quarters for a family of enslaved inhabitants of Pompeii.The bedroom findings announced Saturday also included the remains of a wooden trunk with an open lid. Although the weight of beams and ceiling panels that crashed down in the wake of the volcanic explosion heavily damaged the trunk, among the objects found inside was an oil lamp decorated with a bas-relief depicting the ancient Greek deity Zeus being transformed into an eagle. Nearby was a small, three-legged round table, similar to the accent tables in vogue today.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPExposing the storeroom revealed a wooden closet, its backboard still intact, but the shelves caved in. Archeologists believe the closet had at least four panel doors and held cookware and dishes for the nearby kitchen. The excavators found a hinge from the enclosure.The Associated Press contributed to this report. Sarah Rumpf is a Fox News Digital Production Assistant. You can reach her on Twitter at @rumpfsarahc
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Space August 26, 2022 / 10:55 AM / CBS News NASA releases stunning Webb Telescope images NASA releases stunning Webb Telescope images, previewing discoveries to come 03:29 Scientists announced this week the discovery of a nearby "super-Earth" that could potentially support life, calling it a "water world." The team, led by the University of Montreal, used observations from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), as well as telescopes on the ground, to detect the exoplanet, which is described as potentially rocky like Earth, but larger. Named TOI-1452 b, it orbits a red dwarf star about 100 light years away from our planet, which scientists say is "fairly close." Scientists have long theorized the possibility of other ocean planets, but they have been difficult to confirm. TOI-1452 b is roughly 70% larger than Earth and about five times as massive, which would be consistent with having a very deep ocean — but more research is still needed. NASA says the planet could also potentially be an enormous rock with little or no atmosphere — or even a rocky planet with an atmosphere made up of hydrogen or helium. Artistic rendition of the exoplanet TOI-1452 b, a small planet that may be entirely covered in a deep ocean. Benoît Gougeon, Université de Montréal A year on TOI-1452 b takes just 11 days, but it gets a similar amount of light from its smaller, cooler star as Venus does from the sun. Despite its close orbit, it's located in the "habitable zone," meaning it could have highly-coveted liquid water on its surface. If this "one-of-a-kind" exoplanet were confirmed to be a water world, its ocean would be significantly deeper than Earth's. While our planet is 70% water, oceans account for less than 1% of the planet's mass — whereas water on TOI-1452 b could make up as much as 30% of its mass, according to one simulation. "TOI-1452 b is one of the best candidates for an ocean planet that we have found to date," said study lead Charles Cadieux. "Its radius and mass suggest a much lower density than what one would expect for a planet that is basically made up of metal and rock, like Earth."If that simulation is accurate, it would make the planet comparable to watery moons in our solar system, like Jupiter's Ganymede and Callisto, which scientists believe hide deep oceans under their surfaces. Artistic representation of the surface of TOI-1452 b, which could be an "ocean planet", i.e. a planet entirely covered by a thick layer of liquid water. Benoit Gougeon, Université de Montréal. The James Webb Space Telescope is on a mission to understand the origins of our universe, but researchers say it could take some time on the side to observe TOI-1452 b, which, "in a stroke of good fortune," appears in the constellation Draco, a part of the sky that Webb can see during most times of the year. "Our observations with the Webb Telescope will be essential to better understanding TOI-1452 b," said researcher René Doyon, who also works with one of the four science instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope. "As soon as we can, we will book time on the Webb to observe this strange and wonderful world." In: James Webb Space Telescope News From Space Science NASA Sophie Lewis Sophie Lewis is a social media producer and trending writer for CBS News, focusing on space and climate change. Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue
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Drought has a way of revealing things. Receding waters can highlight the precarity of the crucial systems that keep societies functioning and expose hidden ancient cities.In the case of Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, diminishing waters have in recent months uncovered long buried secrets and other mysterious finds: at least three sets of human remains, including a body inside a barrel that could be linked to a mob killing, and a sunken boat dating back to the second world war.A grueling drought in the American west has depleted the lake, a crucial water source for 25 million people, drying out tributaries, threatening hydropower production and closing boat ramps at the popular recreation site. It is now at its lowest level since the lake was being filled in 1937.Officials expect more grim finds, and have already received calls from visitors about possible remains that turned out to be animal bones or prop skeletons left by local scuba divers years earlier.A formerly sunken boat sits high and dry along the shoreline of Lake Mead in May. Photograph: John Locher/AP“You will find things in the lake. It’s inevitable,” said Michael Green, an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s been sad to watch the lake drop, the islands appear, the bathtub ring, the marina being moved out further and further.”The recent spate of discoveries began in May when boaters spotted a barrel. Inside were the remains of a man who officials say was shot between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s. The killing has the signature of a “mob hit”, the local Mob Museum said, and coincided “with the most violent period in Las Vegas’s past – an era of unprecedented street crime and underworld killings”.A week after that discovery, two sisters paddle-boarding on the lake came across what they thought were the bones of a bighorn sheep, but which turned out to be another set of human remains.“I would say there is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” Ray Spencer, a lieutenant with the Las Vegas police, said in May.Earlier this week, someone alerted park rangers to additional human remains, partially encased in mud, along a beach. The investigation is continuing, the park said in a statement.But there aren’t just bodies in the water that comes in from the Colorado River, and experts say as the “bathtub ring” around the lake grows, more discoveries are waiting.This summer a sunken second world war-era boat began to jut out from the water. The Higgins landing craft, models of which were deployed at Normandy, was once used to survey the Colorado River and then sold to the marina before it sank.A sunken second world war-era Higgins landing craft that used to be nearly 200ft underwater rests on its side near the Lake Mead Marina on Thursday. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesA crashed B-29 plane has been in the water since 1948. It’s still far below the surface, but as the water levels fall light is reaching the plane for the first time in decades, 8NewsNow reported.Lake Mead is a not natural body of water, Green points out. It was formed with the creation of the Hoover Dam, which submerged St Thomas, a Mormon settlement founded in 1865. One of the town’s final residents left in 1938 when waters reached his front door, according to the Deseret News. Declining lake levels, which have exposed St Thomas several times over the years, have kept the settlement visible for the last 10 years.The lake also covered archaeological digs, said Green, who teaches about the history of Nevada and Las Vegas, meaning there could be historical items in the water.“There might actually be some archaeological relics,” Green said, adding that a nearby museum has artifacts from the Puebloan people, who lived in the area about a thousand years earlier. “Archaeologists were working there until the lake was rising around them.”The vast reservoir’s water level has dropped more than 170ft (52m) since 1983, the same year the Colorado River flooded the dam’s spillways. Over-extraction, extreme heat and decreased snowmelt have burdened the Colorado River Basin and nearly 40 years later, Lake Mead is down to about 27% of its capacity.The forecast is grim – the Colorado River has endured a drought for two decades and officials project Lake Mead’s water levels will continue to fall, meaning that more discoveries will be unearthed.“There tends to be plenty of stuff that goes to the bottom and you just wait around,” Green said. “Ideally we’ll get more water and we won’t find more.”
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Geoff Bennett: The site is between 4,000 and 7,000 years old, and was first discovered in 1926. It's only been fully visible four times since then. Another shrinking reservoir in western Spain has unearthed an entire village frozen in time. 1992 the year it was flooded to create the reservoir.In Italy, the remains of an ancient bridge have appeared in Rome's river Tiber. It's believed to be from the reign of Emperor Nero. On the dwindling Danube River near the Serbian port of Prahovo, dozens of Nazi warships are seeing their first day light since they were sunk during World War II. Many of the warships still have ammunition and explosives on board.At the historic Chatsworth estate in England, the scorched lawn has revealed broad ornate patterns in a 17th century garden. The drought isn't just in Europe, China's Yangtze River is at its lowest level since records began there. The receding river has uncovered the base of a 700-year-old temple that normally appears to float on the water, and a trio of 600-year-old Buddhist statues that were once submerged.Closer to home, dry conditions across the western U.S. have pushed Nevada's Lake Mead to dangerously low levels and brought to light a host of items, everything from sunken boats to the more grim discovery of human remains.
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What's happening New radio telescope observations have brought a new lens on one of our universe's most beautiful stellar nurseries. Why it matters Having a clearer sense of what star-forming regions look like could help us understand how stars have formed since the dawn of time. And why they're still forming as you read this. About 170,000 light-years from where you're sitting -- which sounds terribly far but is actually relatively close on a cosmic scale -- lies an astronomical marvel. It's a glorious stellar nursery decorated with breathtaking swirls and iridescent streaks, illuminating space's void by violently birthing newborn stars.Since its genesis, in fact, experts believe this bundle of interstellar dust and gas has witnessed the dawn of more than 800,000 stars and protostars in our universe, half a million of which are hot, young and absolutely massive. Some are even thought to carry a mass of about 150 times that of our sun. You know, the stellar body that makes up something like 99.8% the mass of our entire solar system.And, thanks to new research published Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal, we Earthlings have the privilege of admiring this spectacle with a level of detail never experienced before. Better yet, upon peering through this new lens on the nebula, you might also catch a glimpse of the reasoning behind its very metal name. It's known as the Tarantula Nebula, and it looks just like a cosmic web.This zoomed-in view of the southern region of the Tarantula Nebula reveals some of the clumpy areas that help to make up the gas cloud. ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), T. Wong (U. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Painting stellar artworkBy harnessing a world-class radio telescope called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, scientists managed to reveal ultra-high-resolution depictions of the magnificent Tarantula Nebula. Here's how.Basically, in the team's newly released images, you'll see lava-like wisps and feathery lines come to life as a result of ALMA's super precise light emission measurements. The structure of this nebula -- also called 30 Doradus in reference to its catalog number in the list of objects of the constellation Dorado -- can be traced by detecting carbon monoxide gas content in the area scientists believe it's located. ALMA's emission measurements can do just that.And scientists are after these carbon monoxide remnants simply because they signify the location of cold clouds which are known to collapse and form baby stars. And baby stars form in stellar nurseries, like 30 Doradus. If scientists can figure out where those gas clouds are, they can get a pretty clear visualization of what the outline of 30 Doradus looks like. Think of it like working backwards. Shown here in composite, the red/orange millimeter-wavelength data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array stands out like stringlike filaments against optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope. ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), T. Wong (U. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Then the research team overlaid the gas cloud outline with a previous infrared image of the same area that shows hot cosmic gas, indicated by pinkish puffs, and bright speckles of stars adorning an indigo background of space -- the rest of the scene.Slap it all together, and we get the awesome composite image.But besides the artistic element of the team's star nursery cartography efforts, there's a practical reason for understanding what the Tarantula Nebula looks like. Beyond beauty lies discovery"What makes 30 Doradus unique is that it is close enough for us to study in detail how stars are forming, and yet its properties are similar to those found in very distant galaxies, when the universe was young," Guido de Marchi, a scientist at the European Space Agency and co-author of the paper, said in a statement."Thanks to 30 Doradus," de Marchi said, "we can study how stars used to form 10 billion years ago, when most stars were born."To begin working toward that end-goal, the team harnessed its new dataset to decode the way gravity affects stellar generation in 30 Doradus and how energy released from newly birthed stars slows the overall assembly line of star formation. Both of these bits are considered integral to dissecting star formation processes, and the latter one in particular is represented in the new image by some of the lit-up pieces we see.This zoomed-in view of the northern region of 30 Doradus reveals more filamentary structures that make up the gas cloud. ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), T. Wong (U. Illinois, Urbana-Champaign); S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF) "These fragments may be the remains of once-larger clouds that have been shredded by the enormous energy being released by young and massive stars, a process dubbed feedback," Tony Wong, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and lead author of the new research, said in a statement.The results were striking."We were expecting to find that the parts of the cloud closest to the young, massive stars would show the clearest signs of gravity being overwhelmed by feedback, and as a result, a lower rate of star formation," Wong said.A map of where 30 Doradus is located within the Dorado constellation. IAU/Sky & Telescope But Wong was surprised to see a different story when gazing at ALMA's new observations. "These observations confirmed that even in a region with extremely active feedback," he said, "gravity's presence is still strongly felt and star formation is likely to continue."In other words, nascent stars spitting up energy don't appear to mess up gravity around the stellar nursery or slow star formation. Star babies prevail. OK, unless you're an astronomer, this discovery might sound kind of nitty gritty. But zooming out, the team hopes that understanding the ins and outs of the Tarantula Nebula's workings could inform what might be considered one of the biggest mysteries of astronomy."Why didn't all of the available gas collapse in a huge fireworks show long ago?" Wong said. "What we're learning now can help us to shine a light on what is happening deep within molecular clouds so that we can better understand how galaxies sustain star formation over time."Plus, in the vein of curiosity and science, Wong said, "there is still much more to do with this fantastic dataset, and we are releasing it publicly to encourage other researchers to conduct new investigations."
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Image source, National Museums ScotlandImage caption, A pommel is a decorative piece attached to the bottom of a sword sometimes used as a counter-weightAn "exceptionally rare" gold sword pommel discovered by a metal detectorist near Stirling has been acquired by National Museums Scotland.The pommel, which is about 1,300 years old, was found in 2019 and was declared to the Scottish Treasure Trove unit.The gold decoration which would have sat at the top of a sword handle measures 5.5cm wide, weighs 25g and was valued at about £30,000.The find has been described as "hugely significant".Dr Alice Blackwell, senior curator of medieval archaeology and history at National Museums Scotland (NMS), said goldwork from this period was "virtually unknown" anywhere in the UK.She said it showed the spectacular skill and craftsmanship of the early medieval period.The pommel is thought to date from about 700 AD.The solid gold object is encrusted with garnets and intricate goldwork which feature religious motifs and fantastical creatures. The discovery was made at Blair Drummond towards the end of 2019 but NMS said that due to restrictions during the pandemic decisions about its acquisition were delayed.It was allocated to them on recommendation of the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel.Dr Blackwell said its archaeological value was due to what it told us about important cultural, political and artistic interactions in northern Britain at this time. She said its decoration combined elements from both Anglo-Saxon England and the kingdoms of Early Medieval Scotland. "Early medieval Scotland is a really interesting period," Dr Blackwell said."You have a number of culturally distinct kingdoms and the pommel's design has taken from the different cultures and melded them together "That melding of different cultural styles is known as "insular art" style, which was made famous by illuminated manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels.Dr Blackwood said this fusion of styles had made it hard to determine where exactly it was made and whom it may have belonged to.However, she said it potentially could have belonged to royalty due to the higher standard of goldwork the pommel had compared with other goldware found in this period. "In a way this is the start of the artefact's journey," Dr Blackwell said."A lot of research and work is still to be done to uncover what stories it can tells us about the political and cultural landscape of Northern Britain at this time."
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Image source, University of ReadingImage caption, The site excavated lies next to Cookham's Holy Trinity ChurchArchaeologists have unearthed a long-forgotten trading hub that researchers say would have enjoyed comparable status to London in the Middle Ages. The find on the banks of the Thames in Cookham, Berkshire, has been hailed as "a once in a generation discovery" by the University of Reading.It includes infrastructure that suggested the area was used extensively for importing and exporting goods. The university said the site was abandoned in the late 9th Century. Image source, University of ReadingImage caption, University students and staff spent four weeks excavating the siteArchaeologists began work on the land next to the Holy Trinity Church after evidence pointed to it being the site of a "lost" 8th Century monastery. The excavation team said what it went on to find "ranks alongside the most extensively preserved early medieval monastic sites ever investigated in Britain".They found evidence of a waterside loading area, workshops for industrial activities like metalworking, and bread ovens to feed the local population.The university said the area "could have enjoyed similarly important status as a trade and production centre to larger towns like London and Southampton".Image caption, Archaeologist Gabor Thomas said the discoveries would lead to a better understanding of daily life at the monasteryGabor Thomas, the excavation's lead archaeologist, said: "This is a once in a generation archaeological discovery. "We have not just rediscovered the location of this monastery but shown that it's in a remarkable state of preservation."We have uncovered a densely occupied riverside trading and production zone, complete with streets and loading areas. "This level of infrastructure and planning is surprising and compares with larger trading and production sites known as 'wics' that were the only towns of the period."Image source, University of ReadingImage caption, The excavation was part of a summer field school project run by the universityHe said Cookham's population would have been considerably smaller than London but similarities in the way the monastery was organised reflected "its importance as a place of trade and production on the River Thames"."The discoveries at Cookham will enable us to build a detailed picture of daily life within a monastery of this period, including Cookham's role as an economic hub for the Middle Thames region," he added. The monastery is believed to have thrived in the 8th and early 9th centuries, reaching its peak under the control of powerful Anglo-Saxon queen Cynethryth.Cynethryth was the only Anglo-Saxon queen known to have been depicted on a coin and had been married to King Offa, who ruled one of the era's main kingdoms, Mercia, until his death in 796 AD. Follow BBC South on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Send your story ideas to south.newsonline@bbc.co.uk.Related Internet LinksThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
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For archaeologists, it’s the underwater find that keeps on giving. A Roman-era cargo ship, discovered by chance off the Greek island of Antikythera more than 120 years ago and regarded as the world’s richest ancient shipwreck, has yielded yet more treasures in the most recent explorations of it, including the missing head of a statue of the demigod Hercules.“In 1900, [sponge divers] pulled out the statue of Hercules [from the sea] and now in all probably we’ve found its head,” said Prof Lorenz Baumer, the classical archaeologist who is overseeing the underwater mission with the University of Geneva.“It’s a most impressive marble piece,” he said, describing characteristics that bore all the hallmarks of one of the great heroic figures of Greek and Roman mythology. “It is twice lifesize, has a big beard, a very particular face and short hair. There is no doubt it is Hercules.”The head features short curled hair and a big beard.The discovery of the sculpture – along with the plinth of another marble statue, human teeth and parts of the ship’s equipment – had been made possible by the removal of three 8.5-tontonne boulders that had partially covered the wreck at the bottom of the sea bed.For three weeks the research team of marine archaeologists and specially trained divers – working at depths of 50 metres – had access to an area never previously explored.“It’s so deep they can only be down there for 30 minutes,” said Baumer. “But now we have an idea of what has been hiding under those rocks … each find helps us piece together more context in our understanding of the ship, its cargo, the crew and where they were from.”A team of divers worked at depths of 50 metres to recover the items. Photograph: Nikos Giannoulakis/PRThe two teeth were embedded in encrusted marine deposits that had accrued on the 2,000-year-old shipwreck. Genetic and isotopic analysis of the remains could prove groundbreaking in shedding light on the people who sailed the ship.The boat, which is thought to have sunk in a storm off the tiny island of Antikythera within the first 50 years of the first century BC, was retrieved by sponge divers in 1901. Most famous among its cargo of giant marble and bronze statues, ceramics and glassware was a mysterious geared device used to map the motions of the sun, moon and planets, which has been described by scientists as the world’s first analog computer.Why the instrument, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, was aboard a vessel increasingly believed to be a merchant ship travelling from the eastern Mediterranean to Rome remains unknown.Sign up to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BSTFurther expeditions are expected to reveal further secrets in the seabed off the tiny isle. “The ship could have gone down anywhere but, that said, every discovery puts us on the map and is exciting,” said Stratos Charchalakis, the mayor of Kythira, under whose jurisdiction the Aegean outpost falls.“The truth is that for an island with just 30 inhabitants, the wreck has had a huge social and economic impact. It has helped keep its shops and people going.”Prof Baumer said the team had “an idea” of what future investigations may bring.“You never know what archaeology will deliver tomorrow, but what we do know is that the Antikythera wreck is an extremely rich site, the richest in the ancient world.”
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It is believed to be the Welsh Atlantis, a lost land lying below the water at Cardigan Bay. For at least 800 years, the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod has been the subject of myth, but the evidence has been scant.Now, a medieval map depicting two islands off the Ceredigion coast, provides some proof that the legend may be rooted in historical fact, according to a BBC report.The discovery has been made by Simon Haslett, honorary professor of physical geography at Swansea University, and David Willis, Jesus Professor of Celtic at the University of Oxford.Haslett, who went in search of lost islands in Cardigan Bay while he was a visiting fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, explained that the two islands are clearly marked on the Gough map, held in the collections of the university’s Bodleian library.The document is believed to be the earliest surviving complete map of the British Isles, dating from as early as the mid-13th century. The pair have published their findings in the journal Atlantic Geoscience.Two islands are depicted, each about a quarter the size of Anglesey. One island is offshore between Aberystwyth and Aberdyfi and the other farther north towards Barmouth, Gwynedd.Haslett told the BBC: “The Gough map is extraordinarily accurate considering the surveying tools they would have had at their disposal at that time.“The two islands are clearly marked and may corroborate contemporary accounts of a lost land mentioned in the Black Book of Carmarthen.”Cardiff University’s Welsh folklore expert, Dr Juliette Wood – who was not involved in this research – told the BBC the Black Book’s account was key to anchoring the story in Welsh myth.“The Gough map may have its origins around 1280; shortly before that, around 1250, you have the Black Book of Carmarthen.Drawing on previous surveys of the bay and understanding of the advance and retreat of glaciers and silt since the last ice age about 10,000 years ago, Haslett and Willis were able to suggest how the islands may have come into existence and then disappeared again.Haslett said: “I think the evidence for the islands, and possibly therefore the legends connected with them, is in two strands.“Firstly, coordinates recorded by the Roman cartographer Ptolemy suggest that the coastline at the time may have been some eight miles (13km) further west than it is today.“And, secondly, the evidence presented by the Gough map for the existence of two islands in Cardigan Bay.He added that folk legends of being able to walk between lands now separated by sea could be a folk memory stemming from rising sea levels after the last ice age.“However, legends of sudden inundation, such as in the case of Cantre’r Gwaelod, might be more likely to be recalling sea floods and erosion, either by storms or tsunami, that may have forced the population to abandon living along such vulnerable coasts.”Wood added: “People, now as much as then, want to find a way of explaining things which seem simply unexplainable, especially during tough times.”“The romanticists among the Celtic population want to find meaning and a belief system to make sense of the current hardships.”Haslett, however, warned that his findings could have more bearing on the future than the past.“These processes didn’t happen just once, they’re still ongoing.”“With rising sea levels and more intense storms it’s been suggested that people living around Cardigan Bay could become some of Britain’s first climate change refugees, within our lifetimes.”
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Adapted from the book The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer, by Charles Graeber.Chance favors the prepared mind. —Louis PasteurJames Allison looks like a cross between Jerry Garcia and Ben Franklin, and he’s a bit of both, an iconoclastic scientist and musician known for good times and great achievements. He also doesn’t always answer his phone, especially when the call arrives at 5 am, from an unfamiliar number.So when the Nobel Prize committee tried to reach Allison a few weeks ago to inform him he’d been awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in medicine, Allison ignored the call. Finally, at 5:30 am, Allison’s son dialed in on a familiar number to deliver the news. The calls have not stopped since.Allison’s breakthrough was the discovery of a sort of secret handshake that cancer uses to evade the immune system, and a means to block that handshake—what the Nobel committee hailed as “a landmark in our fight against cancer,” which has “revolutionized cancer treatment, fundamentally changing the way we view how cancer can be managed.” (Allison’s co-recipient was Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University.) Advances in cancer typically come in 50-year increments; the science that Allison and Honjo helped advance, cancer immunotherapy, has made a generational leap seemingly overnight.Adapted from The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer, by Charles Graeber. Buy on Amazon.
Twelve PublishingUntil very recently we’ve had three main methods for treating cancer. We’ve had surgery for at least 3,000 years. We added radiation therapy in 1896. Then in 1946, chemical warfare research led to the use of a mustard gas derivative to kill cancer cells. Those poisons were the foundation for chemotherapy.These “cut, burn, and poison” techniques are currently estimated to be able to cure cancer in about half of the people who develop the disease. And that’s remarkable, a true medical accomplishment. But that leaves the other half of cancer patients. Last year, in the United States alone, that translated to nearly 600,000 people who died of the disease.The fight was never fair. We’ve been pitting simple drugs against creative, mutating versions of our own cells, trying to kill the bad ones while sparing the good ones, and making ourselves sick in the process. And we’ve been doing that for a very long time.But now we have added a new and very different approach—one that doesn’t act directly on cancer, but rather acts on the immune system. And that’s the breakthrough.The immune system has evolved over 500 million years into a personalized and highly effective natural defense against disease. It is a complex biology with a seemingly simple mission: to find and destroy anything that’s not supposed to be in our bodies.Hundreds of millions of immune cells circulate throughout the body, searching out and destroying invaders that make us sick and body cells that have become infected, have mutated, or have become defective—cells like cancer.Which raises the question: Why doesn’t the immune system fight cancer already, the way it fights even the common cold?For more than 100 years, medical researchers puzzled over that question. Most concluded that the immune system and cancer simply had nothing to say to each other. The argument was that since cancer is a normal body cell gone rogue, it is too much a part of us to ever trigger an immune response. Cancer immunotherapy was condemned as a quaint if simplistic idea based on high hopes and bad science. But despite the mounting mockery of the larger scientific community and dwindling research funds, a handful of immunotherapy researchers continued to believe—and continued searching, decade after decade, for the missing piece of the cancer immunity puzzle, a factor that prevented the immune system from recognizing and attacking cancer cells.The stakes could not have been higher. If such a missing piece could be found, it would radically reshape our scientific understanding of both ourselves and disease and possibly revolutionize medicine on a scale not seen since the invention of vaccines. It might allow us to finally unleash our immune system, enabling it to recognize and attack cancer the way it does other diseases. It might even pave a new road to the cure. For the tens of millions more diagnosed with cancer each year, the race to find the missing piece of the cancer-immunity puzzle was literally a matter of life and death.But despite the occasional glimmer in the darkness, generations of researchers had tried and failed to find this missing factor. Nobody could even say for certain that such a such a piece existed. And certainly nobody would have guessed that it would be discovered by a hard-living, harmonica-playing Texan who hadn’t even been looking for it.The stretch between 1965 and 1973 were peak years if you were young and musical in Austin, when the little university town was just beginning its metamorphosis into the tech and freak capital of a cowboy state—Texas enough to two-step, hippie enough to do it stoned, and smart enough to work the newly relocated tech mills of Texas Instruments, Motorola, and IBM. Jim Allison fit right in.Allison initially thought he would go to medical school but soon realized he was more interested in research and set out to earn a PhD in biochemistry.
Courtesy of Jim AllisonHe had outgrown his hometown of Alice, Texas, when the local high school failed to offer an advanced biology class that dared mention Charles Darwin. He turned to correspondence courses from the University of Texas at Austin. and after graduation he enrolled full-time, a 17-year-old bound to be a country doctor like his dad. Back then, the 2018 Nobel Prize in medicine wasn’t even a twinkle in the young Texan’s eye.If you sold beer in Austin and had a surface flat enough to put a bar stool on, you were a music club, and Jim Allison played the blues harp well enough that he was in demand. He could sit in at the honky-tonks in town or play for Lone Stars in Luckenbach, where the new breed of outlaw country players like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings roamed the earth. Either way it was a lot of fun; premed, meanwhile, wasn’t proving to be that interesting. Allison wasn’t drawn to memorizing what others had found out. He wanted to arm himself with skills to do the finding himself, so in 1965 he switched tracks and traded memorization for a laboratory, working with enzymes toward a biochemistry PhD.Enzymes are natural organic chemicals that make stuff happen. The enzymes Allison was studying happened to break down a chemical that fueled a type of mouse leukemia; inject a mouse with this specific enzyme and the enzyme destroyed the cancer fuel. His goal was to figure out the biochemistry of how those enzymes did their job.In the experiment, once the enzyme eventually robbed the tumor of all its fuel, the tumor went necrotic and “disappeared.” Allison wanted to know where it went. Allison says. His curiosity led him to his first glimpse of a biology he would eventually redefine, and the first tenuous steps toward a generational breakthrough in the war against cancer.Allison knew the disease intimately. He’d been just a kid when he lost his mom to it, had held her hand as she went, not even knowing what the disease was or why she had burns, only knowing she was gone. He’d lose most of his family that way eventually, and though he’d never say it out loud, and wouldn’t even much voice it to himself, in the back of his mind killing cancer would always be the one potential, practical outcome of his otherwise pure scientific research. Allison would follow his curiosity like a north star, wandering for decades, but heading home all the while.The dead tumors in his mouse cages hadn’t just disappeared by magic, of course—it was biology. The human body sheds old, dead cells (a mass roughly equal to our body weight each year) the way trees shed leaves, and for essentially the same reason. The process (called “apoptosis,” from the Greek for “to fall away”) allows fresh daughter cells to take their place. The spring cleaning is carried out by hungry, blobby Pac-Man cells in our blood—part of a 500 million-year-old personal defense force that Allison’s textbooks called the innate immune system.Today, aspects of our immune system still remain a mystery, but when Allison began his studies it hadn’t really even been explored, a sort of deep-ocean ecosystem in the human body. “New” aspects of the immune system, like the hunter-killer T-cells, were barely on the radar yet (Allison’ s college professor thought they were “too weird” evolutionarily to really exist). But some of the older aspects of the defenses in our bloodstream had been worked out, especially those of the innate immune system, which works much the same in sea sponges as it does in humans.The ancient players of the innate immune system are charismatic and deceptively straightforward. They also happen to be big enough to be seen wiggling and eating under the microscope. That includes amoeba-like cells adept at squeezing between body cells and patrolling our perimeter (inside and out, we have a surface larger than a doubles tennis court), looking for what shouldn’t be there and killing it.Some of the innate immune cells are small, blobby smart patrollers called dendritic cells. Others are similar-looking but larger blobby characters called macrophages (literally, “big eaters”). Most of what they eat are those retired body cells—normal cells that have hit their expiration date and politely self-destructed, through apoptosis. They also eat bad guys.Macrophages have an innate ability to recognize simple invaders. Most are the usual suspects of disease—the bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses that evolved right alongside us for millennia. These foreign, or “non-self,” cells are recognizable as foreign because they look different—that is, the fingerprint of chemical arrangements of proteins on their surfaces is different. Macrophages look for anything they recognize as foreign, then grab and gobble it.From his reading in the library, Allison knew that researchers had found these blobby amoeba-like cells to be more than just garbagemen; they were also frontline reporters bringing back updates from the constant battle against disease. When they found something interesting and foreign, they carried pieces of those strange, non-self proteins (or “antigens”) back to the lymph nodes, to show them around like wanted posters. (Lymph nodes are like Rick’s in Casablanca. Good guys, bad guys, reporters and soldiers, macrophages, dendritic cells, T and B cells, and even diseased cells, everyone goes to Rick’s.) The information triggered other cells in the adaptive immune system to ramp up into a massive clone army in specific response.Allison knew that was basically how vaccines worked—by presenting the body with dead samples of a disease that it might encounter later. This introduction triggers the immune system to build up forces against anything that looks like that sample. Then later, if the live disease does show up, an immune army will be waiting for it.Now, Allison wondered if something like that was happening in his mouse cages, tooHe’d killed the tumor. The mouse macrophages were gobbling up the mutant cells and clearing them out. In the process, they were surely carrying back those distinctive mutant proteins and showing them to the killer cells of the adaptive immune system. And wasn’t that sorta how a vaccine worked?So, Allison wondered, did that mean his experiment had, in a roundabout way, vaccinated his mice against this specific form of blood cancer? Were they now “immune” to this cancer?“Just for the hell of it, I was setting up another experiment, and I decided that since I had these mice that were cured—who were just sitting there, eating—I would inject them with the tumor again, but not treat them with the enzyme this time, and see what happened,” Allison remembers. He hadn’t asked permission, he didn’t write a protocol, nothing. He simply shot from the hip. And what happened was ... nothing.“They didn’t get tumors,” Allison says. “I went back and injected them with 10 times as much, and they still didn’t get tumors. I injected them with another five times more, and they still didn’t get tumors! Something was happening here,” Allison says. “Something amazing!”“It was great,” Allison says of his time as a researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center outside of Houston. “The camaraderie—nobody expected any payback for anything. They did it because it's what you did, you know? It was heaven.”
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center/Courtesy of Jim AllisonAs a casual one-off, the experiment hadn’t really proved anything. (“People talked about doing it in humans, you know, just taking your own tumor and mashing it up somehow and injecting it back, but it doesn’t really work that easily.”) But it had provided Allison his first glimpse of the mystery and potential of the immune system and its most recently discovered component, the T cell. His professor was only half wrong—they did exist, but they were, in fact, weird. Good weird, Allison thought. They were killers, some of them, but there were other types that “helped” complex immune responses, making it possible to somehow be prepared to recognize and kill diseases that the human body had never encountered before. And, really, there was no telling how much we didn’t yet know.Simply put, this was the most interesting thing Jim Allison had ever come across. So he decided to switch tracks, again, and study that.By 1973, after eight years spent getting his BA, MS, and PhD in Austin, Allison wanted to stretch his legs and find somewhere new and “first-rate” for his immunology research, and that took him 1,300 miles west into California and a postdoc program at the prestigious Scripps Institute. He was married now, doing lab work by day and playing harmonica with a country-western band a couple nights a week. “Our band got pretty famous in what was called the North County,” Allison says. “People think it’s all like LA or something, but that part of California’s pretty redneck.”Fights were brief but frequent. “Usually, it'd start because one cowboy that's doing a two-step would swing too widely and bump into a guy, and the guy would say, ‘Don't do that again.’ But, that's just the way the guy danced, you know? He danced big. So it happened again. Pretty soon there’s beer and fists everywhere.”Allison was the only one in the band with a day job, but playing with full-time musicians put him quickly into the local music scene. Plus, Allison was the guy with the VW microbus. “So we’d go to these parties. There was one up the road in Del Mar—we walk in, I don’t know anyone. It was a pretty magnificent party by the way,” Allison says, “with Waylon Jennings and Tammy Wynette doing a few songs each, then Willie Nelson—turns out it was a celebration of his Red-Headed Stranger album.” The two Texans got to talking and partying, and next thing Allison’s got Willie and some of his band in the back of the microbus, on the way to open-mic night at the Stingray.“Man, they sold a lot of beer that night,” Allison says. Willie had taken the mic, asking, “You all mind if I stand in and play a few?” then played for four hours. “I never had to pay for another one in that bar again,” Allison says. Afterward he took the band back to the hotel. “Yeah, that was good,” Allison says. “And somehow we managed to avoid getting arrested.”Meanwhile, Scripps wasn’t really working out the way he’d imagined. “I was purifying proteins and sequencing them and all this stuff, working on the key molecules of the immune system,” he says, “but it really wasn't immunology.” Allison was interested in systems. “But we were discouraged from what the older guys called, you know, ‘model building.’ Like, ‘Don't build models, just do your work. Don't think.’ Yeah. It was very frustrating. I figured, if this is what science is, I don’t like it.” The cutting edge of cancer therapy might look very different had Allison quit the field right there. Instead, he went home and got lucky.Back in Texas, the MD Anderson Cancer Center was opening a new outpost lab near the town of Smithville. “Yeah, it was pretty weird.” Allison says. “Some economic stimulus thing from the governor, on donated land and with state money. And it was in the middle of an 18-acre state park. They’d just set up some lab buildings and hired six faculty members to go out there.”The idea was to fund a team to study carcinogenesis—how cancer starts. But in reality, Allison soon discovered, they pretty much had free reign.“Yeah, that was the weird thing at the time, because after they started this thing, the MD Anderson president changed. The new guy came in and said, "What do you do? What the hell is that?" You know? So they kind of just forgot about us and pretty much left us alone.”This was Allison’s kind of place. His colleagues were bright, enthusiastic scientists his own age—the oldest were in their thirties—who worked late, helped each other with their experiments, kept beer in the lab for ones that ran overnight, and pooled intellectual resources without ego or credit getting in the way. “It was great,” Allison says. “The camaraderie—nobody expected any payback for anything. They did it because it's what you did, you know? It was heaven.”The setup was sweetened by a total lack of teaching or administrative responsibilities, a Norton Commando 850 motorcycle, and enough NIH and NCI grant money to pursue what Allison was really interested in—the T cell.“It was a fantastic time in science because immunology had just been this poorly understood field,” he says. “I mean, everybody knew we had an immune system, because there were vaccines. But nobody knew much about the details of anything.”One of the things nobody knew was how a T cell recognized a sick cell in the first place. By now it was understood that T cells killed off normal body cells that had become sick or infected. But exactly how a T cell “saw” that sick body cell, how it recognized the distinctively foreign sick cell proteins (or “antigens”) on the cell’s surface, was still a stone-cold mystery. Allison read every academic paper he could find on the topic, then read the papers cited in them.There were plenty of theories about how a T cell recognized antigens. Most assumed that each T cell had a unique type of receptor (a specific arrangement of proteins extending from the cell surface) that recognized a specific antigen expressed by a sick cell, homing in and fitting something like a key into a lock.That was a reasonable theory, but nobody had actually found one of the receptors. If they existed, there should be a lot of them, scattered among all the yet-uncounted proteins that stuck out from the T-cell surface (there are so many that new ones are given numbers, like newly identified stars). Those “receptor” proteins would be molecules built in some sort of double-chain-like configuration. Several labs were convinced that it would look just like it did on another denizen of the adaptive immune system that “sees” antigens, the B cells.Which, Allison thought, was stupid.“People from Harvard and Johns Hopkins and Yale and from Stanford were already claiming they had a molecule that was the T cell receptor,” Allison says. “Most of them, because B cells make antibodies, figured that in T cells the receptor had to be an antibody-like thing, too.”Whatever it looked like, if you could find it, in theory you could manipulate it. Control the T-cell receptor and you might control what the immune system’s killing machine targeted. The result could have massive implications for humanity, and a massive name—and maybe even a Nobel Prize—for whoever found it.B cells and T cells are both part of the adaptive immune system. They look so similar that they cannot be distinguished under an optical microscope—part of the reason they’d gone undiscovered for so long. But B and T cells would turn out to be distinct types of immune cells, which see and attack foreign or non-self cells in very distinct ways.Allison didn’t believe that T cells were just a cell-killing version of B cells, a sort of killer-B. He believed that if T cells existed (they did) and were different from B cells (they were), then those differences were the point. The T cell wasn’t just more of the same—it was a unique cell type that did a unique job, and accomplished it in a unique way, through a unique biology.The race to clone the T-cell receptor protein gene was intense. "I mean, everybody realized there was a Nobel Prize at the end of it," Allison says. "Everybody was scrambling, man.”
Scott Dalton“We didn't have a library to speak of in Smithville,” Allison remembers, but he had access to an excellent library down the road, thanks to having finagled an adjunct appointment with the main MD Anderson campus in Houston and a newly restored ’54 Mercedes for the back-and-forth. “I'd go and Xerox big stacks of shit and then read it,” he says. He was looking to better understand the T cell receptor. But what Allison was reading in the academic journals didn’t really make sense to him.“Yeah, when that happens, the fact that it doesn't make sense is either their fault or your fault,” Allison laughs. Naturally, his first assumption was that it was his fault. “I'd think, ‘I'm an idiot. I can't understand this.’” Allison says. “Then, I thought, ‘No, they're idiots. They don't understand what they're talking about!’” Then he’d drive back out to the library and copy another stack.All the reading and wondering came together one night while Allison was in Houston sitting in on a lecture by a visiting Ivy League immune researcher. Something just clicked. “I said, 'I think I know a shortcut to finding the T-Cell receptor.'"Suddenly it seemed so obvious: If Allision could rig up a way to compare B cells and T cells, devise a lab experiment that put one against the other and let their redundant surface proteins cancel each other out, the receptor should be the molecule that didn’t cancel out. Essentially, he was looking for a needle in a haystack, and his idea was to set fire to the haystack and sift the ashes—or as Allison puts it, “pick it out of the weeds.” Whatever was left would be the needle he was looking for.He gunned the Merc back to the Smithville lab and got to work. The idea was relatively simple, but the steps were numerous, and Allison had to make all the assays himself, which was tedious work. “The assays were so crude,” Allison says. “The end point involved holding a piece of film up and trying to guess which circle was bigger out of 100, you know? Then doing that with maybe 1,000 different films. People laughed at us. I’m really surprised that it worked.”And yet, it did work. “It was a success, the very first time,” he says. “So now I’ve got a thing that’s on T cells but not on B cells, not on any other cells— so, that’s gotta be the T-cell receptor!”He showed that the receptor was a two-chain structure—an alpha and a beta chain, and he wrote it up in a paper.Allison was hoping to be published by one of the leading peer-reviewed research journals. But nobody at Cell or Nature or any of the A-list, peer-reviewed journals was willing to publish the findings of this junior academic from Smithville, Texas. “Finally, I ended up publishing the results in a new journal called The Journal of Immunology.” It wasn’t Science or the New England Journal of Medicine, but it was in print, and in the world.“At the end of the paper, I said, ‘This might be the cell antigen receptor, and here are the reasons why I think that it is the T-cell antigen receptor,’ and I just listed it out, all the reasons.” It was a bold announcement regarding the biggest topic in immunology. “And nobody noticed it,” Allison says. “Except in one lab.”That lab was headed by eminent biologist Philippa “Pippa” Marrack at UC San Diego. Her lab (shared with her husband, John Kappler) hadn’t identified the T-cell receptor yet, but they had a scientific technique that could verify if Allison’s results were correct. Marrack reproduced Allison’s experiment and got an exact hit on the protein Allison had identified—and only on that protein. It was a shock, especially coming out of a lab Marrack had never heard of. Allison says she called and told him she was organizing a Gordon Conference—elite, closed-door gatherings something like the Davos of science. She invited him to present at the meeting; Allison had a sense he was being invited into the big leagues.The Gordon meeting helped put the brash young scientist on the academic map and won him an appointment as a visiting professor at Stanford University. It also gave him license to pursue the next intellectual milestone. Now that the T-cell antigen receptor had been identified and its two-chain molecular structure had been described, the race was on for the greater prize: the blueprints for those proteins, as encoded in genes in the T-cell DNA.“At that point, people had just figured out how you could work with DNA and clone genes, so now, everybody was trying to clone this T-cell receptor protein gene,” Allison says. “It had been the holy grail of immunology for 20, 25 years, and nobody had solved it. There was this huge, ugly race for about three or four years. I mean, everybody realized there was a Nobel Prize at the end of it. Everybody was scrambling, man.” The experience provided a valuable lesson to the young immunologist. “I mean, it got ugly. Ugly. But I met some really good people there too, some fine people,” Allison says. “So I sorta learned who was who.”“Anyway, we cloned a lot of stuff,” Allison says. “But none of it was right.” Other teams wound up decoding the T-cell receptor genes. “Yeah. Anyway, we failed. A guy named Mark Davis at Stanford actually cloned the beta chain gene. Then, later on, his lab and his wife cloned the alpha chain gene. In the meantime, though, I was in Irv Weissman's lab and I got a call one day to give a seminar at Berkeley. Berkeley, you know; it was like, ‘Wow.’“It was kind of controversial because I hadn’t been at the big labs,” Allison says. “I hadn’t been at Harvard. I lacked the pedigree of most faculty at places like Berkeley.” Which was why it blew his mind two weeks later when Berkeley offered him a full-time job, covered by a healthy grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Allison would have a lab and postdoc salaries, and he could research whatever he wanted. He didn’t need to teach, and the money might last forever with no strings. His only obligation was to occasionally give a presentation on his progress.“Then when you came up for review, it was pretty bad,” Allison says. “They would have 50 of the top scientists in the world in the room. You would give a 25-minute talk, and it was 25 exactly. When minute 25 came, it was ‘Stop. Questions?’ It was really frightening. Literally, sometimes the night before I’d just be in the bathroom throwing up.”Much had been discovered about T cells in the decade since their discovery. Now it was widely accepted that there were different kinds of T cells, with different specialties for coordinating an immune response against disease. Some “helped” immune response by sending out chemical instructions, via cytokines, like a quarterback calling plays. Others, the killer T cells, killed infected cells one-on-one—usually by chemically instructing those cells to commit suicide.These processes, and more, were set in motion only when a T cell was “activated.” Activation is the beginning of the adaptive immune response to disease; until then, the T cells are just floating around and waiting. So what activated T cells? What made them start mobilizing against disease?“We thought that the T-cell antigen receptor was the ignition switch,” Allison says. That was the natural assumption.It was only after they’d identified the T-cell receptor that they realized, nope, that wasn’t quite right either. They could get the T-cell receptor to “see” the foreign antigen of a sick cell; they clicked together like lock and key. They could make that fit. But it wasn’t enough to turn on a T cell. It wasn’t the “go” signal that ignited the immune response.After all the work that had gone into decoding the T-cell receptor, this might have been a frustrating development; instead, it only deepened the mystery. “When I learned that, I said, ‘Oh, wow, this is cool. T cells are even more complex,’ you know?” Allison remembers. “It just added to the puzzle. It made it more fun.”If keying the T-cell receptor with the corresponding antigen wasn’t the only signal needed to turn on a T cell, that meant there had to be another molecule, maybe several, required to activate the T cell, what’s known as “co-stimulation.” Maybe the T cell required two signals—like the two keys for a safe deposit box, or how, when starting a car you need to key the ignition and also press the gas pedal to make it go. But where was the T cell’s gas pedal? Three short years later, they found it, another molecule on the T-cell surface called CD28. (CD stands for “cluster of differentiation,” which is sort of like calling it “a thing that’s clearly different from the other similar things around it”.)CD28 was definitely a second signal required for activating T cells; that is, they’d discovered that T cells could not activate without it. That was an important discovery, but as Allison and other researchers quickly realized, it also wasn’t that simple. Presenting the right antigen key to the T-cell receptor and co-stimulating CD28 did start up the T cell, but when they did that in mice models, the T cell often just stalled out. It was as if they’d found the key to the ignition and the gas pedal, but a third signal was still necessary to make the T cell go. So now they went hunting for that.One of Allison’s postdoctoral students, Matthew “Max” Krummel, compared the structure of the protein CD28 to other molecules, looking for something similar in a sort of computerized book of molecule mug shots—“the gene bank, that’s what we called it at the time,” Allison says. The idea was that if you found a molecule that looked similar, maybe it did similar things and was related, evolutionarily.Krummel soon found another molecule with a close family resemblance to the part of CD28 that stuck out of the cell, the receptor part. The molecule had recently been identified, named, and numbered. It was the fourth cytotoxic (cell-killer) T-immune cell (lymphocyte) identified in the batch, so Pierre Goldstein, the researcher who’d found it, called it cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein #4— or CTLA-4 for short. (A few decades later, these letters would be on the license plate of Allison’s convertible Porsche.)Early on, Allison read every scientific paper he could find on T-cell receptors. “I'd think, ‘I'm an idiot. I can't understand this.’” he says. “Then, I thought, ‘No, they're idiots. They don't understand what they're talking about!’”
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center/Courtesy of Jim AllisonMeanwhile, researchers Jeffrey Ledbetter and Peter Linsley were working on the same third-signal problem at the Bristol-Myers Squibb research campus in Seattle. Finding the protein signal was one thing, but the point was understanding what it did. Blocking a signal (with an antibody that binds to it and basically prevents it from being used, like crazy-gluing a keyhole) and observing the result is a common method. “Linsley made an antibody to block CTLA-4,” Allison recalls. The group quickly published a paper, concluding that CTLA-4 was a third “go” signal, another gas pedal on the T cell that had to be activated for immune response.Having another researcher beat them to the anti-CTLA-4 antibody was disappointing. It was especially disheartening to Krummel, who had just spent three years working on the antibody as his intended thesis project. But Allison decided to proceed with more CTLA-4 experiments anyway. There was always more to learn—and besides, Allison wasn’t totally convinced that Linsley et al. had really solved the T-cell activation mystery. “I knew there were two ways you can get something to go faster,” Allison says. “One is to press on the gas pedal. The other is to take off the brake.”Allison says Linsley’s group had only devised experiments consistent with CTLA-4 being another “go” signal, essentially a second CD28. “I said, ‘Let’s do the experiments consistent with CTLA-4 giving an off signal.’ Sure enough, that’s what we found out. CTLA-4 was an off signal.”Jim Allison is a master of the Texas-sized understatement. Behind his simple s
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The sun has set on the iconic Arecibo telescope. Since 1963, this behemoth radio telescope in Puerto Rico has observed everything from space rocks whizzing past Earth to mysterious blasts of radio waves from distant galaxies. But on December 1, the 900-metric-ton platform of scientific instruments above the dish came crashing down, demolishing the telescope and spelling the end of Arecibo’s observing days. Arecibo has made too many discoveries to include in a Top 10 list, so some of its greatest hits didn’t make the cut — like a strange class of stars that appear to turn on and off (SN: 1/6/17), and ingredients for life in a distant galaxy. But in honor of Arecibo’s 57-year tenure as one of the world’s premier observatories, here are 10 of the telescope’s coolest accomplishments, presented in roughly reverse order of coolness. 10. Clocking the Crab Nebula pulsar Astronomers originally thought that apparently blinking stars called pulsars, discovered in 1967, might be pulsating white dwarf stars (SN: 4/27/68). But in 1968, Arecibo saw the pulsar at the center of the Crab Nebula flashing every 33 milliseconds — faster than white dwarfs can pulsate. (SN: 12/7/68). That discovery strengthened the idea that pulsars are actually rapidly spinning neutron stars, stellar corpses that sweep beams of radio waves around in space like celestial lighthouses (SN: 1/3/20). Arecibo observations of the frequency of radio flashes from the pulsar at the center of the Crab Nebula (red star in the middle) gave support to the idea that pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars.Optical: NASA, HST, ASU, J. Hester et al.; X-ray: NASA, CXC, ASU, J. Hester et al. 9. Reborn pulsars In 1982, Arecibo clocked a pulsar, dubbed PSR 1937+21, flashing every 1.6 milliseconds, unseating the Crab Nebula neutron star as the fastest known pulsar (SN: 12/4/82). That find was puzzling at first because PSR 1937+21 is older than the Crab Nebula pulsar, and pulsars were thought to rotate more slowly with age. Then, astronomers realized that old pulsars can “spin-up” by siphoning mass from a companion star, and flash every one to 10 milliseconds. The NANOGrav project now uses such rapid-fire radio beacons as extremely precise cosmic clocks to search for the ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves (SN: 2/11/16). Pulsars typically rotate more slowly as they age. But data from Arecibo showed that pulsars can ‘spin-up’ to rotate hundreds of times per second by siphoning material off a neighboring star (as seen in this artist’s impression; pulsar in blue).ESA, Francesco Ferraro/Bologna Astronomical Observatory 8. Ice on Mercury Mercury seems like it would be an unlikely place to find water ice because the planet is so close to the sun. But Arecibo observations in the early 1990s hinted that ice lurked in permanently shadowed craters at Mercury’s poles (SN: 11/9/91). NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft later confirmed those observations (SN: 11/30/12). Finding ice on Mercury raised the question of whether ice might exist in shadowed craters on the moon, too — and recent spacecraft observations indicate that it does (SN: 5/9/16). Images of Mercury taken by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft in 2011 and 2012 confirmed that hints of water ice (yellow) seen on the planet by Arecibo reside in shadowy regions at Mercury’s poles (north pole, shown; two craters labeled).NASA, JHUAPL, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Arecibo Observatory 7. Unveiling Venus Venus is shrouded in a thick layer of clouds, but Arecibo’s radar beams could cut through that haze and bounce off of the rocky planet’s surface, allowing researchers to map the terrain. In the 1970s, Arecibo’s radar vision got the first large-scale views of Venus’ surface (SN: 11/3/79). Its radar images revealed evidence of past tectonic and volcanic activity on the planet, such as ridges and valleys (SN: 4/22/89) and ancient lava flows (SN: 9/18/76). 6. Mercury’s revolution In 1965, Arecibo radar measurements revealed that Mercury spins on its axis once every 59 days, rather than every 88 days (SN: 5/1/65). That observation cleared up a long-standing mystery about the planet’s temperature. If Mercury had turned on its axis once every 88 days, as previously thought, then the same side of the planet would always face the sun. That’s because it also takes 88 days for the planet to complete one orbit around the sun. As a result, that side would be much hotter than the planet’s dark side. The 59-day rotation better matched the observation that Mercury’s temperature is fairly even across its surface. Arecibo’s early radar observations measured the 59-day rotation rate of Mercury (shown in this false-color image of MESSENGER spacecraft data, which highlights chemical and mineralogical features on the planet’s surface).NASA, JHUAPL, Carnegie Institution of Washington 5. Mapping asteroids Arecibo has cataloged the features of many near-Earth asteroids (SN: 5/7/10). In 1989, the observatory created a radar image of the asteroid 4769 Castalia, revealing the first double-lobed rock known in the solar system (SN: 11/25/89). Arecibo has since found space rocks orbiting each other in pairs (SN: 10/29/03) and trios (SN: 7/17/08). Other odd finds have included a space rock whose shadows made it look to Arecibo like a skull, and an asteroid with the improbable shape of a dog bone (SN: 7/24/01). Understanding the characteristics and motion of near-Earth asteroids helps determine which ones might pose a danger to Earth — and how they could be safely deflected. Arecibo radar images in 2000 revealed the strange dog bone shape of an asteroid named 216 Kleopatra (shown from multiple angles).WSU, NAIC, JPL/NASA 4. Phoning E.T. The Arecibo Observatory broadcast the first radio message intended for an alien audience in November 1974 (SN: 11/23/74). That famous message was the most powerful signal ever sent from Earth, meant in part to demonstrate the capabilities of the observatory’s new high-power radio transmitter. The message, beamed toward a cluster of about 300,000 stars roughly 25,000 light-years away, consisted of 1,679 bits of information. That string of binary code detailed the chemical formulas for components of DNA, a stick figure sketch of a human, a schematic of the solar system and other scientific data. Anyone there? The first radio message meant for an alien audience (illustrated at left) was beamed into space in binary code by Arecibo in 1974. The message encoded information about DNA’s ingredients (green) and its double-helix shape (blue), a schematic of the solar system (yellow) and other data about life on Earth. 3. Repeating radio blasts Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are brief, brilliant blasts of radio waves with unknown origins. The first FRB known to give off multiple bursts was FRB 121102, which Arecibo first spotted in 2012 and again in 2015 (SN: 3/2/16). Finding a repeating FRB ruled out the possibility that these bursts were generated by one-off cataclysmic events, such as stellar collisions. And because FRB 121102 kept recurring, astronomers were able to trace it back to its home: a dwarf galaxy about 2.5 billion light-years away (SN: 1/4/17). This confirmed the decade-long suspicion that FRBs come from beyond the Milky Way. A repeating source of radio waves discovered by Arecibo (radio image, left) was the first fast radio burst traced back to its home galaxy. The burst originated in a dwarf galaxy about 2.5 billion light-years away (visible light image, right).H. Falcke/Nature 2017 2. Making waves Gravitational waves were first directly detected in 2015 (SN: 2/11/16), but astronomers saw the first indirect evidence of ripples in spacetime decades ago. That evidence came from the first pulsar found orbiting another star, PSR 1913+16, first sighted by Arecibo in 1974 (SN: 10/19/74). By tracking the arrival time of radio bursts from that pulsar over several years, astronomers were able to map its orbit, and found that PSR 1913+16 was spiraling toward its companion. As the orbits of the two stars contract, the binary system loses energy at the rate that would be expected if they were whipping up gravitational waves (SN: 2/24/79). This indirect observation of gravitational waves won the 1993 Nobel Prize in physics (SN: 10/23/93). The first pulsar found orbiting another star, sighted by Arecibo in 1974, provided indirect evidence for the existence of ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves (illustrated).ESO, L. Calçada 1. Pulsar planets The first planets discovered around another star were three small, rocky worlds orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 (SN: 1/11/92). The find was somewhat serendipitous. In 1990, Arecibo was being repaired, and so it was stuck staring at one spot on the sky. During its observations, Earth’s rotation swept PSR B1257+12 across the telescope’s field of view. Small fluctuations in the arrival time of radio bursts from the pulsar indicated that the star was wobbling as a result of the gravitational tug of unseen planets (SN: 3/5/94). Thousands of exoplanets have since been discovered orbiting other stars, including sunlike stars (SN: 10/8/19). Recent exoplanet surveys, however, suggest that pulsar-orbiting planets are rare (SN: 9/3/15). The first worlds ever spotted beyond the solar system were three rocky planets (seen in this artist’s illustration) orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12.NASA, JPL-Caltech, R. Hurt/SSC
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A boab tree with a snake carving in Australia’s Tanami Desert.Photo: Darrell LewisAfter two years of fieldwork, a group of researchers and First Nations Australians have announced the discovery of centuries-old carvings on 12 boab trees in Australia’s Tanami Desert.OffEnglishCarvings on boabs were first reported in the mid-19th century, but they weren’t investigated thoroughly until a century later. The carvings depict snake figures believed by the team to be the King Brown Snake, a character in Indigenous oral traditions, among geometric patterns and other representations of animals. The team’s research describing the carvings is published this week in the journal Antiquity.The boab (or bottle) tree (Adansonia gregorii) may live over 1,000 years, based on the dating of the closely related baobab trees in South Africa. They have very thick, often squat trunks that give them their nickname. Unlike many trees, the boab’s soft inner trunk does not record seasonal growth rings, making it difficult to precisely date them. Instead of normal dendrochronological methods, getting a precise age for these trees requires radiocarbon dating.Despite how long some of the carvings—and the trees on which they were carved—have persisted, their existence is fragile. “Unlike most Australian trees, the inner wood of boabs is soft and fibrous and when the trees die, they just collapse,” said Sue O’Connor, an archaeologist at the Australian National University, in an Australian National University release.G/O Media may get a commission“Sadly, after lasting centuries if not millennia, this incredible artwork, which is equally as significant as the rock art Indigenous Australians are famous for, is now in danger of being lost,” O’Connor added.The pith, seeds, and roots of the tree are eaten, and parts of the tree have medicinal uses among First Nations Australians. The bark is relatively smooth, leaving the recently catalogued carvings clear to the naked eye.The team wants to date the Australian boabs directly, to get a sense of the potential age of the carvings. Only 12 boabs were identified with carvings in the recent fieldwork, but previous research identified 22 boabs with Indigenous carvings.Older boabs often have hollow trunks, which can make them more prone to collapse; according to Brittanica, the recent deaths of some of the largest baobabs (a closely related species) have been linked to the effects of climate change.“We are in a race against time to document this invaluable cultural heritage,” said Brenda Garstone, a Traditional Owner who collaborated with the research team, in the university release. Besides the snake dendroglyphs, the team found carvings of emu tracks, kangaroo tracks, a lizard-like figure, and geometric markings. They also found First Nations stone artifacts around some of the larger boabs.Aerial imagery indicated hundreds more boabs in the surrounding area of the Tanami, and the team intends to check those boabs for carvings as well.More: Of Course the Oldest Known Rock Painting in Australia Is of a Kangaroo
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On a Hawaiian mountaintop in the summer of 1992, a pair of scientists spotted a pinprick of light inching through the constellation Pisces. That unassuming object — located over a billion kilometers beyond Neptune — would rewrite our understanding of the solar system. Rather than an expanse of emptiness, there was something, a vast collection of things in fact, lurking beyond the orbits of the known planets. The scientists had discovered the Kuiper Belt, a doughnut-shaped swath of frozen objects left over from the formation of the solar system. As researchers learn more about the Kuiper Belt, the origin and evolution of our solar system is coming into clearer focus. Closeup glimpses of the Kuiper Belt’s frozen worlds have shed light on how planets, including our own, might have formed in the first place. And surveys of this region, which have collectively revealed thousands of such bodies, called Kuiper Belt objects, suggest that the early solar system was home to pinballing planets. The humble object that kick-started it all is a chunk of ice and rock roughly 250 kilometers in diameter. It was first spotted 30 years ago this month. Sign Up For the Latest from Science News Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your inbox Staring into space In the late 1980s, planetary scientist David Jewitt and astronomer Jane Luu, both at MIT at the time, were several years into a curious quest. The duo had been using telescopes in Arizona to take images of patches of the night sky with no particular target in mind. “We were literally just staring off into space looking for something,” says Jewitt, now at UCLA. An apparent mystery motivated the researchers: The inner solar system is relatively crowded with rocky planets, asteroids and comets, but there was seemingly not much out beyond the gas giant planets, besides small, icy Pluto. “Maybe there were things in the outer solar system,” says Luu, who now works at the University of Oslo and Boston University. “It seemed like a worthwhile thing to check out.” David Jewitt and Jane Luu, shown in Honolulu in the early 2000s, discovered the Kuiper Belt.D. Jewitt/UCLA Poring over glass photographic plates and digital images of the night sky, Jewitt and Luu looked for objects that moved extremely slowly, a telltale sign of their great distance from Earth. But the pair kept coming up empty. “Years went by, and we didn’t see anything,” Luu says. “There was no guarantee this was going to work out.” The tide changed in 1992. On the night of August 30, Jewitt and Luu were using a University of Hawaii telescope on the Big Island. They were employing their usual technique for searching for distant objects: Take an image of the night sky, wait an hour or so, take another image of the same patch of sky, and repeat. An object in the outer reaches of the solar system would shift position ever so slightly from one image to the next, primarily because of the movement of Earth in its orbit. “If it’s a real object, it would move systematically at some predicted rate,” Luu says. By 9:14 p.m. that evening, Jewitt and Luu had collected two images of the same bit of the constellation Pisces. The researchers displayed the images on the bulbous cathode-ray tube monitor of their computer, one after the other, and looked for anything that had moved. One object immediately stood out: A speck of light had shifted just a touch to the west. But it was too early to celebrate. Spurious signals from high-energy particles zipping through space — cosmic rays — appear in images of the night sky all of the time. The real test would be whether this speck showed up in more than two images, the researchers knew. Jewitt and Luu nervously waited until 11 p.m. for the telescope’s camera to finish taking a third image. The same object was there, and it had moved a bit farther west. A fourth image, collected just after midnight, revealed the object had shifted position yet again. This is something real, Jewitt remembers thinking. “We were just blown away.” The way the circled object shifted position in the sky (time stamps at right) told Jewitt and Luu that the object, dubbed 1992 QB1, was distant. It was the first evidence of the icy zone called the Kuiper Belt.D. Jewitt/UCLA Based on the object’s brightness and its leisurely pace — it would take nearly a month for it to march across the width of the full moon as seen from Earth — Jewitt and Luu did some quick calculations. This thing, whatever it was, was probably about 250 kilometers in diameter. That’s sizable, about one-tenth the width of Pluto. It was orbiting far beyond Neptune. And in all likelihood, it wasn’t alone. Although Jewitt and Luu had been diligently combing the night sky for years, they had observed only a tiny fraction of it. There were possibly thousands more objects out there like this one just waiting to be found, the two concluded. The realization that the outer solar system was probably teeming with undiscovered bodies was mind-blowing, Jewitt says. “We expanded the known volume of the solar system enormously.” The object that Jewitt and Luu had found, 1992 QB1 (SN: 9/26/92, p. 196), introduced a whole new realm. Just a few months later, Jewitt and Luu spotted a second object also orbiting far beyond Neptune (SN: 4/10/93, p. 231). The floodgates opened soon after. “We found 40 or 50 in the next few years,” Jewitt says. As the digital detectors that astronomers used to capture images grew in size and sensitivity, researchers began uncovering droves of additional objects. “So many interesting worlds with interesting stories,” says Mike Brown, an astronomer at Caltech who studies Kuiper Belt objects. Finding all of these frozen worlds, some orbiting even beyond Pluto, made sense in some ways, Jewitt and Luu realized. Pluto had always been an oddball; it’s a cosmic runt (smaller than Earth’s moon) and looks nothing like its gas giant neighbors. What’s more, its orbit takes it sweeping far above and below the orbits of the other planets. Maybe Pluto belonged not to the world of the planets but to the realm of whatever lay beyond, Jewitt and Luu hypothesized. “We suddenly understood why Pluto was such a weird planet,” Jewitt says. “It’s just one object, maybe the biggest, in a set of bodies that we just stumbled across.” Pluto probably wouldn’t be a member of the planet club much longer, the two predicted. Indeed, by 2006, it was out (SN: 9/2/06, p. 149). Up-close look The discovery of 1992 QB1 opened the world’s eyes to the Kuiper Belt, named after Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper. In a twist of history, however, Kuiper predicted that this region of space would be empty. In the 1950s, he proposed that any occupants that might have once existed there would have been banished by gravity to even more distant reaches of the solar system. In other words, Kuiper anti-predicted the existence of the Kuiper Belt. He turned out to be wrong. Today, researchers know that the Kuiper Belt stretches from a distance of roughly 30 astronomical units from the sun — around the orbit of Neptune — to roughly 55 astronomical units. It resembles a puffed-up disk, Jewitt says. “Superficially, it looks like a fat doughnut.” The frozen bodies that populate the Kuiper Belt are the remnants of the swirling maelstrom of gas and dust that birthed the sun and the planets. There’s “a bunch of stuff that’s left over that didn’t quite get built up into planets,” says astronomer Meredith MacGregor of the University of Colorado Boulder. When one of those cosmic leftovers gets kicked into the inner solar system by a gravitational shove from a planet like Neptune and approaches the sun, it turns into an object we recognize as a comet (SN: 9/12/20, p. 14). Comets that circle the sun once only every 200 years or more typically derive from the solar system’s even more distant repository of icy bodies known as the Oort cloud. There are many places in the solar system where icy bodies congregate: the asteroid belt roughly between Jupiter and Mars (top), the doughnut-shaped Kuiper Belt beyond the gas giant planets (middle) and the most distant zone, the Oort cloud (bottom).Mark Garlick/Science Source In scientific parlance, the Kuiper Belt is a debris disk (SN Online: 7/28/21). Distant solar systems contain debris disks, too, scientists have discovered. “They’re absolutely directly analogous to our Kuiper Belt,” MacGregor says. In 2015, scientists got their first close look at a Kuiper Belt object when NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto (SN Online: 7/15/15). The pictures that New Horizons returned in the following years were thousands of times more detailed than previous observations of Pluto and its moons. No longer just a few fuzzy pixels, the worlds were revealed as rich landscapes of ice-spewing volcanoes and deep, jagged canyons (SN: 6/22/19, p. 12; SN Online: 7/13/18). “I’m just absolutely ecstatic with what we accomplished at Pluto,” says Marc Buie, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., and a member of the New Horizons team. “It could not possibly have gone any better.” But New Horizons wasn’t finished with the Kuiper Belt. On New Year’s Day of 2019, when the spacecraft was almost 1.5 billion kilometers beyond Pluto’s orbit, it flew past another Kuiper Belt object. And what a surprise it was. Arrokoth — its name refers to “sky” in the Powhatan/Algonquian language — looks like a pair of pancakes joined at the hip (SN: 12/21/19 & 1/4/20, p. 5; SN: 3/16/19, p. 15). Roughly 35 kilometers long from end to end, it was probably once two separate bodies that gently collided and stuck. Arrokoth’s bizarre structure sheds light on a fundamental question in astronomy: How do gas and dust clump together and grow into larger bodies? One long-standing theory, called planetesimal accretion, says that a series of collisions is responsible. Tiny bits of material collide and stick together on repeat to build up larger and larger objects, says JJ Kavelaars, an astronomer at the University of Victoria and the National Research Council of Canada. But there’s a problem, Kavelaars says. In 2019, New Horizons flew by Arrokoth (above), a roughly 35-kilometer-long Kuiper Belt object.NASA, JHU-APL, SWRI As objects get large enough to exert a significant gravitational pull, they accelerate as they approach one another. “They hit each other too fast, and they don’t stick together,” he says. It would be unusual for a large object like Arrokoth, particularly with its two-lobed structure, to have formed from a sequence of collisions. More likely, Arrokoth was born from a process known as gravitational instability, researchers now believe. In that scenario, a clump of material that happens to be denser than its surroundings grows by pulling in gas and dust. This process can form planets on timescales of thousands of years, rather than the millions of years required for planetesimal accretion. “The timescale for planet formation completely changes,” Kavelaars says. If Arrokoth formed this way, other bodies in the solar system probably did too. That may mean that parts of the solar system formed much more rapidly than previously believed, says Buie, who discovered Arrokoth in 2014. “Already Arrokoth has rewritten the textbooks on how solar system formation works.” What they’ve seen so far makes scientists even more eager to study another Kuiper Belt object up close. New Horizons is still making its way through the Kuiper Belt, but time is running out to identify a new object and orchestrate a rendezvous. The spacecraft, which is currently 53 astronomical units from the sun, is approaching the Kuiper Belt’s outer edge. Several teams of astronomers are using telescopes around the world to search for new Kuiper Belt objects that would make a close pass to New Horizons. “We are definitely looking,” Buie says. “We would like nothing better than to fly by another object.” All eyes on the Kuiper Belt Astronomers are also getting a wide-angle view of the Kuiper Belt by surveying it with some of Earth’s largest telescopes. At the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea — the same mountaintop where Jewitt and Luu spotted 1992 QB1 — astronomers recently wrapped up the Outer Solar System Origins Survey. It recorded more than 800 previously unknown Kuiper Belt objects, bringing the total number known to roughly 3,000. The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, near the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island, has revealed hundreds of Kuiper Belt objects.Gordon W. Myers/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) This cataloging work is revealing tantalizing patterns in how these bodies move around the sun, MacGregor says. Rather than being uniformly distributed, the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects tend to be clustered in space. That’s a telltale sign that these bodies got a gravitational shove in the past, she says. The cosmic bullies that did that shoving, most astronomers believe, were none other than the solar system’s gas giants. In the mid-2000s, scientists first proposed that planets like Neptune and Saturn probably pinballed toward and away from the sun early in the solar system’s history (SN: 5/5/12, p. 24). That movement explains the strikingly similar orbits of many Kuiper Belt objects, MacGregor says. “The giant planets stirred up all of the stuff in the outer part of the solar system.” Refining the solar system’s early history requires observations of even more Kuiper Belt objects, says Meg Schwamb, an astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. Researchers expect that a new astronomical survey, slated to begin next year, will find roughly 40,000 more Kuiper Belt objects. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, being built in north-central Chile, will use its 3,200-megapixel camera to repeatedly photograph the entire Southern Hemisphere sky every few nights for 10 years. That undertaking, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST, will revolutionize our understanding of how the early solar system evolved, says Schwamb, a cochair of the LSST Solar System Science Collaboration. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is expected to spot about 40,000 Kuiper Belt objects with its 8.4-meter mirror and the world’s largest digital camera.Rubin Observatory/NSF and AURA It’s exciting to think about what we might learn next from the Kuiper Belt, Jewitt says. The discoveries that lay ahead will be possible, in large part, because of advances in technology, he says. “One picture with one of the modern survey cameras is roughly a thousand pictures with our setup back in 1992.” But even as we uncover more about this distant realm of the solar system, a bit of awe should always remain, Jewitt says. “It’s the largest piece of the solar system that we’ve yet observed.”
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This urban settlement lacked both a city center and a defensive wall.New remote-sensing studies at the massive Tell al-Hiba site in southern Iraq, shown here from the air, support an emerging theory that an ancient city there was largely made up of four marsh islands. ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT LAGASHA ground-penetrating eye in the sky has helped to rehydrate an ancient southern Mesopotamian city, dubbed the Fertile Crescent's Venice. The discovery of this early metropolis's watery nature has important implications for how urban life flourished nearly 5,000 years ago between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where modern-day Iraq is located.According to anthropological archaeologist Emily Hammer of the University of Pennsylvania, remote-sensing data, mostly collected by a specially equipped drone, a vast urban settlement called Lagash largely consisted of four marsh islands connected by waterways. These findings add crucial details to a growing consensus that southern Mesopotamian cities did not, as previously thought, expand outward from the temple and administrative districts into irrigated farmlands surrounded by a single city wall, according to Hammer's report in the December Journal of Anthropological Archaeology."As human occupation and environmental change reshaped the landscape, there could have been multiple evolving ways for Lagash to be a city of marsh islands," Hammer says.She suspects that because Lagash had no geographical or ritual center, each city sector developed distinct economic practices on a single marsh island, similar to the later Italian city of Venice. Waterways or canals, for example, crisscrossed one marsh island, where fishing and reed collection for construction may have predominated.Two other Lagash marsh islands have gated walls that enclose carefully laid out city streets and areas with large kilns, indicating that these sectors were built in stages and may have been the first to be settled. Crop cultivation and activities such as pottery making may have taken place there.Drone photos of what appears to harbor on each marsh island indicate that boat travel is linked to city sectors. Footbridge ruins can be found in and near waterways between marsh islands, a possibility that can be investigated further.Lagash, the core of one of the world's earliest states, was established between 4,900 and 4,600 years ago. Previous excavations indicate that residents abandoned the site, now known as Tell al-Hiba, around 3,600 years ago. It was excavated for the first time more than 40 years ago.Hidden cityDrone photos taken across a vast site in southern Iraq revealed buried structures from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Lagash, shown in yellow, clustered in four sectors that were most likely marsh islands. Two large sectors were surrounded by red walls. Waterways, shown in dark blue, connected sectors and crisscrossed one sector on the far right.Lagash composite map based on remote sensing dataPrevious research by anthropological archaeologist Jennifer Pournelle of the University of South Carolina in Columbia on the timing of ancient wetlands expansions in southern Iraq suggested that Lagash and other southern Mesopotamian cities were built on raised mounds in marshes. According to satellite images, archaeologist Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University in New York believes Lagash was made up of around 33 marsh islands, many of which were quite small.According to Hammer, drone photos provided a more detailed look at Lagash's buried structures than satellite images could. A drone spent six weeks in 2019 photographing much of the site's surface, guided by initial remote-sensing data gathered from ground level. Soil moisture and salt absorption from recent heavy rains aided the drone's technology in detecting buried remnants of buildings, walls, streets, waterways, and other city features.According to Hammer, drone data allowed her to narrow down densely populated areas of the ancient city to three islands. It's possible that those islands were part of delta channels leading to the Persian Gulf. A large temple dominated a smaller fourth island.According to University of Chicago archaeologist Augusta McMahon, one of three co-field directors of ongoing excavations at Lagash, Hammer's drone probe "confirms the idea of settled islands interconnected by watercourses."According to McMahon, drone evidence of contrasting neighborhoods on different marsh islands, some looking planned and others more haphazardly arranged, reflect waves of immigration into Lagash between 4,600 and 4,350 years ago. According to excavated material, newcomers included residents of nearby and distant villages, mobile herders looking to settle down, and slave laborers captured from neighboring city-states.According to Hammer, dense clusters of residences and other buildings across much of Lagash suggest that tens of thousands of people lived there during its heyday. At the time, the city was estimated to be 4 to 6 square kilometers in size, roughly the size of Chicago.It's unclear whether northern Mesopotamian cities that were not located in marshes around 6,000 years ago had separate city sectors (SN: 2/5/08). However, according to archaeologist Guillermo Algaze of the University of California, San Diego, Lagash, and other southern Mesopotamian cities likely exploited water transport and trade among closely spaced settlements, enabling unprecedented growth.Hammer describes Lagash as a "frozen in time" early southern Mesopotamian city. After Lagash's abandonment, nearby cities continued to be inhabited for a thousand years or more, as the region became less watery and sectors of longer-lasting cities expanded and merged. "We have a unique opportunity to see what other ancient cities in the region looked like earlier in time," Hammer says of Lagash.CITATIONSHammer, E. Lagash, an early Mesopotamian city, had multi-centric, marsh-based urbanism (Tell al-Hiba, Iraq). 101458, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Vol. 68, December 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaa.2022.101458
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The Santa Marta sabrewing.Photo: Yurgen Vega/SELVA/ProCATConservationists in Colombia have recently rediscovered one of the most elusive and mysterious creatures in the world: a singing and shimmering, emerald-green species of hummingbird known as the Santa Marta sabrewing. The sighting is only the second ever documented since it was first identified, and the first in over a decade. Sadly, the bird is one of many species in the area threatened by habitat loss.OffEnglishThe Santa Marta sabrewing (Campylopterus phainopeplus) was originally discovered in 1946 along the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains of Colombia. Like other species of sabrewing, it’s rather large for a hummingbird. Males also have distinctive emerald-green feathers, a curved black bill, and a iridescent blue neck that would make the bird easy to spot for anyone with a trained eye (iridescent meaning that its color changes depending on the angle and amount of light it’s viewed through). But the bird has remained elusive since its discovery, with previously only one other confirmed sighting in the wild in 2010.The rareness of the sabrewing has become so noteworthy that, in 2021, a coalition of conservation organizations added it to its top 10 most wanted birds to rediscover. The release of the list also heralded the start of the group’s new Search for Lost Birds initiative, led primarily by the organization Re:wild. A male Santa Marta sabrewingPhoto: Yurgen Vega/SELVA/ProCATThe group has since funded new expeditions to look for these rarest of birds, but the rediscovery of the Santa Marta sabrewing was nothing more than sheer good fortune. Local birdwatcher Yurgen Vega had been working to study other native birds in the mountains, and he was just about to leave the area when he came across a male sabrewing perched on a branch. And the bird was courteous enough to stay there long enough for Vega to take photos and videos of it. He even got to hear the bird sing.G/O Media may get a commissionLittle is known about the Santa Marta sabrewing’s habits, though it seems to prefer higher-altitude forested areas in the mountains. There have been other, unverified reported sightings nearby where Vega found it. So this discovery alone, and how it came about, may pave the way for new insights into the species, according to Esteban Botero-Delgadillo, director of conservation science with SELVA: Research for Conservation in the Neotropics. Vega, for instance, had been working with SELVA and other groups as part of his birdwatching.“Perhaps the main conclusion that we can draw from this finding is that, in order to better understand this species, it will be vital to work along with the rural and Indigenous communities in the region. They have the possibility of encountering the species more often, so involving them in initiatives such as community monitoring programs will be the most efficient way to generate valuable information that contributes to conservation,” Botero-Delgadillo told Gizmodo. “We still don’t understand the distribution of the species well, so it is possible that there are other locations that require urgent attention. However, the first and foremost step is to determine where stable populations occur, so that we can identify pressures and threats to determine key areas for conservation.” Unfortunately, these forests—like so many natural environments throughout South America—have been steadily eroded by industrial human activity. Scientists believe that the bird is critically endangered and that its population is continuing to decline, and it’s not the only species in the area facing the threat of extinction. “The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains are a unique wonderland, home to unique lost-and-found species like this bird and the starry night harlequin toad, and a community of wildlife found nowhere else in the world,” Lina Valencia, Andean countries coordinator at Re:wild, told Gizmodo. So as wondrous as this rediscovery is, it’s also a reminder that, unless further effort is taken, we may eventually never see this majestic bird and others like it ever again. “I hope that people reading about the Santa Marta Sabrewing feel inspired and hopeful. It is an incredible accomplishment to find this bird and something that was only possible through the amazing collaboration and long-term efforts of SELVA, ProCAT Colombia, World Parrot Trust and their local partners in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta,” said John C. Mittermeier, director of threatened species outreach at American Bird Conservancy. “I also hope that people see this rediscovery as a call to action for both the sabrewing—now that the species has been found, we need to act quickly to learn more about it and protect it—and for other lost bird species. There are more than a hundred species of birds around the world that are currently lost. Hopefully by working together we can find them all.”
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NASA’s InSight spacecraft, soon after it touched down on Mars in 2018, compared with its most recent selfie, showing it coated in dust from a storm.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The first and only spacecraft to study quakes on Mars is about to die. A recent Martian storm blanketed the solar panels of NASA’s InSight lander with dust, blocking much of the sunlight it needs to charge its batteries. Mission controllers are now running its seismometer intermittently to conserve energy. In weeks, the spacecraft will probably stop responding to commands from Earth and slide into oblivion. Mars’s core has been measured — and it’s surprisingly large But InSight isn’t going out without a bang. On 27 October, scientists reported that last year, the mission detected seismic waves created by the biggest meteorite impacts ever seen on Mars1,2. Both meteorites hit the planet with the energy of a small nuclear bomb. By tracing how the massive seismicity rippled through Mars, scientists were able to study properties of the red planet’s crust thousands of kilometres from InSight, and resolve a mystery about whether the spacecraft happens to sit in a geologically unusual spot.The findings add to InSight’s rich legacy of discovery. Since arriving on Mars in November 2018, it has gathered information on more than 1,300 ‘marsquakes’3. This has allowed researchers to calculate, among other things, the long-sought size of Mars’s core and the thickness of its crust. Just last month, researchers used data from five marsquakes to determine that Mars’s mantle is richer in iron than is Earth’s4. All of this information on Mars’s internal layers will help scientists to understand how the planet formed and evolved over billions of years.“Before the mission, I always showed all these cartoons of cut-in-half planets,” says Mark Panning, InSight’s project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “Now the cartoon has moved from question marks and fuzzy boundaries to a real picture of what the Mars interior is. That was what we promised, and we did it.”Seismic revelationsIt wasn’t always clear that scientists would succeed. In 2012, NASA decided to build and launch the US$994-million InSight, a controversial choice because the agency had several other Mars missions already in its queue. Then, problems in building its super-sensitive seismometer forced a $150-million, two-year launch delay. Once InSight finally arrived at Mars, a German-built instrument nicknamed the Mole, which was meant to measure heat flow in the soil, failed when it couldn’t bury itself in the ground. The mission didn’t even detect its first marsquake until five months after landing — and when it finally did, researchers struggled to interpret what they were seeing.“At the beginning, we were not really sure how much we could get from the data,” says Brigitte Knapmeyer-Erdrun, a planetary scientist at the University of Cologne in Germany. Surprise! First peek inside Mars reveals a crust with cake-like layers But things picked up for InSight during its second Martian year. The spacecraft sits near the Martian equator, in a region known as Elysium Planitia. Many of the quakes it detects come from a geologically active region known as Cerberus Fossae, about 1,500 kilometres away, where underground injections of magma are thought to cause tremors5. In August and September 2021, the spacecraft detected marsquakes on the other side of the planet for the first time6.And on 4 May this year, InSight detected a magnitude 4.7 quake — the biggest by far (most of InSight’s detections are in the magnitude 2–3 range). On Earth, such a quake could be felt by humans if they were near the epicentre.“This is a beautiful gift given by Mars,” says Philippe Lognonné, a geophysicist at the Paris Institute of Earth Physics who leads the seismometer team.Researchers haven’t yet published what they have learnt from the ‘big one’. But it was so large that it sent seismic energy through the surface layers of the Martian crust, creating what’s known as a surface wave — which can reveal more information about a planet’s interior than can other types of seismic waves. “I don’t want to tip our hand too much,” says Bruce Banerdt, a geophysicist at JPL and InSight’s principal investigator. “But it’s really giving information all across the spectrum, from the shallow crust all the way down to the deepest mantle and core.”Deep impactsMeanwhile, scientists have analysed surface waves generated during the two record-setting meteorite impacts last year on 18 September and 24 December1,2. InSight picked them up from thousands of kilometres away. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this image of the crater caused by a meteorite striking the red planet on 24 December 2021. It’s more than 130 metres across.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona They rippled through the Martian crust to the north of InSight, which sits near a key geological boundary where the terrain is smoother and lower in elevation than the heavily cratered southern highlands. The way the surface waves travelled through the crust to the north suggests that it is denser than the crust beneath Insight, which landed in a region where the rocks are particularly porous.InSight was able to tell where the quakes originated thanks to NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Scientists who were looking through images from the orbiter spotted craters on the surface left by each of the impacts, and were able to pinpoint the dates on which they formed. Both of the craters are more than 130 metres across, making them the largest fresh craters observed in the 16 years that the MRO has been studying the planet. “This is a very unique dataset of this size of impact,” says Liliya Posiolova, orbital science operations lead for the MRO at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California. When the first images arrived, she says, “it was like nothing we had ever seen before, and we almost did a double-take”.Saying goodbyeJust because InSight is almost finished doesn’t mean discovery will stop. A ‘marsquake service’ based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich has been archiving the mission’s data. Researchers will probably use that information to make fresh findings for years to come, as they have with decades-old Apollo data collected during quakes on the Moon. “I’m quite sure we’re going to do the same with Mars,” says Anna Horleston, a seismologist at the University of Bristol, UK. ‘Marsquakes’ reveal red planet’s hidden geology Researchers have already benefited from re-evaluating InSight data. Initially, they could determine only the magnitude of marsquakes, but usually not their location. Scientists led by Géraldine Zenhäusern, a geophysicist at ETH, figured out how to use the polarity of seismic waves from a marsquake to calculate its location7. Separately, new techniques such as machine learning are already starting to unearth more marsquakes in InSight’s data8.Once InSight dies, Mars will be without a seismometer for a while; one was planned for the European Space Agency’s ExoMars lander, but that mission involved a collaboration with Russia and is on hold in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.There is a tiny chance that a dust devil might blow off the dust covering InSight’s solar panels and prolong the mission’s life. But researchers are preparing themselves to say goodbye. “There is definitely a sense of, oh my goodness, this is about to end,” Horleston says. ReferencesPosiolova, L. V. et al. Science 378, 412–417 (2022).Article Google Scholar Kim, D. et al. Science 378, 417–421 (2022).Article Google Scholar Ceylan, S. et al. Phys. Earth Planet. Inter. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pepi.2022.106943 (2022).Article Google Scholar Huang, Q. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2204474119 (2022).Article PubMed Google Scholar Stähler, S. C. et al. Nature Astron. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-022-01803-y (2022).Article Google Scholar Horleston, A. C. et al. Seism. Rec. 2, 88–99 (2022).Article Google Scholar Zenhäusern, G. et al. Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. 112, 1787–1805 (2022).Article Google Scholar Dahmen, N. L. et al. Preprint at ESSOAr https://doi.org/10.1002/essoar.10512017.1 (2022).Download references
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Image source, Ministry of the Environment EcuadorImage caption, Pristimantis anaiae is one of the six species of rain frog discovered by scientists in EcuadorScientists in Ecuador have discovered six new species of rain frog.The new species were all found on the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorean Andes, in two national parks.But the scientists who discovered them have warned that all six Pristimantis species were found within a 20km-radius of deforested areas.They recommended that they all be added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) red list of threatened species.There is a huge diversity of Pristimantis frogs with more than 550 different species living in areas ranging from eastern Honduras through the Andes to northern Argentina and Brazil.Colombia and Ecuador have the biggest wealth of species of these little land-dwelling frogs and scientists think there are many more species yet to be discovered. This latest discovery was made by Ecuadorean herpetologists Jhael Ortega, Jorge Brito and Santiago Ron.Mr Ron explained in a tweet that they had decided to name one of the species resistencia (resistance) in honour of all the environmental activists killed in Latin America.According to a report by advocacy group Global Witness, more environmentalists were killed in Latin America than any other region in the world last year."Alba Bermeo was assassinated on Friday for opposing mining in Azuay, Ecuador, another victim," the tweet adds, referring to the killing of a 24-year old campaigner last week.Una de las ranitas que acabamos de describirel cutín de la resistencia se la dedicamos a los defensores ambientalesque han sido asesinados en LatinoaméricaAlba Bermeo fue asesinada el día viernes por oponerse a #minería en Azuay, EcuadorUna nueva víctima 😔 (1/n) pic.twitter.com/46ZkqFdNvw— Santi Ron (@santiak) October 24, 2022
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter
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Ancient coral reef preserved for millions of years is found hiding in plain sight in a vast Australian desert using high-resolution satellite imageryThe Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia once contained vast, prehistoric oceanIt's now desert on limestone bedrock that's extremely flat and almost featurelessAncient coral reef preserved for millions of years has been discovered in desertWas found by Slovenian researchers using new high-resolution satellite imagery Published: 05:32 EDT, 8 September 2022 | Updated: 05:37 EDT, 8 September 2022 An ancient coral reef preserved for millions of years has been discovered hiding in plain sight in a vast Australian desert.The Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia is now an extremely flat and almost featureless expanse of limestone bedrock that extends over 600 miles.But it once contained a vast, prehistoric ocean that led to the formation of the coral when the Plain was underwater. The surprising find was made using new high-resolution satellite imagery by an international team of scientists. Discovery: Ancient coral reef preserved for millions of years has been discovered hiding in plain sight in a vast Australian desert. The reef-like landform is made up of a circular elevated ring about 4,265ft (1,300m) wide with a dome in the centre (pictured above) The Nullarbor Plain in southern Australia (pictured) is now an extremely flat and almost featureless expanse on limestone bedrock that extends over 600 miles'Unlike many parts of the world, large areas of the Nullarbor Plain have remained largely unchanged by weathering and erosion processes over millions of years, making it a unique geological canvas recording ancient history in remarkable ways,' said Dr Milo Barham, of Curtin University in Australia.'Through high-resolution satellite imagery and fieldwork we have identified the clear remnant of an original sea-bed structure preserved for millions of years, which is the first of this kind of landform discovered on the Nullarbor Plain.'The reef-like landform is made up of a circular elevated ring about 4,265ft (1,300m) wide with a dome in the centre. It could be the first primary depositional structure ever discovered on the plain.'The ring-shaped "hill" cannot be explained by extra-terrestrial impact or any known deformation processes but preserves original microbial textures and features typically found in the modern Great Barrier Reef,' Dr Barham added.He said the discovery was due to greater access to new high-resolution satellite imagery, which revealed subtle features representing surprising histories of environmental evolution on the Nullarbor Plain.The ocean that covered the Nullarbor started to dry up around 14 million years ago, exposing the shallow-water limestones deposited during the middle Cenozoic. The surprising find was made using new high-resolution satellite imagery by an international team of scientists 'The ring-shaped "hill" cannot be explained by extra-terrestrial impact or any known deformation processes but preserves original microbial textures and features typically found in the modern Great Barrier Reef,' the researchers said The ocean that covered the Nullarbor started to dry up around 14 million years ago, exposing the shallow-water limestones deposited during the middle CenozoicSince that time, very little has happened on the plain, geologically speaking. There has been no significant sediment deposition, and no major upheavals leading to the formation of mountain ranges, or other features. It means the Nullarbor is effectively a clean record of geological processes and features dating back to the Miocene.'Evidence of the channels of long-vanished rivers, as well as sand dune systems imprinted directly into limestone, preserve an archive of ancient landscapes and even a record of the prevailing winds,' Dr Barham added.'And it is not only landscapes. Isolated cave shafts punctuating the Nullarbor Plain preserve mummified remains of Tasmanian tigers and complete skeletons of long-extinct wonders such as Thylacoleo, the marsupial lion. 'At the surface, due to the relatively stable conditions, the Nullarbor Plain has preserved large quantities of meteorites, allowing us to peer back through time to the origins of our solar system.'These features, in conjunction with the millions of years old landscape feature we have now identified, effectively make the Nullarbor Plain a land that time forgot and allow a fascinating deeper understanding of Earth's history.'The research has been published in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. NULLARBOR'S 'ALIEN' SLIME Divers have previously found a bizarre 'slime' in water-filled underground caves beneath Australia's Nullarbor Plain.Researchers were stunned by the reports of unique 'curtains' of biological material, which are now known as Nullarbor cave slimes.The dominant group of organisms in the cave slimes are known as the Thaumarchaeota.This community of microbes thrives in the total dark, independent of photosynthesis.The researchers say the organisms that make up the Weebubbie cave slime community survive in a very unusual way – by oxidizing ammonia in the salty cave water. Advertisement
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It's rare to discover fossils from the mid-Miocene era around the Pyrenees mountain range in southern France. But paleontologists believe they may have discovered a new species after finding a lower jaw bone. The recently-discovered fauna is from a family of predators named the amphicyonidae – the bear-dog – that roamed the mountains over 12 million years ago, with several known species. To determine the new species, Bastien Mennecart, a paleontologist from the Natural History Museum Basel and his international team have come together. While the finding is similar to the jaw bone of other amphicyonidae species, this specimen has a fourth lower premolar, a key indicator for species and genera. According to a press release, the jaw bone likely represents a new genus.Jean-François Lesport and Antoine Heitz from the Natural History Museum Basel and Floréal Solé, a specialist in carnivorous mammals named the new specimen Tartarocyon, after a giant cyclops known in Basque mythology. This is also a well-known legend throughout the province of Béarn, where the jaw bone was unearthed from a 12.8 to 12 million-year-old marine deposit. Not only is this a discovery of a new species, but researchers can also use this jaw bone to further study the way the climate was shifting during the mid-Miocene and the way prehistoric animals made their way across the landscape.
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Low water levels brought on by the hot weather have uncovered prehistoric treasures in a reservoir in Cornwall. Features known as cup-marked stones - made intentionally by ancient Britons - were re-discovered this month at Stithians Reservoir near Falmouth. The mysterious markings are believed to date from at least the Bronze Age 4,000 years ago, but may originate in the Neolithic period predating it, meaning they could be more than 6,000 years old. Photographs of the markings - taken last week - were posted on Twitter by local photographer Tim Pearson after the water levels in the reservoir dropped to 57 per cent of normal capacity. Further images were taken for MailOnline today. In a sign of the impact the hot weather is having, this time last year the reservoir's levels were at more than 80 per cent, according to data from South West Water. The cup markings have appeared before when water levels have dropped in previous years, but this is the first time they have been seen in 2022. Low water levels brought on by the hot weather have uncovered prehistoric treasures in a reservoir in Cornwall. Features known as cup-marked stones - made intentionally by ancient Britons - were re-discovered this week at Stithians Reservoir near Falmouth The markings are believed to date from at least the Bronze Age 4,000 years ago, but may originate in the Neolithic period predating it, meaning they could be more than 6,000 years old BRONZE AGE BRITAIN: A PERIOD OF TOOLS, POTS AND WEAPONS LASTING NEARLY 1,500 YEARS The Bronze Age in Britain began around 2,500 BC and lasted for nearly 1,500 years.It was a time when sophisticated bronze tools, pots and weapons were brought over from continental Europe.Skulls uncovered from this period are vastly different from Stone Age skulls, which suggests this period of migration brought new ideas and new blood from overseas. Bronze is made from 10 per cent tin and 90 per cent copper, both of which were in abundance at the time.Crete appears to have been a centre of expansion for the bronze trade in Europe and weapons first came over from the Mycenaeans in southern Russia.It is widely believed bronze first came to Britain with the Beaker people who lived about 4,500 years ago in the temperate zones of Europe.They received their name from their distinctive bell-shaped beakers, decorated in horizontal zones by finely toothed stamps.The decorated pots are almost ubiquitous across Europe, and could have been used as drinking vessels or ceremonious urns.Believed to be originally from Spain, the Beaker folk soon spread into central and western Europe in their search for metals.Textile production was also under way at the time and people wore wrap-around skirts, tunics and cloaks. Men were generally clean-shaven and had long hair. This period was followed by the Iron Age which started around 650 BC and finished around 43 AD. Archaeoastronomer Carolyn Kennett, who took her own images of the markings, told the BBC: 'What's interesting about the pre-history at Stithians is the amount of cup-marked stones. There are batches of them but they are really condensed together in a small area.'It is probably the most amount of cup-marked stones in one area in Cornwall, so it is the biggest amount of pre-historic rock art that we have'Cup-marking is definitely late or mid-Neolithic and into the Bronze Age they would still be doing it, but it is incredibly difficult to date these type of things.' The markings are believed to have survived because of the fact they have largely remained underwater for so long.Stithians Reservoir began operating in 1967 after a dam was built. It meant that hundreds of acres of farm land, and some country houses, had to be submerged.This month's low water levels also exposed evidence of medieval farmsteads. Before the area was flooded, the stones would have lain under a layer of top soil and vegetation. It means that, by washing away the top soil, the water played a crucial role in their eventual discovery. The cup-markings were first exposed in the early 1980s when water levels dropped sufficiently.Flints and axes that were once wielded by ancient Britons were also found.However, before the markings could be examined, the water levels rose again and so it was not until 1984 that they could be surveyed. Cup-marked stones are also known to exist elsewhere in Britain, including beneath Cornwall's Drift Reservoir, near Penzance. They are common at other ancient sites around the world, but their purpose remains a mystery to experts. One theory suggests that they are symbols made for the dead to help them in the after-life. Markings have been found elsewhere on the inside of tombs.The markings may also have a wider religious, magical or astronomical significance. Others have suggested that cup markings could have been made by Britons honing their stone-working skills.The 5,000-year-old Cochno Stone in Scotland also boasts cup markings.Discovered in 1887 by the Reverand James Harvey on a section of farmland near Clydebank in West Dunbartonshire, the Cochno Stone caused a sensation when it was unearthed. The markings on the stone - it is covered in around 90 grooves and spirals - are far more elaborate than those on the stones at Stithians Reservoir. In 2016, it was re-excavated so archaeologists could study it. Photographs of the markings taken last week were posted on Twitter by local photographer Tim Pearson after the water levels in the reservoir dropped to 57 per cent of normal capacity The cup markings have appeared before when water levels have dropped in previous years, but this is the first time they have been seen in 2022 The cup-markings were first exposed in the early 1980s when water levels dropped sufficiently. Above: Images of the stones taken for MailOnline today Low water levels have uncovered prehistoric collection of cup-marked stones, pictured today at Stithians ReservoirAfter it was discovered, the stone was vandalised and so was covered up again in 1965.Photos taken before that show local people walking on the stone .The water levels of Stithians Reservoir have dropped in recent weeks as Britain grapples with hot weather that reached its peak this week.Water bosses have advised residents in some parts of the country to avoid baths, put less water in the kettle and only do full loads of laundry in a bid to avoid hose pipe bans as they grapple with increased demand and reduced reservoir levels.This month's low water levels also exposed evidence of medieval farmsteads. The area was flooded when the dam was built One theory suggests that they are symbols made for the dead to help them in the after-life. Markings have been found elsewhere on the inside of tombs. Above: The markings todayAn Environment Agency spokesperson said earlier this month: 'People should use water wisely and follow advice from their suppliers.'Further hot, dry weather could put pressure on some areas. We will continue to take action where necessary.'River flows and reservoir levels have receded across central and south western England.'The most recent fears of a hose pipe ban came in May 2020. It was the driest May in 124 years after only 1.25in (31.8mm) of rain fell in the month following an unusually dry and sunny April. Stithians Reservoir is seen today after this month's hot weather that has seen water levels plummet to 57 per cent of capacity The reservoir pictured in July last year, when water levels were much higher. Stithians Reservoir began operating in 1967 after a dam was built. It meant that hundreds of acres of farm land, and some country houses, had to be submergedBritain began the move from 'hunter-gatherer' to farming and settlements about 7,000 years ago as part of the 'Neolithic Revolution' The Neolithic Revolution was the world's first verifiable revolution in agriculture.It began in Britain between about 5000 BC and 4500 BC but spread across Europe from origins in Syria and Iraq between about 11000 BC and 9000 BC.The period saw the widespread transition of many disparate human cultures from nomadic hunting and gathering practices to ones of farming and building small settlements. Stonehenge, the most famous prehistoric structure in Europe, possibly the world, was built by Neolithic people, and later added to during the early Bronze AgeThe revolution was responsible for turning small groups of travellers into settled communities who built villages and towns.Some cultures used irrigation and made forest clearings to better their farming techniques.Others stored food for times of hunger, and farming eventually created different roles and divisions of labour in societies as well as trading economies.In the UK, the period was triggered by a huge migration or folk-movement from across the Channel. The Neolithic Revolution saw humans in Britain move from groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled communities. Some of the earliest monuments in Britain are Neolithic structures, including Silbury Hill in Wiltshire (pictured)Today, prehistoric monuments in the UK span from the time of the Neolithic farmers to the invasion of the Romans in AD 43.Many of them are looked after by English Heritage and range from standing stones to massive stone circles, and from burial mounds to hillforts.Stonehenge, the most famous prehistoric structure in Europe, possibly the world, was built by Neolithic people, and later finished during the Bronze Age.Neolithic structures were typically used for ceremonies, religious feasts and as centres for trade and social gatherings.
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It will be a challenge to nurture and grow plants when we finally start a colony on the red planet. Researchers on the international space station made an exciting discovery that might make things a little easier. Scientists aboard the ISS have been performing a wide range of scientific research for many years, engaging with the unique zero-gravity conditions that the station provides. Part of their focus lies in sustaining plants in extreme environments and searching for biotechnological tools to aid in growing them. Occupants have been surveying the space station for the presence and persistence of the microorganisms for six years on several locations (among which the special plant growth chamber) and found four strains of bacteria belonging to a family called 'Methylobacteriaceae' at separate locations on the station over two back-to-back flights. One of these strains was already known, but the other three were previously undiscovered. The newly discovered bacteria are rod-shaped and capable of movement. Genetic examination revealed that the trio is closely linked to the known Methylobacterium indicum.Researchers think these three newly discovered strains might be useful in helping vegetation grow on Mars because Methylobacterium species are known to promote plant growth. They are good at increasing the solubility of poorly water–soluble substances with surface-active agents (Solubilization). They are also known to help convert molecular nitrogen into ammonia or related or related nitrogenous compounds in soil (Known as Nitrogen fixation). On top of that, Methylobacterium species are capable of engaging in biocontrol actions against plant pathogens. NASA scientists Dr. Nitin Kumar Singh and Dr. Kasthuri Venkateswaran stated in a press release that the newly found strains might be a game-changer for the future of space crops. However, they explicitly asserted that further experimental biology is necessary for confirmation. According to them, it is essential to find new bacteria that assist in plant growth under stressful conditions in extreme places with scarce resources. Given the importance of finding new, useful microbes, Venkateswaran and Singh argue for an expansion of the space station to mitigate the lengthy process of continuously sending samples back to Earth. Rather than returning samples back to Earth for examinations, an integrated microbial monitoring system that collects, processes, and analyzes samples on location, in space, using molecular technologies would vastly expedite the process. The researchers published their discovery in the science journal Frontiers in Microbiology. If you are interested in the details of the study, be sure to check out the paper listed in the further reading section below.Further reading:Methylobacterium ajmalii sp. nov., Isolated From the International Space Station (Frontiers in Microbiology, full article)SolubilizationNitrogen fixation
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James Webb Telescope snaps its FIRST 'alien world': New images of an exoplanet just 385 light years from Earth show incredible detail never before seen by human eyesHIP 65426 is the first exoplanet captured by the James Webb TelescopeIt sits just outside of our solar system and is much younger than Earth Earth is 4.5 billion years old, while the exoplanet is 15 to 20 million years old This exoplanet has been captured by Earth-based telescopes, but James Webb was able to 'see' it with out disturbances Published: 16:05 EDT, 1 September 2022 | Updated: 16:09 EDT, 1 September 2022 NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured its first image on an exoplanet located just 385 light years from Earth, which show incredible detail never before seen by human eyes.The telescope used its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) that can block out surrounding starlight to snap epic images of the exoplanet HIP 65426.The alien world was first discovered in 2017 by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, in Chile, but the long wavelengths were blocked by Earth's atmosphere.However, since Webb is soaring through space, it was able to take direct shots of the planet that astronomers can process to remove the starlight and uncover the planet.Scroll down for video NASA's James Webb Telescope captured detailed images of its first exoplanet that sits outside of our solar system. The telescope used its powerful technologies to 'see' the exoplanets longer wavelengths that are missed by Earth-based telescopesAarynn Carter, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the analysis of the images, liked this to 'digging for space treasure.'The exoplanet is just 15 to 20 million years old, which is much younger to our 4.5-billion-year-old Earth.It sits just outside of our solar system, but NASA notes it is a gas giant that is without a rocky surface and therefore could not host life.Astronomers discovered the planet in 2017 using the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile and took images of it using short infrared wavelengths of light. The alien world was first discovered in 2017 (pictured) by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, in Chile, but the long wavelengths were blocked by Earth's atmosphere.Webb's technology is able to capture the longer infrared wavelengths without interruption because the telescope is soaring through space.Researchers involved in the discovery are currently analyzing the data to write a paper that will be submitted for review - the current information has not been peer-reviewed.'But Webb's first capture of an exoplanet already hints at future possibilities for studying distant worlds, NASA shared in a statement.Since HIP 65426 b is about 100 times farther from its host star than Earth is from the Sun, it is sufficiently distant from the star that Webb can easily separate the planet from the star in the image.This is due to the NIRCAM and MIRI that are fitted with coronagraphs that act as tiny shields to block surrounding starlight. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, slated to launch later this decade, will demonstrate an even more advanced coronagraph. James Webb infrared capabilities allow it to 'see back in time' to the Big BangIn each filter image, the planet appears as a slightly differently shaped blob of light. That is because of the particulars of Webb's optical system and how it translates light through the different optics.While this is not the first direct image of an exoplanet taken from space – the Hubble Space Telescope has captured direct exoplanet images previously – HIP 65426 b points the way forward for Webb's exoplanet exploration.'I think what's most exciting is that we've only just begun,' Carter said. 'There are many more images of exoplanets to come that will shape our overall understanding of their physics, chemistry, and formation. We may even discover previously unknown planets, too.'The James Webb Telescope: NASA's $10 billion telescope is designed to detect light from the earliest stars and galaxies The James Webb telescope has been described as a 'time machine' that could help unravel the secrets of our universe.The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago, and observe the sources of stars, exoplanets, and even the moons and planets of our solar system.The vast telescope, which has already cost more than $7 billion (£5 billion), is considered a successor to the orbiting Hubble Space TelescopeThe James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of roughly 40 Kelvin – about minus 387 Fahrenheit (minus 233 Celsius).It is the world's biggest and most powerful orbital space telescope, capable of peering back 100-200 million years after the Big Bang.The orbiting infrared observatory is designed to be about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.NASA likes to think of James Webb as a successor to Hubble rather than a replacement, as the two will work in tandem for a while. The Hubble telescope was launched on April 24, 1990, via the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.It circles the Earth at a speed of about 17,000mph (27,300kph) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude. Advertisement
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Image source, iSrael Antiquities AuthorityForty-four pure gold coins dating to the 7th Century have been found hidden in a wall at a nature reserve in northern Israel, archaeologists say.Weighing about 170g, the hoard found at the Hermon Stream (Banias) site was hidden during the Muslim conquest of the area in 635, experts estimated.They said the findings shed light on the tail end of the Byzantine Empire.The Byzantine Empire was the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which survived for more than 1,000 years."We can imagine the owner concealing his fortune in the threat of war, hoping to return one day to retrieve his property," said Yoav Lerer, director of the excavation."In retrospect, we know that he was less fortunate."Image source, Israel Antiquities AuthorityImage caption, Dr Gabriela Bijovsky says the coins help document the life of Emperor Heraclius's familyMr Lerer added that the discovery "may shed light on the economy of the city of Banias during the last 40 years of Byzantine rule".Apart from the gold coins, the excavation - in a residential quarter of the ancient city - also uncovered the remains of buildings, water channels and pipes, bronze coins and much more, Israeli authorities said.Dr Gabriela Bijovsky, a numismatic (currency) expert at the Israel Antiquities Authority, said some of the coins were of Emperor Phocas (602-610), but most were of his successor Heraclius.Banias has a particular place in Christian tradition, being the site where Jesus is said to have told the apostle Peter, "on this rock, I will build my church".
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When "home" is defined by more than one place, capturing each uniquely can be challenging and rewarding. Here, author Annette Libeskind Berkovits shares how to find and write the soul of a place.Any writer who’d been an immigrant at one point knows how difficult is to capture the soul of a place. The life of an immigrant is not easy—putting on a new skin, transforming into someone else—it often obscures the true essence of a place, assuming any place has a singular identity and is not simply a kaleidoscope of human perceptions, different for everyone who experiences it. Writing about a place that had once served as one’s home can be both a treat and a challenge.(How To Turn Artifacts and Research Into a Family Memoir)In writing about a place, a writer will first attend to its physicality, the spaces—are they wide open or constricted? The landscape, with its fauna and flora—even if it is only grass and ants— would feature in the descriptions. Then there is the sensory component: What impact does the place have on one’s senses? Does the body feel warm, or cold, or wet in the environment? How does it smell? Musty? Sour? Fragrant and fresh? You get the idea.Endless adjectives will be available, but an author will strive to select only a few that are most evocative. That’s the easy part. But to dig beneath all those descriptions for the emotions is an entirely different challenge.Having been born in Central Asia at the foothills of the Himalayas, then immigrating to communist Poland, later to newborn Israel and finally to the U.S., I needed to wrestle not only with physical descriptions of places in writing my memoir, Aftermath: Coming of Age on Three Continents, but with their emotional impact on me. There isn’t any doubt in my mind that a writer’s emotional state affects how she or he sees the setting.The very first image of my life was a valley strewn with bright red poppies and behind them, the giants—the towering peaks of the Tien Shan mountain chain that is part of the Himalayas. It was also the place where standing in my outdoor crib I could reach up and grab a peach off the bough hanging low overhead. Some part of me still remembers my mother’s faux annoyed look seeing the nicks of my two front teeth on all the peaches within my grasp. Those are warm memories that color my experience of Kyrgyzstan, but the red communist flags had no meaning to me at the time. To my parents, who suffered starvation and forced labor, the same place has a very different emotional resonance. They’d describe it very differently.Poland, where I spent my elementary school years is always gray in my memory. I know that we went on vacations and there must have been lovely sunny days in the resorts of Krynica- Zdroj and Zakopane. There must have been sounds of birds and the smell of pines trees in the forests near our summer cottage rentals— yet I recall none of it viscerally. The antisemitism directed toward me and my family has rendered everything during that time the color of mud. The soul of the place was mute to my feelings of rejection.IndieBound | Bookshop | Amazon[WD uses affiliate links.]Israel with its hamsin heat, its turquoise Mediterranean, and the cacophony of dozens of languages, all shades of faces and the embrace of family is what lingers in my memory. I know there were difficult times. We lived in a sublet apartment where I was repeatedly cautioned not to touch things, we were robbed, there were worries about money, and I experienced a painful separation from my beloved father. And yet … the soul of that place is eternally bound up in my mind with the joys of youth, of fun, of love, of discovery. It is an eternally happy soul.At age 16 I arrived in New York. It was a crucial point where as a teen I stood on the brink of womanhood. Confusion and insecurity reigned in my brain. I was overwhelmed by the city’s mammoth size, its noise, and waves of humanity on the streets. And here once again— a new indecipherable foreign language threatened. I suppose I could have been overcome and retreated into myself but that would not have been a wise survival tactic. Instead, I entered high school and studied English as if my life depended on it. In many ways, it did. If a foreigner were to ask me to describe my adopted city it would be a challenge despite having spent most of my adult life in New York. I could write many different descriptions because each of the city boroughs has a distinct soul. After all, we have immigrants from 150 nations! Yet, a rich cultural diversity is our most emblematic feature. If I were to express my city’s collective soul as a work of art, it would be a beautiful, huge multi-colored tapestry.In online lectures, supplemental readings, and written assignments and exercises, we’ll talk about how to source, prioritize and develop topic ideas; compose and refine pitches to multiple outlets; stay tightly organized about submissions, follow-ups and correspondence; and execute assignments brilliantly—as well as why writers who query well, deliver on time and prove easy to work are gold to editors everywhere.Click to continue.How One Photograph Inspired a NovelDuring a tumultuous time, author Lola Jaye sought distraction. Here she describes how one photograph inspired her new novel, The Attic Child.How To Find and Write the Soul of a PlaceWhen "home" is defined by more than one place, capturing each uniquely can be challenging and rewarding. Here, author Annette Libeskind Berkovits shares how to find and write the soul of a place.
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New research could explain why people with dyslexia are drawn to certain professions - including the arts, engineering and entrepreneurship.The University of Cambridge says dyslexics are better at exploring the unknown - and have "enhanced abilities" when it comes to discovery, invention and creativity.
Celebrities who suffer from dyslexia include Cher, Keira Knightley and Richard Branson - as well as legendary figures such as Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso.Those behind the study say the world needs to change its perspective and stop treating dyslexia as a neurological disorder.Estimates suggest that up to 20% of the population have dyslexia - and the study's aim was to better understand their cognitive strengths. Lead author Dr Helen Taylor said "the deficit-centred view of dyslexia isn't telling the whole story" as people with this condition "play an essential role in human adaptation".
Many people with dyslexia thrive on explorative learning - and "searching the unknown" through experimentation, discovery and innovation. More on Dyslexia Jamie Oliver wrote first cook book on 'back of fag packs and beer mats' Dyslexic student who couldn't read until aged 13 achieves first-class honours degree Trial finds using Microsoft's OneNote software boosts dyslexic children's learning This is a contrast to exploitative learning, which focuses on what's already known - featuring tasks such as reading and writing that can present difficulties for someone with dyslexia."Schools, academic institutes and workplaces are not designed to make the most of explorative learning. But we urgently need to start nurturing this way of thinking to allow humanity to continue to adapt and solve key challenges," Dr Taylor said.She added: "It could also explain why people with dyslexia appear to gravitate towards certain professions that require exploration-related abilities, such as arts, architecture, engineering and entrepreneurship."Forty years ago, the American neurologist Norman Geschwind noted that an increasing number of studies suggest those with dyslexia often have "superior talents in certain non-verbal skills".Academics argue that different but complementary ways of thinking enhances our ability to adapt through collaboration.The new paper has been published in the Frontiers in Psychology journal.
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Archaeologists on Monday announced a "significant" series of finds at the Sanxingdui ruins in China’s southwestern Sichuan province.A bronze altar excavated from a sacrificial pit at the Sanxingdui ruins. Wang Xi / Xinhua News Agency via Getty ImagesJune 15, 2022, 1:06 PM UTCA bronze altar and a dragon with a pig's nose are among a trove of items discovered in sacrificial pits that shed new light on the buried secrets of an ancient Chinese civilization.Archaeologists on Monday announced the "significant" series of finds at the Sanxingdui ruins in China's southwestern Sichuan province, according to the team behind the dig and the state-run Xinhua news agency.A team including academics from Peking University and Sichuan University found thousands of items including intricate bronze, gold and jade items, and what it called the unprecedented discovery of 10 bronzes. Experts say the finds date back 3,000 to 4,500 years.Discovered in the late 1920s, Sanxingdui is one of the key Chinese archaeological sites. Experts think its treasures once belonged to the ancient Shu kingdom, which dates back 4,800 years and lasted 2,000 years.The new finds mostly come from what archaeologists call sacrificial pits 7 and 8, the highlight being a bronze box with a tortoise-shaped lid containing jade artifacts, including dragon heads. Traces of silk fabric were found surrounding the box.A bronze box with jade artifacts inside was among the finds in a sacrificial pit. Chine Nouvelle / SIPA / Shutterstock“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the vessel is one of its kind, given its distinctive shape, fine craftsmanship and ingenious design. Although we do not know what this vessel was used for, we can assume that ancient people treasured it,” said Li Haichao, a professor at Sichuan University who is in charge of the excavation at pit 7, according to Xinhua.The role of the pits and their use is contested. One academic, Chen Shen, argued in a 2002 book: “Some believe the pits to be a kind of burial, but without human skeletons; the body might have been reduced to ash as a result of a ritual burning ceremony.”Burned fragments of ivory were found in one pit and the presence of ash, possibly the remnants of tree and plant matter used as fuel, has led archaeologists to speculate that boxes were placed in the pits to be burned.In pit 8, archaeologists found yet more elaborate bronze work, including heads with gold masks, an altar and a dragon with a pig's nose.A curious three-part sculpture features a snake with a human head with protruding eyes, tusks and horns. The top part of the head resembles an ancient trumpet-shaped wine vessel.Ran Honglin, from the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, said some elements of the sculpture were typical of the Shu kingdom, while others were seen in items from the Zhou dynasty.“These three factors are now blended into one artifact, which demonstrates that Sanxingdui is an important part of Chinese civilization,” he told Xinhua.“More cultural relics unearthed at Sanxingdui have also been seen in other locales in China, giving evidence of the early exchange and integration of Chinese civilization,” Honglin added.A bronze head excavated from a sacrificial pit at Sanxingdui.Xinhua News Agency / via Getty Images“The sculptures are very complex and imaginative, reflecting the fairy world imagined by people at that time, and they demonstrate the diversity and richness of Chinese civilization,” Zhao Hao, an associate professor at Peking University who led the excavation of pit 8, told Xinhua.The institute said some 13,000 items have already been found at Sanxingdui since excavations began in the 1980s. The 12-square-mile site was accidentally discovered in the late 1920s by a farmer in Sichuan province who was repairing a sewage ditch. It is considered one the most important Chinese archaeological finds and one of the world’s greatest discoveries of the 20th century.Members of China's National Cultural Heritage Administration have been working at the site in Guanghan city, in southwest China's Sichuan province.AP fileThe finds paint a vivid picture of life in ancient China. Small sacrificial pits and the sacrificed remains of cattle and boars were found alongside reeds, bamboo and soy beans.Most historians and archaeologists previously thought the birthplace of Chinese civilization was the Yellow River Basin in China’s north. But Sanxingdui's discovery, and its excavation in the 1980s, challenged those assumptions. The new finds are expected to be displayed at an exhibition at Sanxingdui Museum, near the city of Guanghan, in 2023.Mystery has surrounded the fate of the societies that created the artifacts found at Sanxingdui. Evidence shows that at some point, they left the area and moved to the ancient city of Jinsha, near the modern city of Chengdu.Some scholars believe the move was caused by an earthquake 3,000 years ago.Patrick Smith is a London-based editor and reporter for NBC News Digital.Meredith Chen contributed.
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An ancient Inca-era tomb was discovered under the home of a working-class man in Peru's capital city of Lima, local archaeologists said Wednesday. The tomb likely belonged to elites from the Riricancho society, which existed in the city prior to the Incas and populated Lima over 500 years ago, lead archaeologist Julio Abanto told Reuters. BRITISH UNIVERSITY WARNS STUDENTS ARCHAEOLOGY COURSE SHOWS HUMAN REMAINS The site was unveiled during an excavation that began in May, triggered by owner Hipolito Tica's reconstruction plans, which required an archaeological survey. "It’s amazing. I really have no other words to describe it,” Tica told the outlet. Tica said he was emotional over the new discovery and hoped the people in his neighborhood would appreciate the history surrounding the tomb. Lima has been the site of hundreds of other historic finds, including from civilizations before and after the Incas. The Incas populated Peru during the 15th century and were known for their construction skills, including the creation of Machu Picchu, a citadel in the Andes Mountains. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER The Inca civilization was defeated by the Spanish in 1532. In February, archaeologists discovered the mummified remains of eight children believed to have lived 15 miles outside of Lima 1,000-1,200 years ago. The remains of 12 adults who were not mummified were found just outside the children's tomb.
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AI art generators are facing backlash from artists who say the technology is "scraping" their work without their consent in order to create sophisticated images.
Tim Flach, a world-renowned animal photographer and the president of the Association of Photographers, is among those who feel ripped off and says artificial intelligence can easily imitate the style of his images.
Sky News filmed Flach generating a photo very similar to one of his originals using AI.
"In the case of my tiger I have to put a lot of resources in there - I have to be in there with the tiger," he said. "The machine doesn't have to do that.
"But also the fact that at the moment these images are being generated by scraping our images, taking them off our websites, but there's no remuneration there."
He added: "For us in terms of livelihood, will there be legal frameworks that will allow us to invest creatively going forward?"
Isabelle Doran, the chief executive of the Association of Photographers, told Sky News: "These massive datasets have been accumulated from images that have been scraped without permission so effectively the photographers work must be remunerated ... I think it's only fair that creators are paid for the work that's in those databases."
The government is currently preparing an AI Code of Practice, but this will initially be voluntary.
Some artists see the creative potential in AI.
Mat Collishaw will open an exhibition of his work with new technology in London next week.
He told Sky News: "When photography was invented 150-odd years ago, for first 50 years most photography was just an imitation of painting ... it took a long time before photographers thought 'Hey, we can do this we can go down here' ... and I suppose it's the same with any new iteration of technology.
"It takes time before people learn to use this new tool in a way that utilises all of its potential."
However, where some see just another artistic tool, others worry about the outlines of a deeper, more troubling shift.
Comic book artist Dave McKean said: "I think this [is] redefinition of what creativity is - there's never been such a huge gap between the sheer lack of effort or work or anything going in and the huge sophistication that then results coming out.
"And I think that's just a dreadful shame. I think that what we lose in that is immense."
Of the AI companies Sky News contacted, only one, Stability AI, responded.
A spokesperson said the company was "building AI tools to unlock creative potential".
"AI can help to simplify the creative process, but isn't a replacement for creators," they said. "For example, when using a version of Stable Diffusion, or one of the many text-to-image applications built on that suite of models, an artist controls the style, composition and arrangement of their work.
"These models are designed to act as an assistive technology and enhancement for artists, similar to what digital cameras or photo editing software has done for photography.
"Like those technologies, we expect AI to open up new opportunities for the creative industry and grow the pie for paid artistic work.
"We believe that a broad range of creative and professional talents will embrace AI and use it to rapidly implement designs and improve efficiency. AI can help professionals convert ideas into deliverables with greater creative control, less time, and lower production costs."
Read more:
AI generated newsreader debuts in Kuwait
AI can now pick out transplant organs 'more effectively than what human doctors can see'
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A government spokesperson said ministers were "seeking to strike a balanced and pragmatic approach which will allow AI innovators and creative industries to grow together in partnership".
The Intellectual Property Office is to work with AI firms and rights holders to produce a Code of Practice and guidance on copyright and AI by the summer.
The spokesperson added that the government office will also "aim to make it easier for copyright holders to enforce their rights".
"This will include providing guidance, coordinating intelligence on any systematic copyright infringement and encouraging the development of AI tools which assist with copyright enforcement," they said.
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Portrait photographers can spend hours perfecting a single headshot in Adobe’s apps—everything from erasing skin imperfections to making the subject look much younger than they really are. Some of those advanced photo-retouching techniques just got a lot easier, as today Adobe announced several AI-powered Lightroom upgrades, including automatic beard darkening.
First introduced last year, Adobe’s Adaptive Presets are AI-guided filters designed for portrait photography where only parts of an image need a very specific correction or enhancement applied—such as whitening the subject’s teeth. The new Adaptive Presets, available through a Lightroom update released today, include ‘Polished Portrait,’ which smooths skin and enhances lighting, ‘Enhance Clothing,’ which increases the contrast, color saturation, and texture of a subject’s outfit, and ‘Darken Beard,’ which automatically masks facial hair and makes adjustments to help graying hairs look less pronounced.
It’s an issue that has plagued photography since its earliest days, right on through to the modern digital era. When a photographer has to compensate for poor or inadequate light by boosting the ISO and the sensitivity of their camera’s sensor, noise is going to rear its ugly head and make images look less sharp. Lightroom’s AI-powered ‘Denoise’ tool can strip away the unwanted artifacts from an image, but is currently only compatible with RAW files. Support for removing noise from other file types is promised to be coming soon.
For those whose priority when travelling is making sure their social media accounts are filled with enviable photos of their latest destination, Adobe is also adding 18 new travel presets to Lightroom that aim to make mundane shots look like something straight out of a National Geographic magazine. The presets automatically apply multiple adjustments and enhancements to an image, improving the impact of even photos snapped by novice photographers.
But the presets also provide a way for those just starting to learn apps like Lightroom to see how its various tools and settings can be used to improve or change the mood of their shots. They can be useful shortcuts, but also work like the digital equivalent of disassembling a clock radio to see how it works.
For a full breakdown of all the new tools and improvements made to the various versions of Lightroom, head on over to Adobe’s website.
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Story at a glance
- Iconic Hawaii surf photographer Larry Haynes unexpectedly died after a surfing session on Thursday.
- On Sunday, his friends and family found the last moments of his life, which Haynes himself caught on video.
- “Here it is. He had this incredible life right up till the end. He could not have filled any more into his life than he did,” Haynes’ friend Brian Bielmann said.
HONOLULU (KHON) — Hawaii is mourning the loss of an iconic local surf photographer, but his loved ones are taking comfort in seeing some of his final moments captured on camera.
Just weeks after filming water shots at the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, Larry Haynes unexpectedly died after a surfing session on Thursday.
On Sunday, his friends and family found the last moments of his life, which Haynes himself caught on video. It was pure joy as he did what he loved.
“Here it is. He had this incredible life right up till the end. He could not have filled any more into his life than he did,” Haynes’ friend Brian Bielmann said.
After a stand-up paddleboarding session at Hawaii’s Laniakea Beach, Haynes collapsed in the parking lot.
“We were so, so shocked. He just did the Eddie Aikau with us. He did the Pipe contest. He does everything with a smile; and then, we just lost him. He caught a wave at Laniakea. And, then, he came in and collapsed,” Haynes’ friend Mike Prickett said.
Haynes was a surf photographer for 35 years, known for his courage and athleticism in the face of big waves.
“He’s the most bad*** of all photographers ever of all time. He was such a bull. And, he would go anywhere and do anything and have no fear,” Bielmann said.
In fact, he was shooting at the Banzai Pipeline Hawaii at Ehukai Beach Park just hours before he passed.
Lifeguards called Bielmann to collect Haynes’ board to give back to his family. There, he found a GoPro on the paddle containing the final moments of Haynes’ legendary life.
“I went down and got it this morning and immediately took it home and went on the computer,” Bielmann said. “There must have been 40 files, and we looked through all of them. And, then, he had a lot of, like, non-start type waves and over and over and finally caught this beautiful wave and rode it for a long time. And, by the end of it, we were cheering and yelling and crying — the whole everything.”
A poetic way for him to go — capturing the magic in the water as he did during this year’s Eddie.
While friends shed tears at losing him, they smile at the way he went out.
“It’s really cool. In the footage as well because he gets his wave and right before he turns off the camera he had this Larry smile that we all knew from him,” Prickett said. “I was like, that’s what made me start crying.”
Haynes is survived by his daughter, Lilly.
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Whether you’re an enthusiast looking to sharpen your creative tools or a professional expanding your skills to get more gigs, off-camera lighting—that is, flashes or continuous lights not mounted on your camera—can be as daunting to master as a musical instrument or a language. Even for professionals, it’s a lifelong process. But with basic concepts and a few inexpensive tools, it can be surprisingly simple to begin.For specific product recommendations, see our companion photo and video light-buying guide.Writing With LightThe first step is the recognition that lighting is at the core of this art form. “Photo-graphy literally means writing with light,” says photographer and lighting instructor David Hobby, who spent 15 years creating the online lighting education resource Strobist to help photographers around the world. “Learning how to create your own light is a critical foundational skill to becoming a capable and versatile photographer,” Hobby says. He adds that lighting allows you to solve technical problems, create an entirely new environment for your subject, and make your camera interpret a scene exactly the way your eye sees it. “Lighting is probably your most effective tool to shift the thought patterns of your viewer,” he says.But it’s a journey more than a destination. “I am still learning about light, still trying new techniques, and still experimenting,” says Art Streiber, an iconic Los Angeles-based photographer whose portraits and editorial work reflect an astounding fluency with lighting. Streiber says you don’t need to apprentice as a photo assistant or even go to photography school. “But you have to be open-minded, and in constant pursuit of knowledge and experience,” he says. “I’m not done learning, and I don’t think any of us in the creative arts are, or should be.”The yellow background plays with dense shadows and integrates a red shadow, with the colder blue light in the shadow area of the jacket.
Photograph: Karl TaylorOur emotional responses to lighting are based on our lifelong relationship with sunlight. “We are working with emotion that is hard-wired,” says Karl Taylor, a UK-based photographer and photography educator and the founder of Karl Taylor Education, a global online photography platform. A low angle of light paired with a color and intensity reminiscent of a sunset triggers one emotion, while light suggesting a sunrise evokes another—be it nostalgia, melancholy, or hope. Shadows can create a sense of mystery and be ominous or inviting. Taylor uses the example of a child putting a flashlight under her chin: Because light is coming from a different direction than our brains are used to it seems uncanny.We feel this stuff on a deep level already, so the key is recognizing the connection between our ingrained human understanding of light and our emotional responses to it. “Photography is an art form, but most of our response to it is based on science,” says Taylor, who teaches that photography is about “using the scientific part to enhance the emotional part” of photography.Using Light to ComposeStarting out, most photographers compose their shots based on the subject in the frame, but it turns out that the lighting composition is what engages the viewer most, on a scientific level. According to Taylor, when we look at an image, we are drawn first to the highest contrast and the brightest point in an image; then the different luminosity values guide the eye around the image, as if our eyes are being steered by the light. “Composition is far less important than the composition you create with light,” Taylor says.Former Disney CEO Bob Iger. Three light sources: ambient; a hard source outside; and one soft source, hidden at camera right.
Photograph: Art StreiberWhile composing his shots, Streiber always asks himself “How can I best get the reader’s attention and keep them on the page?” He acknowledges that the term “page” may sound like an anachronism, but he says viewer engagement directly translates from paper to the algorithms of digital platforms. “You [keep them on the page] by giving the viewer primary, secondary, and tertiary reads on the photo,” says Streiber, whose goal is always to make a viewer stop on his image, and then to keep their eyes moving through the frame by creating multiple layers within it for them to explore. “That nuance is the thing that gets under your skin and is compelling,” he says.Skill Transcends GearIt’s easy to go down a rabbit hole of obsessing over camera gear, comparing the specs of the latest camera bodies or drooling over pricey lenses. But Taylor points out that this kind of obsession generally misses what makes an image interesting. Lighting, he says, is the aspect of photography most misunderstood by those obsessed with gear. “They become gadget freaks, and they start to appreciate the art of composition, but they don’t understand the composition you create with light,” Taylor says. Quality gear is certainly important, but perhaps it’s just easier to obsess over frames per second and aperture sizes than to learn a totally new skill. “Photography is not about gear in the same way that writing isn’t about a keyboard,” he says.Cast of The Happiest Season. Two light sources: ambient daylight and one large soft source at camera right.
Photograph: Art StreiberAnother big reason to begin your lighting education is that it can help you get more and bigger jobs. “People who want to get into filmmaking have to be multifaceted,” says commercial filmmaker Austen Paul. “Understanding lighting in product filmmaking will open up so many job possibilities—interviews, product filmmaking, commercials, and short films,” he says.Study the WorldThe first practical step is to start paying attention to the different types of light you see in your daily life. Hobby recommends training yourself to consciously observe the world around you. “What direction is the light coming from? Is it hard light? Soft light? What color is it? Are there multiple light sources? How are they interacting?”Hobby also recommends paying attention to the kinds of light that make you stop and take in a scene, “And then in each of those circumstances, the immediate follow-up question: How could you create that kind of light?” he says. By making these observations and asking these questions, you begin a path as “a photographer who can intuitively conjure up any type of environment and emotional feel you want for your images.” It is this process that will help you discover what kinds of lighting speak to you and form your own lighting style.“It’s up to every individual photographer to find his or her own aesthetic for light,” says Streiber. But to do that, you need to understand the basics. Streiber compares the basics of lighting to those of music or cooking: “You can bang on the piano, but do you know scales? Do you know how to chop? Do you know how to sauté?” Whether he is using a constant light source or a strobe (aka flash), Streiber always begins by looking at three things: the quality of the light, the position of the light, and the intensity of the light. “I start with quality first, then I deal with position, then I dial [the intensity] in,” he says. “I’m on-site three to four hours ahead of my talent. I’m testing the light, I’m nailing it down, and I have an hour or less with my subject, and that’s normal with us.”The quality of the light relates to the color of the light and how soft or hard the light is.It’s the second light that lifts the shadows. This makes the photo feel more lush, realistic, and (ironically) less “lit.”
Photograph: David HobbyTo explain soft versus hard light, Taylor uses the example of sunlight on a bright day (hard) and sunlight on a cloudy day (soft). On a bright day, light is coming from one small source—the sun—and therefore it creates a hard shadow. On a cloudy day, the light is coming from every direction because it is diffused by the clouds, so there’s little to no shadow. In the world of photography and videography, hard light is what comes from a small source, such as a bare flash, whereas soft light is what you’d get if you put a large diffuser (or a softbox) in front of the flash.The position of the light can change the photo in many ways, whether it’s creating a silhouette, separating a subject from a background, or even lighting the background itself. To illustrate the way a light’s position can affect the impression of an image, Streiber uses the example of an on-camera flash, which immediately evokes the sense of a caught moment at an event, or a paparazzi shot. If that flash were moved off-camera, maybe held in your hand at the end of your outstretched arm, the same shot creates a totally different impression.The intensity of the light relates to how bright the light is, which translates in the images to whether you want to create a natural look or make the scene appear deliberately lit. Hobby applies the cooking metaphor to dialing in the intensity of light: “You taste the soup. You think, ‘It needs a little more salt.’ You add some salt. The only real difference is that with lighting, if you add too much salt you can easily take it right back out.”This example from Karl Taylor demonstrates the use of shadows and color to create emotion. “Is that light coming through a gap in the curtains?" he asks. "What is it that enhances the atmosphere? Is it the combination of warm gold light through the gap and blue shadows that provides the melancholy feeling? Is it that just enough detail is visible in the shadows?”
Photograph: Karl TaylorTaylor says that most of our visual systems are not based on color, but on brightness and shade. “We’re seeing in black and white without realizing it.” Taylor uses the example of flecks on a deer or the stripes on a tiger, which don’t seem very stealthy when viewed in color, but in terms of luminosity to other animals who see in black and white, it’s brilliant camouflage. Taylor cautions that color can trick the eye into thinking that an image is brighter than it actually is, so he often edits the luminosity of an image in black and white first, and then edits for color, so the color doesn’t trick his eye into a false sense of brightness.Build a Lighting SetupThe lighting spice rack can get cluttered quickly, so the pros build their lighting one step at a time. “The first light source is what’s known as your ‘key light,’” says Paul. After you establish where you want to put your first light, you put the “fill light” on the opposite side. For most setups, the fill light is not as bright as the key light. Paul says this makes the subject look more three-dimensional, and with a fill light slightly darker than your key light, you create a gradient from lighter to darker.Just by adding a fill light, you can easily create photos that are both more evocative and more three-dimensional.
Photograph: David HobbyHobby explains that with the combination of these two lights, you can adjust the “legibility” of the shadows in an image however you want. “This is what we mean when we say you can make your camera see a scene more like the way your eye sees it,” says Hobby.After placing your key light and fill light, you can add yet more dimension with a third light. “Your third light can be a backlight for a product, it can reveal your background, or it can just separate your subject from the background,” says Paul. A light that separates your subject from the background is called a “hair light” or “rim light” because it creates a rim of light around the subject’s hair or their entire body that makes them stand out. “Three lights is where it really gets interesting,” says Taylor.Dial in Mood and EmotionAs much as the quality, position, and intensity of light contribute to the technical balance and visual impact of your shot, those three elements combine to provide a fourth, less tangible component: emotion. “In the studio, we control the light going into the shadows very carefully as part of the inducement of the mood,” says Taylor. “We might put a bit of blue light into the shadows, we might put a bit of red light into the shadows, we might put a bit of neutral light into the shadows. Or we’ll try to suck light out of the shadows with what we call negative fill so that we actually make the shadows darker on purpose.” Deepening the shadows gives the image a more dramatic and mysterious character.The low-grazing shadows of the pasta shot invoke early morning or evening, due to the color of the light and angle of the shadows. Introducing a melancholy feeling to the image through the density of the shadows gives the shot an abstract quality that borders on ominous, in conjunction with the very graphic placement of these rather mundane food products.
Photograph: Karl TaylorThe elements for creating a desired emotional effect are rooted in science and physics, but it ultimately comes down to the personal taste of the creator. Taylor shoots with his camera tethered to a 4K monitor. The detail this affords immediately lets him know if he’s getting the right mood and emotion. “I don’t make lighting decisions based on measurements, I make them based on an emotional response,” he says. “And only by looking at a preview image can I tell if the emotional response is correct.”If you don’t have the ability to tether your camera to a monitor, try simply reviewing the images on your camera’s display while you dial in your lighting. Or better yet, sync your camera via Wi-Fi with your smartphone so you can review test shots on a slightly bigger screen and more easily pass them around for a second opinion. Think of this as the spoon you use to taste the sauce and decide if it needs more (or less) salt.“You’re the creator. Art is subjective. And if you like it, that’s the most important thing,” says Paul.For specific product recommendations, see our companion photo and video light buying guide.
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This year's competition has once again provided some stunningly beautiful photography.
The competition attracted 21,400 entries from photographers in 96 different countries. And it was Canadian nature photographer Jacquie Matechuk that was crowned the overall winner of the 2023 Nature Photographer of the Year competition (as well as being the winner of the Mammals category) with her enchanting image of a male spectacled bear taking refuge in an old fig tree in the Andes Mountains.
This photo, plus OGN's selection of other winners and runner-ups can be seen. And, remember, if you are a nature photographer yourself, entries for the 2024 edition of the competition will begin being accepted on 20 December 2023.
You're no doubt wondering what the image above could be. Well, it's a close up detail of the underside of a mushroom.
If you would like to explore more collections of outstanding images, please see the OGN Photography archives.
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We've now hit the second day of Amazon's October Prime Day sale (aka Prime Big Deal Days) and it's proving to be a great time to pick up a new camera. Vloggers, photographers and other creators will find plenty of good discounts on new and recent gear and accessories. We're seeing discounts on mirrorless cameras, action cameras, photo accessories and more, so if you want to update old equipment or are just picking up your first mirrorless, now's a good time to shop. And if you've got a budding photographer on your holiday gift list, a few deals fall in the sub $1,000 mark and could make a great introductory camera. You can see the full lineup of our recommendations in our camera guide.
One notable deal is GoPro's Hero10 Black Action camera, which is still among the best action cameras on the market, for just $250, saving $200. On the mirrorless camera side, Sony has some great deals across its lineup, marking the popular A6600 down to just $998, for a savings of $402 or 29 percent off. The A6100 with an 18-50mm kit lens is now just $698 ($152 off), while the newish A7 IV is back down to its July Prime Day price of $2,398, saving you $100. Not to be left out of the fun, Panasonic is selling its full-frame Lumix S5 camera for $1,298 (28 percent off) and the recent GH6 for $1,698 instead of $2,200, a $502 savings. We're also seeing deals on Panasonic camera and lens bundles.
Nikon's DX-format Z30 is available for $697 with a wide-angle zoom lens, while the full-frame Z5 is just $1,097, which is $303 (22 percent) off. Canon also has a stellar deal on its relatively recent R3 powerhouse camera, marking it down by a full $1,000 to $5,000, while its EOS R10 vlogging kit is $1,200 ($100 off). And it's not just cameras — you'll also find sales on memory cards, bags, and other accessories.
GoPro Hero 10 action camera
Though it's been displaced by the Hero 11 and 12, GoPro's Hero 10 is still the third-best action camera available. The GP2 processor enables features like HyperSmooth 4.0 (which stabilizes footage), tone mapping, noise reduction and a 5.3K maximum resolution at up to 60fps. It can also shoot in 4K at 120fps and 2.7K at 240fps. Like the previous model, the Hero 10 Black has a front screen to make it easier for you to shoot video of yourself, and it supports new horizon leveling options and faster navigation.
Nikon Z 30 with 16-50mm zoom lens
Nikon's Z30 is a DX (APS-C) camera designed for vloggers and creators. It offers 4K using the full width of the sensor, 120fps slow-mo at 1080p, a flip-out display and AI powered hybrid phase-detect AF. It also offers outstanding image and video quality, with dynamic range on par with more expensive cameras. The drawbacks are the lack of an EVF and autofocus performance that’s not on par with Sony’s devices.
Sony A6600
As Sony’s former flagship APS-C camera (until the A6700 came along), the 24.2-megapixel A6600 still has a lot to offer. It comes with features like real-time AF tracking, a pop-up screen, in-body stabilization, solid battery life and generally excellent photo quality. It's also a great travel camera thanks to its compact size. It is a bit old now, having come out in 2019, but it's an attractive option at this relatively low price.
Canon EOS R3
Canon’s EOS R3 can shoot bursts at up to 30 fps with autofocus enabled, so it’s ideal for sports and action. It’s a very solid option for video, offering 6K at up to 60 fps in Canon’s RAW LTE mode, or 4K at 120 fps. Canon’s Dual Pixel autofocus is excellent, and it offers eight stops of shake reduction, a flip-out display and even eye detection autofocus. However, the resolution is limited to 24 megapixels, so it’s not as great for wildlife or landscapes as Sony’s A1 or the R5. The other drawback is the $6,000 price, but Amazon's sale makes it more palatable.
Panasonic Lumix S5
With the arrival of the Lumix S5 II, Panasonic is offering some stellar deals on its predecessor, the S5. It’s smaller and costs less than the Lumix S1, but it actually delivers better video features. That includes a flip-out display, five-axis in-body stabilization and 10-bit 4K recording at up to 60 fps. The autofocus is faster and more accurate than the S1, but not as good as Sony and Canon’s systems for video. Still, at this price, it's one of the best cameras currently available for content creators.
Nikon Z5
The 24-megapixel full-frame Nikon Z5 is a stellar deal right now. It’s mostly aimed at photographers, with features like hybrid phase-detect autofocus and Nikon’s excellent color science. And for such a budget option, it has desirable features like five-axis in-body stabilization, dual fast UHS-II card slots, a 3.69-million dot OLED electronic viewfinder and a tilting touch display. Video isn’t a strong point, but it can handle 4K 30p with a crop and 1080p at 60fps.
Sony A6100
The A6100 is a few years old now, but its autofocus system is still among the best thanks to its intelligent face- and eye-tracking, along with 4K 30 fps video. The color science and low-light capabilities are excellent, so photos are sharp and color accurate, even in dimly-lit environments. The drawbacks are bad rolling shutter and a low-resolution EVF. Still, the A6100 is the best camera in its price range.
Canon EOS R10
Canon’s 24-megapixel EOS R10 is the company’s second APS-C camera to launch in the EOS R mount ecosystem. It offers some nice features for its price range, like 4K 60p, 1080p 120p, a flip-out display, a built-in flash and very fast shooting speeds. The main drawback is excessive rolling shutter that can warp the image, but it’s ideal for casual users who are likely to buy it for vacations, kids sporting events and more thanks to the reliable AF. With features aimed at creators, you can grab it in a kit with a stereo microphone, tripod grip, wireless remote and an S18-45mm lens — saving you $100 in total.
Panasonic Lumix GH6
The Panasonic GH6 is aimed at content creators and largely does a good job of replacing the ultra-popular GH5. It has no-compromise video specs including ProRes support for 5.7K 30p video, 4K at up to 120 fps and full V-log support. With a new 25-megapixel sensor, the highest resolution yet on a Micro Four Thirds camera, it’s a better camera for photography. The GH6 still uses contrast detect only autofocus, though, and while improved, it lags behind rival Sony and Canon cameras.
Other notable camera and accessory Prime Day deals
Those products are just a smattering of what's available, but there are others as well. Sony also has its ZV-1 vlogger camera on sale for $648 ($102 off), while the A7 III is marked down to $1,698 ($302 off). It's also got deals on a large number of lenses — to see more, check out its Amazon camera store. Meanwhile, if you're looking for the latest Panasonic cameras in a bundle, the company has a few solid deals, and Nikon has multiple bundles as well.
There are some notable deals on accessories, too. Lexar's V60 II memory cards (250MB/s read and 120MB/s write) are up to 35 percent off, with a pair of the the 128GB models priced at just $57 and the 256GB model in a two-pack at $105. If you need faster V90 cards, PNY's 128GB EliteX-Pro90 Class is marked down $20 to $75, while the 64GB cards are just $48 (20 percent off). MicroSD cards for drones or action cameras are also on sale, including SanDisk's Extreme 512GB model for $32 (or 71 percent off). More camera deals could arrive later, so stay tuned.
Your October Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In The Know. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Fall Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
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ABC7 New York 24/7 Eyewitness News StreamMega Millions drawing at 11:00 p.m.THE LOOP | NYC Weather and Traffic CamsWATCH LIVEWelcome, Your AccountLog OutCHICAGO -- Twice a year, Chicago's photographers gather in hopes of snapping the perfect picture. During both the Spring and Fall equinox, the stars and architecture align framing the sun perfectly between the buildings of Chicago's grid-system.Many photographers set up hours early to stake their spot for a chance to snap what is known as "Chicagohenge." This astrological event has become a meeting ground for photographers."This is a time where we know we can all come out here be around other photographers," said photographer Vashon Jordan. "Sometimes we come out and it's a beautiful shot, and sometimes we come out we might miss it, but to be around other photographers is something we always look forward to."The next chance to catch Chicagohenge will be Spring 2023.
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The winners of the 2023 Underwater Photographer of the Year awards have been revealed, giving a platform to awe-inspiring photography captured beneath the surface of oceans, lakes, rivers and even swimming pools.
This year, over 6,000 pictures were entered by underwater photographers from 72 countries. A heart-wrenching photograph of a dying humpback whale, a haunting photo of a shipwreck off the coast of Egypt and a vibrant picture of a langoustine in Scotland are among the pictures that have snapped up prizes.
However, it's a photograph of a playful pink river dolphin in the Amazon River that has truly mesmerised the judges, earning U.S photographer Kat Zhou the title of Underwater Photographer of the Year 2023.
Praising her work, the judges remark: 'In dark, tannic waters, Zhou has created a striking composition capturing this rarely photographed and endangered species in a precision composition. This is by far the best image we've ever seen of this species, whose numbers are declining at an alarming rate.'
They add: 'It is appropriate that the Amazon, as the world’s mightiest river, has produced our overall winner.' Below is MailOnline Travel's pick of the incredible underwater shots that have earned acclaim - scroll down to the very bottom to lay eyes on Zhou's prize-winning picture...
A whale shark is surrounded by a cluster of small fish - known as a bait ball - in Australia's Ningaloo Reef in this dynamic picture by photographer Ollie Clarke, who has earned the title of British Underwater Photographer of the Year 2023. He explains: 'The whale sharks on the Ningaloo are often accompanied by bait-balls like this one, where the small fish use the shark as a floating shelter. However, this one was huge, much denser and with a lot more fish than usual... the shark almost looked as if it was getting fed up with the small fish and it was attempting to shake off the swarm.' Noting that whale sharks are 'active predators of schools of small fish', the judges remark: 'Ollie’s stunning image is perfectly timed as the shark pounces, switching from benign escort to hunter, mouth gulping down its prey.' The picture is also a runner-up in the 'Up and Coming' category
Commended in the 'Marine Conservation' category, this heartbreaking picture shows an olive ridley sea turtle that's 'badly entangled' in a fishing net near the Sri Lankan port city of Trincomalee. Hong Kong photographer Simon Lorenz, who was behind the lens, reveals that the turtle was later freed from the net. He says: 'Turtles consume floating plastic and get entangled in fishing nets. The problem in Sri Lanka is that fishermen leave the nets afloat as they are fish aggregation devices. They will rescue turtles if they come across it but since these floats can be many miles from shore, the rescue often comes too late.' The judges describe the picture as a 'lovely photograph of an awful image'
Taking the top prize in the 'Black and White' category, this evocative portrait of a southern right whale calf near Argentina's Valdes Peninsula was captured by Australian photographer Don Silcock. The photographer points out that the calf's mother can be identified in the background. He says: 'The mother accepted our presence and allowed the calf to interact with us. It was very playful but careful not to hit us with its tail and seemed to be really enjoying it all – almost as much as we were! White calves are very rare and referred to locally as “El Blanco” or the white one'
This jarring photograph of a row of dead sharks was taken in Sri Lanka by photographer David Serradell. The Spanish photographer says: 'Looking at the fisherman standing behind his most recent catch I thought about how little money he was just going to get from that day, comparing it to how much Asian markets would get when reselling the future dried fins from these sharks. I cannot blame the fisherman, this is the only thing they have been doing for their entire life with the only goal of bringing food to the family table. It is easy to blame, difficult to listen to the whole story.' The judges describe the picture, which is highly commended in the 'Marine Conservation' category, as 'an emotional picture' that demonstrates the 'complexity of social factors behind most conservation issues'
In this moving picture, Paradorn, an orphaned Irrawaddy dolphin calf, nibbles on a baby bottle while resting in the arms of its caretaker at the Marine Endangered Species Veterinary Hospital in Rayong, Thailand. Thai photographer Sirachai Arunrugstichai, who captured the shot, says: 'The six-month-old dolphin was rescued from stranding in the eastern Gulf of Thailand and then taken into care by the veterinarians of the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources, since the chance for an unweaned calf to survive in the wild without its mother is slim.' Sadly, Arunrugstichai notes that the dolphin calf died soon after the picture was taken, despite efforts to keep it alive. The picture is commended in the 'Marine Conservation' category
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Across a career that has seen him photograph some of music's most recognisable faces, Richard Kelly has built a portfolio and a reputation many can only dream of.
He even became Arctic Monkeys' go-to man, documenting the band as they rose from relative unknowns to stadium stardom - and his photos have now formed the basis of a new exhibition in Manchester.
But despite Kelly's eye for a killer shot, he says he never grew up with the dream of capturing sweaty studios, bouncing concerts and glamourous rockers.
In fact, he didn't dream of being a photographer at all - let alone a two-decade career snapping the stars,
"I started off as a messenger at my local paper, the Manchester Evening News, after leaving school," he says.
"I saw the photographers come in wearing their own clothes, not a suit, and doing different assignments each day, which appealed to me.
"From there, I went to evening college to study photography and eventually did a degree in documentary photography while working as a photo lab technician and printer to pay my way through uni."
The degree course gave him "an ingrained interest to document the world around me, which stood me in good stead for shooting bands and artists".
But it was his extra-curricular activities that brought Kelly to the world of music.
"Whilst studying I used to shoot raves in Manchester, which then led to me shooting for Mixmag and other publications such as Vice and Dazed," he continues.
"It was a natural progression to shoot bands and fashion."
His commissions soon brought him into contact with a host of rising stars, but few were as remarkable as the ones he met when he was sent to photograph some relative unknowns on the other side of the Pennines, the then-up-and-coming Arctic Monkeys.
"I first shot the band for Dazed and Confused just before their first single came out.
"I drove over to their rehearsal studio in Sheffield and spent the afternoon with them.
"The shot that features in the exhibition is the very first photo I took of them. I asked them what they sounded like, and Alex said, 'We'll play you a few songs', so I was treated to my very own individual mini gig."
He says it was simply the "perks of the job", but the chemistry of that day led to a long relationship.
"We got some really nice shots, and I think they liked the fact I wanted them doing normal things and it was a very relaxed shoot.
"After that, the record label asked me back to shoot their official press shots, which I did again and again until they decamped out to LA."
He says the band were "great to photograph, laid-back and very funny", but they also appreciated his way of working "which is more to observe than to participate and hang out with them".
"To get the photos I want, we have a mutual trust and respect to just let me get on with it from an objective, outside perspective.
"They were great by trusting me and letting me crack on with it, which I think shows by the images and work we produced."
Yet the band were far from the only huge stars Kelly met at the start of their careers.
His exhibition also includes the first media photo anyone took of singer Florence Welch, which he captured before her act Florence + the Machine became a household name.
"I actually met her as I was shooting her managers at the time, The Queens of Noize," he says.
"She seemed really photogenic, and you could tell she was going to be a success, so I offered to take some shots of her at the end.
"She was a dream to photograph - I could have picked any one of the 25 shots I took of her for the exhibition and it would have been great."
He says he finds it really difficult to pick a favourite shot in the exhibition, as he is "really proud of the work as a whole, plus it changes from month to month", but his current choice is the one of up-and-coming MC and producer Sparkz.
"It came out of a body of work of a group of Manchester MCs that is up there with my best work in my opinion," Kelly says.
He feels it was important to show Manchester's new talent alongside the famous names, "as there's so much at the moment".
"There are so many artists I wish I could have found time to shoot and include, but I'm really pleased that we have Sparkz, Antony Szmierek, and Akemi Fox in the exhibition alongside more established artists," he says.
"I think for a photograph to be good in its own right, I have to think it's good, regardless of who is in it.
"All the work, new artists included, stand up on their own merit, so you may not know who these three artists are yet, but if by coming to the exhibition, you discover new artists alongside seeing ones you've already heard, surely that's a good thing."
However, he says there is one distinctive older shot he cannot help but return to again and again.
"I do always come back to the shot of Amy Winehouse," he says.
"I remember taking the shot and knowing it was a good one. Sometimes, you just know."
Richard Kelly: A Time and Place is at Kimpton Clocktower Hotel in Manchester until 31 August. Arctic Monkeys play Old Trafford Cricket Ground on 2 and 3 June.
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Photographers
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The British Press Photographers’ Association has condemned the arrest of a photographer and documentary film-maker as they captured images of a Just Stop Oil protest.Rich Felgate, a documentary maker, and Tom Bowles, the photographer, were arrested by a Hertfordshire police officer as they caught the action on a footbridge over the M25 on Monday.Bowles later claimed on Twitter that officers turned up at his home at 11pm before he had returned home, waking his wife and daughter and searching the property. However, both men were ultimately released without further action.The Guardian has contacted Hertfordshire police for comment.Just Stop Oil activists climb M25 gantries for second day – video reportThe BPPA, which represents more than 400 photographers, said: “The BPPA strongly condemns the arrests of two photographers, and members of the BPPA, by Hertfordshire police this morning at a Just Stop Oil protest. News gatherers should be able to operate freely without fear of arrest.”The BPPA strongly condemns the arrests of two photographers, and members of the BPPA, by @HertsPolice this morning at a @JustStop_Oil protest. News gatherers should be able to operate freely without fear of arrest— The BPPA (@TheBPPA) November 7, 2022
Writing on Twitter, Felgate said the police had “no interest in seeing press ID and handcuffed us instantly”.“They said they needed to search me for items which could be used to commit criminal damage,” he wrote. “Obviously, they found nothing, so an officer said ‘just arrest them for conspiracy instead then’.”Felgate said he and Bowles were held in custody for 13 hours and questioned by police who tried to get him to “reveal my journalistic sources and give them the pin to my phone”.“I had to spell it out to the police many, many times that I’m a film-maker, not a protester,” he said, adding he had to provide “rigorous” details of his work. He said both men were released with “no further action”.Just Stop Oil started a campaign of protests mostly in and around London in April. The group says its supporters have been arrested nearly 2,000 times, with five activists in prison.The Guardian understands Ben Cawthra, another BPPA-accredited photographer, was also arrested in similar circumstances on Monday by Hertfordshire police and was detained for just under 16 hours.He is understood to have shown officers his press card but was arrested anyway.
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Photographers
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A photographer from Germany says he won a competition by submitting an image not taken with his camera – but created using artificial intelligence. Boris Eldagsen says he chose to be a "cheeky monkey" and submit an image made by artificial intelligence to spark a debate about the use of AI in the industry.
Eldagsen submitted a portrait titled "Pseudomnesia | The Electrician" to the Sony World Photography Awards, saying the competition allowed the use of "any device." He was selected as one of the many winners in the competition's creative open category. However, he refused the prize at a ceremony earlier this month.
"Thank you for selecting my image and making this a historic moment, as it is the first AI-generated image to win in a prestigious international PHOTOGRAPHY competition," he said in a statement, posted on his website, "How many of you knew or suspected that it was AI generated? Something about this doesn't feel right, does it?"
The black-and-white image shows a woman leaning on the shoulder of another woman. "AI images and photography should not compete with each other in an award like this. They are different entities. AI is not photography. Therefore I will not accept the award," he said.
"I applied as a cheeky monkey, to find out, if the competitions are prepared for AI images to enter. They are not," he said, urging for an open discussion about this topic in the photography world.
"If you don't know what to do with the prize, please donate it to the fotofestival in Odesa, Ukraine. I will happily provide you the contacts," he said.
Eldagsen claims the photography competition had no clue the photo was AI-generated. In a long blog post, he chronicles the events he claims happened between his submission of the photo and his refusal of the ward.
He says he applied in December, and gave little detail about the production of the image since the competition allowed "any device" to be used. He said he made the short list and was asked what the title was, saying in the blog post the title Pseudomnesia means "fake memory."
When he found out he won on March 2, he explained in an email to the competition organizers the image was generated with AI and suggested Sony, which runs the competition, hold a panel to discuss AI in photography. He claims the company ignored his suggestion, but told him he could keep the award.
Eldagsen also alleges that the competition ignored inquiries about the nature of his work, instead putting out a statement by Founder and CEO of the World Photography Organization Scott Gray, which said the competition welcomes "photographers to experiment and explore the dynamism of the medium."
CBS News has reached out to the organization for comment and is awaiting response.
Eldagsen says the organization offered him a chance to do a Q&A on their website, but never followed through. "In my opinion, [awards organizer] Creo is not interested in the fears and needs of the photo community," he said, alleging they have avoided him.
According to BBC News, a spokesperson for the organization said at the awards ceremony, Eldagsen told organizers the image was a "co-creation" using AI.
They felt the piece met the criteria for the category, which "welcomes various experimental approaches to image-making, from cyanotypes and rayographs to cutting-edge digital practices," they told BBC News, adding that the awards will still always champion "excellence and skill of photographers and artists working in the medium."
Eldagsen referred CBS News to the blog post and statement on his website when asked for further comment.
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Photographers
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A UV protection lens filter is an accessory that attaches to the front of your camera lens and blocks ultraviolet light rays. Many photographers argue that UV filters are essential, while others maintain that they are a waste of resources and effort. Don’t listen to them — I think they are crazy, and all serious photographers should use a UV lens filter.
Filters are not only used to block UV light and reduce haze, but they also protect the front element of your camera lens from scratches, dust, liquids, and other hazards. That’s one of the biggest reasons I love using them, and haven’t had my Canon lenses ever unprotected.
What does UV light do to photographs?
UV light is invisible to the human eye but can affect image quality in terms of sharpness and vibrance. A blue cast may also appear in your pictures without any UV filtering.
Historically, using a UV filter was especially useful in old film photography because of how sensitive film was to UV light. Most modern film cameras, however, aren’t affected by UV rays.
Modern digital cameras come equipped with digital sensors that discard most of the UV light.
How to use a UV protection filter
The most common way of using a UV protection lens filter is to screw it onto the front of your camera lens. Make sure to screw it on tightly, so the UV filter does not fall off when using your camera, and this also provides a seal protecting from dust.
You can also place the UV filter in front of your lens and then attach the lens to your camera. This method is often used when using a telephoto lens, as it can help keep the filter in place.
Some photographers use their UV protection lens filter by holding it in front of their lens while taking a photo. This allows them to keep the filter in place and avoid having to screw it onto the lens, but won’t offer lens protection.
What UV Filter Should You Buy?
If you’ve decided to start using a UV protection lens filter, the next step is choosing the right one to buy. While a UV filter doesn’t affect image quality noticeably most of the time, you shouldn’t just buy the cheapest that will fit your lens. The measurement needed for your lens is usually written on the inside of the lens cap. This is important. If you don’t match the lens size, your UV filter won’t fit on it.
I started shooting with a Nikon DSLR and then switched over the Canon’s R mirrorless line, and Hoya was my pick until I tried the K&F, but all 3 are good choices.
Urth UV Filter Plus
The Urth UV Filter Plus is a high-quality lens filter that protects your lens and improves image quality. It cuts out 99.6% of UV light, helping sharpen your photos, especially in hazy conditions. The filter features a durable aluminum frame and a 30-layer nano-coating that protects against scratches, dirt, and oil damage.
These layers also provide a higher maximum light transmission and a more consistent transmission curve for sharper images, finer colors, and greater depth. The Urth UV Filter Plus has a 37mm to 95mm thread diameter range, making it compatible with a wide range of lenses.
The filter has a low-profile design that does not add significant weight or bulk to your camera. It is an excellent choice for photographers who want to protect their lenses and improve their photography.
Amazon Basics UV Protection Lens Filter
The Amazon Basics UV Protection Lens Filter is a high-quality, affordable filter that helps to reduce haze and protect your lenses from scratches, fingerprints, and dirt. The filter is made from optical glass that provides excellent clarity and color balance. It can also be multi-coated.
It also features an Avengers: Infinity War-designed active case with a soft-touch finish. The case has a built-in lens cloth for easy cleaning. This filter is compatible with most 58mm camera lenses. It’s ideal for serious photographers and videographers who want to protect their equipment.
The K&F Concept UV Filter Ultra Slim
The K&F Concept UV Filter Ultra Slim is a high-quality filter that helps to protect your lens from scratches, fingerprints, and other damage. It is 3 millimeters thick with a 37mm to 82mm thread diameter range. I currently am using this on my 24-70mm f/2.8.
The filter is made of durable optical glass and features 28 multilayer coatings. Coatings that are hydrophobic and scratch-resistant for durability. The multilayer coating also ensures maximum light transmission for clear, sharp images. The ultra-slim design minimizes vignetting and allows for easy stacking with other filters.
What’s the difference between a UV protection filter and a polarizing filter?
It’s actually a big difference! While a UV filter blocks actual UV light from affecting your photo more uniformly, a polarizing filter actually takes other ambient light in your photo and reduces it. Things like glare on shiny surfaces, automotive photography on a sunny day, or photos of the water.
Why should you use a UV protection lens filter?
Lens protection
UV filters can protect the camera lens from getting damaged if they get dropped or bumped against hard surfaces. However, the protection is minimal at best.
Most UV filters are made from weaker glass than those used for most camera lenses. Hence, they can get broken more easily than the lens itself.
Note: a UV filter will not protect your camera lens from internal damage. Camera lenses contain other glass elements asides from the frontal element. Dropping your lens with a filter on will probably cause as much internal damage as dropping it without one.
UV filters can come in handy in protecting the front element of a camera lens, though. They offer protection against dust, dirt, scratches, and smears. This can be pretty useful in keeping salt particles, grit, or sand from going near your lens when shooting.
UV filters are flat and are much easier to clean than lenses. They are also cheaper to replace if they get scratched or too dirty to clean thoroughly. In some cases, they can offer better protection than the lens hood can.
Blocking of ultraviolet light
UV light scattered in the atmosphere can make pictures look blurry or hazy. A UV filter blocks out this ultraviolet light, consequently reducing haze in your pictures. This could, in turn, make your picture a bit sharper. Not enough to make a difference, but subtle enough to the keen eyes. Modern cameras have no glaring reactions to the presence of UV light.
Cons of using a UV protection lens filter
Loss in image quality
A UV filter adds an extra layer of glass between the camera lens and digital sensor. This can reduce the amount of light that passes into a camera by 0.5% to 5%, consequently leading to a slight drop in image quality.
The drop in quality is largely dependent on the optical glass on your UV protection filter. Cheaper filters are more likely to cause a reduction in image quality than premium quality lens filters.
They can be quite expensive.
UV filters can be costly, especially those suitable for expensive lenses. Specialty UV lens filters can cost hundreds of dollars.
Lens ghosting
Ghost images are secondary images of very bright light sources. Using a UV protection filter on your camera lens when shooting in certain conditions can cause extra ghosting in images. The bright lights bounce off the digital sensor, reflect onto the rear surface of the filter and bounce back onto the camera sensor.
The wider your camera lens’s aperture, the more pronounced ghosting is. You can remove your UV filter if you want to eliminate ghost images. Sufficiently reducing the aperture can also help in removing ghost images.
Lens flares
UV lens filters are said to make your lens more prone to flares. A flare is an overall veiling of an image or parts of it due to stray light. Currently, there is no overly convincing evidence that a UV protection filter noticeably increases flare in camera lenses.
Flare images are caused by unwanted reflections or scattering of light from the various exposed surfaces within the lens and camera body. Modern digital camera lenses typically contain up to 15 or more glass elements. Hence, adding an extra layer of glass in the form of a UV lens filter won’t make that much difference.
Color casts
UV filters block out all types of ultraviolet light, including the kind that aids in producing vibrant colors. Shooting in certain lighting conditions while using a UV filter can make photo colors look washed out or muted.
FAQs
How do you use a UV lens filter?
You can use a UV protection lens filter by screwing it onto the front of your camera lens. You can also use it by holding it in front of your lens when taking pictures.
Should I keep my UV filter on all the time?
Deciding on whether to keep your UV protection filter on all the time is entirely a personal choice. In some situations, it is better to take off the filter when shooting pictures. But if the filter does not bother you or affect the image quality in any way, you can leave it on at all times.
When should you use a UV filter on a camera?
You should use a UV protection lens filter when shooting in environments that pose hazards to your camera’s lens. You should use a filter when shooting in places like beaches, deserts, and snowy mountains.
Should you put UV filter on lens?
A UV protection filter will help protect wind-borne substances such as salt particles, grit, or sand from coming into contact with your lens. So yes. It is advisable to use one but not compulsory.
Is it worth it using a UV filter?
A UV lens filter can serve as protection from dirt and scratches for the front element of your lens. They’re also cheaper to replace and easier to clean. So yes, using a UV protection filter is worth it.
What is the point of a UV lens filter?
A UV lens filter decreases the intensity of ultraviolet light entering the lens. UV rays have a more profound effect on old film stock than on digital cameras. A UV protection lens filter is not very important in digital photography, but it can be useful in protecting the lens.
Can I leave a UV filter on all the time?
Yes, you can. Most photographers who use lens filters leave them on all the time except when shooting in certain conditions.
Do UV filters affect image quality?
Some photographers say that an extra pane of glass may lead to miscalculations of how much light passes through the lens. But, the effect of UV lens filters on photo quality is quite negligible. Cheaper filters are more likely to affect image quality than premium quality lens filters.
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Photographers
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It's impossible not to be reminded of Diana.
A relentless pursuit, photographers recklessly driving, and all for a picture of people in the back of a car.
By all accounts, what happened in Manhattan was frightening, dangerous, and very nearly fatal.
Prince Harry attracts huge attention and he knows a public outing with Meghan - the first since the coronation - would entice even more interest. But he certainly won't have expected this.
The US is his home now, one of the reasons he moved was to escape the British press. Except the press are everywhere, and the appetite for a photo of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex together seems insatiable.
This is perhaps in part because we haven't seen the couple making many public appearances together. Ever since their Netflix series, Meghan has kept a low profile while Harry released his memoir and gave several subsequent interviews.
She wasn't at the coronation either, and although Harry came, his appearance was brief and perfunctory.
He was spotted at the airport within hours of the service ending.
None of this, of course, justifies the chaos and chase to take the couple's photo after they left a New York awards ceremony. They hadn't entered through a backdoor as we've seen on some occasions.
In fact, they'd made a public entrance and exit and paused for photos in front of the invited media.
Prince Harry will be furious. We have a well-documented account of his life growing up in the glare of long lenses, his hatred of the press who he blames for his mother's death.
He's spoken about paparazzi jumping on the bonnet of his car.
But of course, most poignantly he's spoken at length about Diana's relationship with the press, and the incessant intrusion he experienced growing up.
Explained: What Prince Harry has previously said about the paparazzi
Why is Prince Harry claiming damages against Mirror Group newspapers?
Harry's ghostwriter reveals 'row' with prince over Diana comment anecdote
In his memoir Spare, Harry recalls his mother driving him to tennis lessons, with photographers in pursuit "blasting through red lights", and as a young boy asking: "Are they going to kill us, mummy? Are we going to die?"
Losing his mother has made him even more protective of his own young family. In a recent interview, he said: "I never want to be in that position… I don't want history to repeat itself."
That's why security and protection has been such a big issue for Harry.
He has legal cases challenging the decisions surrounding the withdrawal of his automatic personal security. He also has three legal actions against the tabloid press as he attempts to "change the media landscape".
He knows he's not making any friends with the newspapers in doing so, but even he wouldn't have expected a night out to end like this.
What happened on the streets of Manhattan, a world away from royal life, shows us two significant things.
Firstly, there remains a clamouring media interest in the couple, with paparazzi hunting and hounding them.
And secondly, perhaps more worryingly, they are prepared to do so whatever the risks.
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Photographers
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As one of the most prolific photographers of all time, David Bailey has snapped some of the most famous people in the world - from Mick Jagger to the late Queen Elizabeth.Now, as he prepares to open a new exhibition in London of his work, Bailey has sat down with Sky News to talk about some of his most iconic pictures of all time.Bailey, 84, is perhaps best known for his work in the swinging sixties, and has a string of famous photographs - including one of the first snaps of Mick Jagger, before the Rolling Stones had even recorded a song. Image: Dr Dre. Pic: David Bailey Among his other world-famous clients are the likes of Dr Dre, Kate Bush and even The Kray Twins.But despite his vascular dementia diagnosis in 2018, he remains in top form, telling Sky News: "Maybe if I fall over and go blind I might stop - that would be a sign."I am getting older... that doesn't mean anything. Some people live until they are 90 and do nothing and some people live until 22, and they are like Van Gogh so what, it makes no difference - it's just the time."When asked to summarise his career, he simply told Sky News: "Not over yet." Image: Mick Jagger in 1964. Pic: David Bailey On the late Queen Elizabeth II:"She was nice, she was easy. It was easy, she was sweet... she was very nice. "I don't meet many queens, so I don't know. She was terrific. Image: Queen Elizabeth. Pic: David Bailey On Grace Jones:"She had an agenda, she wanted to do what she's going to do."She's alright though." Image: Grace Jones. Pic: David Bailey On Bob Marley:"Yeah, I told him to get a haircut." Image: Bob Marley. Pic: David Bailey On Freddie Mercury:"Freddie Mercury stung his tongue down my throat - it was a shock, it's only happened to me twice."But thank you, Freddie, I enjoyed it." Image: Queen. Pic: David Bailey On Miles Davis: "I think the only thing he did was stick his tongue out - but he didn't play in my mouth, which was a relief." Image: Miles Davis. Pic: David Bailey Bailey: Vision and Sound opens on 15 September at 45 Park Lane in London.
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Photographers
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A snow-covered stag in London and tree frogs enjoying a "pool party" are among the stars of this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. A collection of 14 highly commended pictures have been unveiled by the Natural History Museum (NHM) as part of its annual competition, now in its 58th year.
The photographs include a majestic snow-covered red deer stag, snapped in Richmond Park, southwest London, by seven-year-old Joshua Cox. Image: 'The snow stag' captured by seven-year-old Joshua. Pic: Joshua Cox/ Wildlife Photographer of the Year Image: 'Treefrog pool party'. Pic: Brandon Guell / Wildlife Photographer of the Year The schoolboy captured the image after he and his father followed a group of deer at a safe distance, before one stopped as the snowfall intensified."He (the deer) almost looked as if he was having a snow shower," Joshua said.
Other entries include an other-worldly image of European perch swimming through a sheet of algae snapped by Tiina Tormanen and a giraffe "disappearing" in Nairobi, Kenya, captured by Jose Fragozo.They are joined by a shot of a polar bear leaning out of a window at an abandoned settlement, an eye-to-eye view of a southern right whale and an inquisitive dog sniffing a sloth. More on Animals Beluga whale lost in River Seine, France dangerously thin and refusing food Drone footage reveals seal's attempts to evade pod of hungry killer whales After three weeks on the run in an airport, Rowdy the cat is captured An exhibition of the top 100 images submitted to the competition opens at the NHM in South Kensington, southwest London, on 14 October before going on a UK and international tour.This year's showcase includes entries from photographers of all ages from 93 different countries. Each entry was judged anonymously based on its creativity, originality and technical excellence by an international panel of industry experts.NHM director Dr Doug Gurr said the entries reflect some of the world's best photography talent and encourage "curiosity, connection and wonder". Image: 'The right look'. Pic: Richard Robinson/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Image: 'Polar frame'. Pic: Dmitry Kokh/Wildlife Photographer of the Year "These inspiring images convey human impact on the natural world in a way that words cannot - from the urgency of declining biodiversity to the inspiring bounce-back of a protective species," he said.Chair of the judging panel, Roz Kidman Cox, added: "What's stayed with me is not just the extraordinary mix of subjects in this year's collection - a vast panorama of the natural world - but the emotional strength of so many of the pictures." Image: 'Dipper dispute'. Pic: Heikki Nikki/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Image: 'Underwater wonderland'. Pic:Tiina Tormanen/Wildlife Photographer of the Year Image: 'Sloth dilemma'. Pic: Suzi Eszterhas/Wildlife Photographer of the Year The winning images will be announced on 11 October at an awards ceremony hosted by wildlife presenter and conservationist Chris Packham.A picture of a rare underwater spawning that happens just once a year around a full moon was crowned the winner of the adult 2021 contest.The image by French underwater photographer and biologist, Laurent Ballesta, had an "otherworldly beauty" and revealed a "fleeting moment of fascinating animal behaviour" witnessed by very few people.Ten-year-old Vidyun R Hebbar was awarded the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year prize in 2021 for "Dome Home", depicting a tent spider in the city of Bengaluru, India.
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Photographers
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For the photographer who’s overwhelmed by all the equipment they need to set up before snapping the perfect shot, Benro will soon be introducing what it claims to be the “world’s first auto-leveling travel tripod,” which uses self-adjusting legs to perfectly level itself at the push of a button.
Setting up a tripod is far from the most difficult task on a photographer’s to-do list, but it can take a few attempts of shortening and lengthening the legs to get the head perfectly level. It’s even more challenging on rough terrain, where each of the tripod’s feet can end up at different heights and re-adjustments frequently need to be made whenever the tripod is moved or repositioned. Let’s be clear: aspiring photographers aren’t abandoning their passion because tripods are too unwieldy, but it’s neat to see a tripod make these adjustments all on its own.
Although Benro doesn’t go into detail about how the self-extending legs on the Theta work, the mechanism apparently allows for manual adjustments too, with added failsafes. If a photographer forgets to fully lock one of the leg segments after making an adjustment, the powered mechanism can take over and lock them in place in the event the tripod starts to tip over, protecting an attached camera from a nasty fall.
It doesn’t sound like the Benro Theta is a one-trick pony, either. The legs are made from strong but lightweight carbon fiber with an aluminum ball head atop that can be panned and tilted to make additional adjustments to an attached camera. And it’s compatible with a collection of optional modules that attach to the Theta’s center column. These include a Battery Module that literally powers the auto-leveling feature, a GoLive module for live-streaming from a camera, a Camera Control module that serves as a wireless remote and adds wireless connectivity to a mobile app, and an Optical Matrix Sensor module that detects the lighting conditions and can make adjustments to a camera’s shooting settings for extended timelapse photography.
The Benro Theta will be available in two versions: a travel-friendly 2.9-pound version for $349, and a larger 3.3-pound Theta Max model that costs $399 and boosts payload capacity from 24.3-pounds to 44.1-pounds for larger cameras. The optional modules range in price from $50 to $99, which means you’ll have to add $50 to the price tag for the Battery Module that enables the Theta’s most notable feature.
You can’t buy either model just yet, however, as Benro will be going the crowdfunding route with a Kickstarter expected to launch sometime this month. So you can expect those prices to be only available to those who eagerly back the campaign when it launches. If you’d rather hold off until the Kickstarter meets its funding goal or when product actually starts shipping, it looks like the MSRP for both tripod models will jump by $250 to $300.
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Photographers
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Photographers have captured some spectacular images of a 'supermoon' as it illuminated global skies last night. Eager photographers snapped stunning photos of the lunar phenomenon from around the world, including New York, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Istanbul, Dubai, Kansas City, Frankfurt and more. A supermoon occurs when a full moon nearly coincides with perigee – the point in the orbit of the moon at which it is nearest to the Earth. This means a supermoon can appear as much as 14 per cent larger and 30 per cent brighter than a normal full moon, depending on the time of year. Nicknames that are used to describe the moon were historically used to track the seasons and therefore are closely related to nature. 'Sturgeon' is the common name for August's full moon because historically the large fish was easily caught at this time of year. Not every August full moon is a supermoon however; there are usually three or four supermoons annually or sometimes even fewer, and when exactly they occur differs from year to year. This supermoon is the last for the year but there is still a meteor shower for the public to enjoy this weekend. Eager photographers snapped stunning photos of the lunar phenomenon from around the world, with images coming in from Dubai, San Francisco, Frankfurt and more The Sturgeon supermoon, which is the final supermoon of the year, rises behind The Shard in London on Thursday August 11 The supermoon rises above the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco skyline as seen from Sausalito, California on Thursday A couple watch the Sturgeon supermoon, the final supermoon of the year, rise over a hill in Ealing, west London on Thursday, August 11, 2022 The Sturgeon supermoon is seen as a shimmering yellow orb as it rises over the Royal Liver Building in Liverpool on Thursday The full Sturgeon supermoon rises through the summer haze, silhouetting the lookout tower on Weymouth's Stone Pier, West Dorset (August 11) In this spectacular image, the Sturgeon supermoon rises behind Edinburgh Castle during the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo firework display on Thursday night The supermoon rises in the sky over the Gulf emirate of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, August 11, 2022. The Sturgeon supermoon is the last supermoon that will appear in 2022 The stunning supermoon rises beyond the Art Deco spire of the Power and Light building in downtown Kansas City, Missouri The Sturgeon supermoon is pictured here as it rises behind Edinburgh Castle during the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo firework display on Thursday An airplane flies past the Sturgeon supermoon as it rises above New York City on August 11, 2022, as seen from West Orange, New Jersey The supermoon sets behind apartment houses in the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany, in the early hours of Friday, August 1It's well known that a full moon occurs roughly every 29.5 days, but a supermoon is a much rarer event. In 2022, there have been four supermoons according to the Old Farmer's Almanac, on May 16, June 14 and July 13, and August 11. In 2023 there will be only two supermoons – August 1 and August 31.Although a supermoon is a full moon, it appears bigger and brighter in the sky than a normal full moon. Last night, the moon came within 224,591 miles of Earth – close enough to officially be termed a 'supermoon'. At the point in the Moon's orbit when it's closest to the Earth, it appears 14 per cent bigger than a micromoon, and vice versa A supermoon occurs when a full moon nearly coincides with perigee – the point in the orbit of the moon at which it is nearest to the Earth. It's pictured here as seen from Melville, New York last night Almost looking like the sun thanks to a bright orange glow, the supermoon rises behind the Dovercourt Lower Lighthouse in Essex The August full Moon is called the Sturgeon Moon because the Algonquin tribes of North America named it after the abundance of Sturgeon in the rivers at this time of the year The Sturgeon supermoon moon (so called because it appears in August) rises next to Istanbul's Camlica Mosque on August 11, 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey The supermoon dominates the skyline over the Hagia Sophia Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey last night. Supermoons occur because the moon orbits the Earth on an elliptical path, rather than a circular one - meaning its distance from Earth changes The stunning, orange-tinted Sturgeon supermoon rises above buildings in the Jornanian capital Amman, on August 11, 2022 It's pictured here in the clear night sky from behind the Needles lighthouse on the Isle of Wight at dusk at the end of a scorching hot daySupermoons occur because the moon orbits the Earth on an elliptical path, rather than a circular one.This means there is a point in its 29.5-day orbit where it is closest to the Earth and, at certain times of the year, it passes this point during a full moon.A supermoon occurs when the full moon nearly coincides with perigee – the point in the orbit of the moon at which it is nearest to the Earth. This means it appears up to 14 per cent larger and 30 per cent brighter than normal, when viewed from Earth. Mr Moonlight! The supermoon is pictured over the historic Royal Liver Building in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, last night The Royal Liver Building, located at Liverpool's Pier Head, is one of the city's 'Three Graces' that line the city's waterfront Although a supermoon is a full moon, it appears bigger and brighter in the sky than a normal full moon. It's pictured here as seen from Pier 17, Brooklyn, New York A plane in silhouette looks like a falling leaf as it's dwarfed by last night's supermoon in this shot taken in London. When a full moon appears at perigee, the moon looks brighter and larger than a regular moon, hence the nickname supermoon Thursday's supermoon is seen here behind the tall buildings that make up the banking district in the city of Frankfurt, GermanyA person turns to watch the last supermoon of the year in the early morning hours above Kosice, Slovakia on Friday, August 12Full moon names, which are used to describe the supermoons, were historically used to track the seasons and therefore are closely related to nature. August's Sturgeon moon gets its name because 'the giant sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain were most readily caught during this part of summer', says the Old Farmer's Almanac. Other names include the Snow Moon in February to coincide with heavy snow and the Worm Moon in March at a time when the Sun increasingly warmed the soil and earthworms became active. FULL MOON NAMES AND THEIR MEANINGS January: Wolf Moon because wolves were heard more often at this time.February: Snow Moon to coincide with heavy snow.March: Worm Moon as the Sun increasingly warmed the soil and earthworms became active.April: Pink Moon as it heralded the appearance of Phlox subulata or moss pink – one of spring's first flowers.May: Flower Moon because of the abundance of blossoms.June: Strawberry Moon because it appeared when the strawberry harvest first took place.July: Buck Moon as it arrived when a male deer's antlers were in full growth mode.August: Sturgeon Moon after the large fish that was easily caught at this time.September: Corn Moon because this was the time to harvest corn.October: Hunter's Moon after the time to hunt in preparation for winter.November: Beaver Moon because it was the time to set up beaver traps.December: Cold Moon because nights at this time of year were the longest.Source: Old Farmer's Almanac Another shot of the moon behind Edinburgh Castle last night. Not every August full moon is a supermoon; there are usually three or four supermoons annually Sturgeon supermoon rises over Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The moon is an astronomical body orbiting Earth and is the planet's only natural satellite known as Selene or Luna Another shot from Eindhoven in the Netherlands on Thursday night. When exactly supermoon occur differs from year to year While the closest point in the moon's orbit is called perigee - which creates an unusually large supermoon - its farthest point is called apogee, creating a 'micromoon'. Pictured, last night's supermoon as seen in Eindhoven in the Netherlands The moon appears with an out-of-focus street lamp, as seen in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. This supermoon is the last for the year but there is still a meteor shower for the public to enjoy this weekend The moon's dimpled surface can be seen in this view of the last supermoon of the year 2022, known as the Sturgeon Supermoon, in Panama City, Panama Supermoons are relatively rare because the moon's orbital path around the Earth is elliptical instead of circular, meaning that full moons rarely occur when the moon is also at its perigee. Pictured, view from Eindhoven in the Netherlands Most full moons occur when the moon is further away from the Earth, making it seem dimmer and not quite as big as it does during a supermoon (Eindhoven in the Netherlands) Supermoon rises in Mumbles, Swansea, Wales, last night. The moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the fifth largest moon in the solar systemThis weekend also marks the peak of the Perseids Meteor Shower, which could see around 150 meteors in the sky per hour. Perseids is often dubbed the best of the year because of how bright and active it is. Known as the 'fiery tears of Saint Lawrence', the celestial event takes place when the Earth ploughs through galactic debris left by the passing of the Swift-Tuttle Comet.Royal Observatory Greenwich calls it 'one of the most dramatic things to see in the night sky between July and August'.This year, the peak of the Perseids falls on the night of August 12 (Friday) and before dawn on August 13 (Saturday). The meteors are called Perseids because they seem to dart out of Perseus, a constellation in the northern sky, which itself is named after the Greek mythological hero Perseus Known as the 'fiery tears of Saint Lawrence', the celestial event takes place when the Earth ploughs through galactic debris left by the passing of the Swift-Tuttle Comet Meteors, also known as shooting stars, come from leftover comet particles and bits from broken asteroidsDuring this period, there could be up to 150 shooting stars per hour this year, according to Royal Observatory Greenwich. The Met Office told MailOnline that skies are expected to be completely clear for much of the UK, with excellent viewing conditions for the shower.'Clear skies are also expected for most of the UK on Friday night for the Perseids meteor showers,' a Met Office spokesperson said'However again there will be a layer of cloud in northwest Scotland making for poor viewing conditions here.'It's possibly that light from the moon could make the Perseids harder to see. When watching for meteors, the darker the sky the better.'The bright moon may also make viewing the meteor shower a little more difficult at times,' the Met Office spokesperson said. REMAINING METEOR SHOWERS IN 2022 Perseids: August 12-13 – 100 per hour – Bright, fast meteors with trainsDraconids: October 8-9 – 10 per hour – From comet Giacobini-ZimmerOrionids: October 21-22 – 25 per hour – Fast with fine trainsTaurids: October 10-11 (Southern), November 12-13 (Northern) – 5 per hour – Very slowLeonids: November 17-18 – 10 per hour – Fast and brightGeminids: December 14-15 – 150 per hour – Bright and plentiful, few trainsUrsids: December 22-23 – 10 per hour – Sparse shower Note: Dates refer to each shower's peak
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Photographers
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Adobe Lightroom has been the industry standard for a while now and if you ask a photographer what editing software they use, there’s a high chance the answer will be Lightroom. This, along with Adobe Photoshop, are what many other software makers model their interfaces on — this is one of the reasons why it tops our best photo editing apps guide.
There isn’t much that you can’t do in Lightroom as a photographer. It’s known primarily for its unrivaled image organization and cataloging features, but it’s also excellent at image editing and has recently adopted some of the features of Photoshop. There are also many options to share your images, and even make them into a book or prints. While it can’t do everything, there’s not a lot it can’t do.
Lightroom is great for beginners all the way through to advanced or professional photographers. If you're looking for editing tips, check out our how to edit photos in Lightroom guide, and here are nine Lightroom tips and tricks you may not know.
Adobe Lightroom review 2023
Lightroom: Pricing and Subscription
Currently, Lightroom is on a subscription basis only, which in the past has divided opinions among its users. Many users like to outright own the software they use and would rather pay a one-time fee to purchase it, whereas others might find smaller monthly payments more affordable and manageable.
Lightroom is available to download on its own (opens in new tab) for $9.99/m or as part of the Photography package (opens in new tab) together with Photoshop for $9.99/m, which we think is a great deal (particularly as Photoshop (opens in new tab) is $20.99/m on its own). In this package, you’ll get both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic as well as Photoshop.
Lightroom (opens in new tab) (formerly known as Lightroom CC) is an integrated cloud-based application that is great for sharing your images across the cloud onto different devices, and Lightroom Classic is a full-fat desktop-based application. For this review, we will primarily be using Lightroom Classic.
Adobe Lightroom 2023: Navigation & Layout
- Can be daunting at first
- Once you're used to the layout, it's unlikely to change with future updates
- Bit of a boring grey layout
In Lightroom Classic, there are a selection of different panels. The main panel along the top is made up of Library, Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print and Web modules. There’s a panel on the left which options vary depending on which of the main modules you’ve selected, and there’s a panel on the right which is where you will find all the editing tools, and in the middle and bottom of the interface you’ll find your images.
The two modules you’ll likely be spending most of your time in will be the Library and Develop modules. The library module is, no shock here, where you can organize your library of images and create folders and collections. The develop module is where the image editing is done.
When importing images from your computer or SD card, you can easily select which images you’d like to import and import them straight into a collection, which will help to keep your catalog organized.
Overall, the layout and navigation have stayed pretty consistent throughout all the updates over the years, and even though it may seem daunting at first, it’s pretty straightforward to use once you’re used to it. That said, it could do with jazzing up a bit, rather than just being grey-on-grey-on-grey — although you can change the background color when you're working in the develop module.
Adobe Lightroom 2023: Organization
- Create collections and folders of all your images
- Easily flag, rate and label your images
- Share your images across multiple devices
Where Lightroom stands out against the competition is down to the organization it offers. The organization and cataloging tools in Lightroom are beneficial for casual hobbyist photographers all the way up to professional photographers who shoot events and weddings and come back with thousands of photos at a time.
There’s no right or wrong way to organize your photos, and thankfully, Lightroom doesn’t push a certain system onto you, so you can really customize it and make it your own, which we really appreciate.
When you’re sorting through a batch of images, you can easily flag images, label them with a particular color or give them a star rating — for example, green to keep, red to trash; three stars on the shots you want to edit, that sort of thing.
Not only that but you can also assign keywords to your images so if you’re looking for a certain photo in the future and you aren’t sure where to find it, you just search for the keyword and it’ll bring up all the shots containing that word. You can also use the map to set the locations of your images, so if you want to find photos from a certain location, you can just search for that specific location (a great option for travel photographers).
Once you’ve finished organizing and editing, you can then share your images across multiple devices with Lightroom. Though we find it just as easy to export to an external file-sharing app like Dropbox, so if you don’t want to have to figure out how to navigate two different Lightroom interfaces, that could be a better option.
Adobe Lightroom 2023: Image Editing
- Recent introduction of editing with masks
- Can edit just about anything
- Not many astro-specific features
Lightroom is an incredibly powerful editing tool with a whole catalog of different editing tools and features. When it comes to editing Astro images, Lightroom is fantastic for editing colors and exposure levels, though the one feature it's missing is the option to stack multiple images together. Aside from that, it’s a pretty powerful beast for editing any type of photograph.
All the editing takes place within the Develop module, and here’s where you’ll find all the standard editing tools like exposure, contrast, saturation, lights & shadows, and so on. If you’re not wanting to spend hours on one image, you can just hit the Auto button and it will fix all the basic settings for you in just one click. But you can delve so much deeper than that.
You can edit all the hue, saturation and luminance of each individual color in the HSL/Color panel, adjust all the light levels with the tone curve, use the Color Grading panel to adjust the colors in the highlights, midtones and shadows of an image, and even adjust the geometry of an image and perform any lens corrections.
One of the more recent additions to Lightroom since our previous Adobe Lightroom review is the introduction of masks. Similar to what you’ll find in Photoshop, you can now add Mask layers in Lightroom to adjust the settings of different aspects of an image. This is useful for astrophotography as you can edit the sky and foreground of an image separately, instead of applying edits to the entire image. You can do this in a number of different ways.
The easiest way would be to click the Masking tool (or shift + W on a Mac) and use ‘Select Sky”. Lightroom will then automatically select the sky portion of your image, so any adjustments you make will then only apply to the selected sky. Then to do the same for the rest of the image, you just click on “Duplicate and Invert Mask”, and it will automatically select anything that wasn’t selected in the original sky layer. There are a load more layer types you can play around with, but this one is the most useful for astrophotography images.
While there aren't many astrophotography-specific features, they have added a neat new feature in their latest update which will be advantageous for editing astro images. There's now an AI-powered denoise feature, as well as still having the option to reduce noise manually. We used this on an astro image with an ISO of 3200, and we were very impressed with how it cleaned up the image without eliminating any of the fainter stars, which you often get with manual noise reduction. It does take a few minutes to complete this process, but we were very impressed with the results. We whacked it all the way up to 100% for the purposes of this review, but you can set the slider anywhere between 0% - 100% depending on how much noise reduction you'd like.
Lightroom is also great for batch editing — particularly useful if you shoot portraits or events, or if you just have a very distinct style and want to apply similar edits to all your images. You can easily apply an edit or preset to many different images at once, saving hours of work and having to edit them all individually.
Lightroom editing is also non-destructive, so any edits you make will not change the original RAW file. You can go back to any and every step in your editing process via the History tab, and only when you export the file will your changes then become permanent — even then, your RAW file will remain untouched.
Should you buy Lightroom?
In our opinion: Yes. Lightroom is one of the most widely used image editing platforms out there and provides a great balance of image editing with image organizing. Unless you’re doing super professional or niche stuff like tethering or image stacking, then Lightroom will be able to do pretty much anything you want it to do.
We get that it’s annoying having to pay for it on a subscription basis rather than having the option to buy the software outright, but we think the $9.99 photography package is a great deal when you consider how much the apps would be if you bought them on their own, and just how much you can do with those two apps. Plus, every time there's an update or a new version, you can just update straight to that version. The disadvantage of buying software outright is that when a new version comes out, you need to pay out for that new version as well.
If, however, you are only a casual photographer who prefers not to edit photos that much, Lightroom may not be the one for you, and you may want to consider another software that you can pay outright for.
If Adobe Lightroom 2023 isn't for you
We believe that on the whole, Adobe Lightroom 2023 is a great tool for any and every photographer. That said, there are bound to be reasons why some users may or may not get on with it. If Lightroom or Lightroom Classic doesn't sound right for you after reading this review — check out some of the following alternatives.
If it's photo manipulation you're after, try checking out Photoshop (opens in new tab). Although it can do most of the same things Lightroom is capable of, Photoshop focuses mainly on photo manipulation through a layer-based method as opposed to just editing the light levels and colors. With Lightroom, you can only really edit what's already there, whereas in Photoshop you have the freedom to add and remove things from your images, blend them together to create composites and delve deeper into which parts of your image you can edit. If you like the sound of this but don't want a subscription, check out Photoshop Elements (opens in new tab)which you can purchase for a one-off fee (currently $99.99) and you'll get a stripped-down version of Photoshop, but still keeping all the most used features.
If, however, it's the subscription part of Lightroom that you don't like, try checking out Affinity Photo 2 (opens in new tab). Affinity Photo has the best parts of Lightroom and Photoshop combined, with different 'personas' (essentially different sections) for editing your image. There are some neat astrophotography features in the newest version (keep your eyes peeled for our review coming soon), and Affinity is available to purchase for a one-off payment for a license, meaning you'll own the software.
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Photographers
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National Geographic announced the winning photographs from its first "Pictures of the Year" photo competition.
The contest, which opened to U.S. residents in early December, invited readers to submit a digital photograph in one of four categories: nature, people, places and animals.
The contest required that photographs be largely unaltered. According to the rules, "only minor burning, dodging and/or color correction is acceptable, as is minor cropping." Photos with other changes are "unacceptable and ... ineligible for a prize."
Karthik Subramaniam, a software engineer in San Francisco who is passionate about wildlife photography, clinched the grand prize. He said he captured his winning shot at the end of a weeklong photography trip in Haines, Alaska, which hosts the world's largest congregation of bald eagles each fall.
As Subramaniam watched the eagles hunt for salmon in their fishing grounds, an eagle swooped in to steal another's perch on a tree.
"Hours of observing their patterns and behavior helped me capture moments like these," he said.
The photo will be featured in an upcoming issue of National Geographic's U.S. magazine.
In addition to the grand prize winner, Nat Geo also gave honorable mentions to several "winners." Their photos will be published on National Geographic's Your Shot Instagram page, which has some 6.5 million followers.
Most of those photographs, along with information provided by Nat Geo, are published below.
The six-month lava flow that covered the surrounding landscape in hard black rock was "an exhibition of the raw and awesome power of nature," said Riten Dharia, who photographed the scene on the Reykjanes Peninsula.
In this photograph, a nomadic Kazakh eagle hunter on horseback prepares his golden eagle for a hunt in Bayan-Olgii, Mongolia, where training eagles to hunt is a 3000-year tradition, according to Nat Geo.
To capture the moment, photographer Eric Esterle lay on his stomach at the edge of the stream as the horse passed less than a few feet away, he said.
"I remember covering my camera with my body and putting my head down," he said.
Seeing this golden tree hidden among tall trunks in the forest gave photographer Alex Berger "goosebumps," he said.
Berger said he spotted it by a small stream while on a road trip through the Austrian Alps.
The mountain ranges of the Alps stretch about 750 miles through eight countries.
Rhez Solano photographed this crowd of king penguins on the beaches of Gold Harbour on the island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean.
The island hosts king penguins along with gentoo penguins and elephant seals.
Roughly half of the island is covered in ice, and there is no permanent human population living on it, though travelers can visit it by cruise ship or yachts, according to its governmental website.
Freelance photographer Tihomir Trichkov said he took this shot while headed home from the airport early one morning in October.
It captures fog that had settled over a valley visible from North Carolina's Blue Ridge Parkway.
The scene depicts "the little slice of heaven that I live in," Trichkov said of his home in Highlands, North Carolina.
"The Smoky Mountains are simply gorgeous," he said.
This photo depicts the night sky reflected in the waters of Tipsoo Lake in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.
From across the lake, photographer W. Kent Williamson said he could see the lantern lights of climbers heading to Mount Rainier's 14,411-foot summit.
"The night sky was unusually clear, and the Milky Way could be seen just above the mountain," he said.
A lone salt miner uses a wooden rake to extract salt from a hillside at Peru's Salt Mines of Maras in this photograph captured by An Li.
The mines comprise around 4,500 salt wells, each of which produces some 400 pounds of salt per month. Families who own the wells continue the tradition of salt extraction that dates back to the Inca Empire.
The contest is Nat Geo's latest effort to highlight photography from contributors.
It launched alongside the magazine's annual "Pictures of the Year" issue, which features the best 49 photos taken by Nat Geo photographers, chosen from more than 2 million submissions.
The goal of the "Picture of the Year" contest is to provide aspiring photographers the "same spotlight," according to Nat Geo.
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Photographers
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Camera and lens prices keep going up, but somehow, Fujifilm’s latest medium format mirrorless flagship includes a bunch of new features but costs significantly less than its predecessor. Fujifilm has announced its new GFX100 II camera at its X Summit livestream from Stockholm, Sweden, and in addition to a new sensor, new subject-detecting autofocus, and full-width 4K video, the new camera will have a price of $7,499 when it comes out in the fall, about $2,500 less than the GFX100.
Couple that with a new $2,299 55mm f/1.7 R WR lens (equivalent to a 44mm in full frame) and a pair of tilt-shift 30mm and 110mm lenses ($3,999 and $3,499, respectively) also launching in the fall, and the somewhat dormant GFX line suddenly looks to have some life in it.
At first glance, the GFX100 II looks more like its lower-cost GFX100S cousin than the original GFX100 it’s poised to replace. The 100 II has a shorter, more standard-size body that’s smaller and lighter than its tall-boy forebear. The vertical grip is now an optional add-on, but what the new camera loses in stature, it tries to make up for in specs. The GFX100 II’s 43.8 x 32.9mm sensor, which has 1.7x more surface area than the 35mm full frame, maintains the same 102-megapixel resolution, but its ISO range now hits a lower floor with a range of 80 to 12,800 (rather than its predecessor’s 100 to 12,800 range), and its full-width 4K recording can now do 60 frames per second, twice its previous frame rate.
102-megapixel stills and 8K video
Also in the speed department, the GFX100 II borrows the fifth-generation X-Processor from Fujifilm’s X-H2S and X-H2 cameras. Along with the processor comes subject-detection autofocus and the ability to record 4:2:2 10-bit Apple ProRes to its dual SDXC or CFexpress Type-B memory cards.
In addition, the GFX100 II’s new tricks include allowing that same subject tracking to be used in video, and the camera can achieve 8K / 30p recording when cropped to 1.44x — which will be the true pixel-to-pixel 8K resolution on its medium format sensor. There’s no telling just yet how the camera’s combination of a smaller body and 8K recording will be able to handle overheating; Fujifilm has made its existing add-on cooling fan compatible with the GFX100 II to try and assist.
While all that’s great for video, photographers may appreciate that the GFX100 II has a new 9.44 million-dot electronic viewfinder, can shoot up to 8fps (pretty fast for medium format), has a new film simulation called Reala Ace (based on Reala color negative film), and its adjustable rear LCD quickly tilts up, down, or to the side like that of the Fujifilm X-T5. Keep in mind that while this style of screen may be faster to deploy for quick from-the-hip shots, it sacrifices the ability to point forward for self-recording.
The GFX100 was a well regarded yet specialized camera when it came out in 2019, and now the GFX100 II’s more aggressive pricing and smaller form factor seem aimed at making Fujifilm’s flagship more approachable to those who want to make the jump to medium format. It’s still a pricey system, but it wasn’t many years ago that just being in the medium format conversation easily meant a cost of $20,000 to $40,000 or more for a camera body designed to live in the studio. The GFX100 II looks about as jack-of-all-trades as medium format has ever been for a price that’s a fraction of what it used to be.
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Photographers
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PhotoPills is a map, a calculator and a celestial almanac rolled into one and much more besides. Photos of the moon setting behind the Statue of Liberty, the Milky Way arching across the night sky between two rock formations and a composite showing the stages of a solar eclipse; all of these photos of alignments have something in common — they were likely planned using PhotoPills. Designed to solve specific problems (hence the name 'pills') for photographers of all kinds, PhotoPills is particularly useful for astrophotographers and night photographers.
Although astrophotographers largely use it to find the right shooting spot on the correct date and at the right time to capture a specific event, PhotoPills is also helpful for finding the settings to take the shot, such as deciding which lens to use and calculating the exposure settings. It’s also a place to learn new techniques and to share images with a community of other users.
We review why you need to get PhotoPills if you’re serious about learning or becoming better at, astrophotography.
- Download PhotoPills app via PhotoPills.com
PhotoPills app review
PhotoPills app: Pricing and Subscription
- Originally launched in 2013
- Available for Android and iOS
- Costs from $10.99 (£9.49)
First released in 2013 and relaunched as PhotoPills 2.0 in 2015 for iOS and for Android in 2017, PhotoPills was created by a company of developers based in Menorca, Spain. Available for both Android ($10.99/£9.49) and iOS ($10.99/£10.99), they continue to add new and exciting features.
PhotoPills app: User Interface
- Simple grid design
- Steep learning curve
- No landscape mode for smartphones
PhotoPills has a simple grid-based user interface that’s clear and easy to use, though it only works in portrait mode on a smartphone. There are three pages to flick through on the main hub page, but it’s the default page 'Pills' that has all the essential apps. Front and center are 'Planner', 'Sun' and 'Moon', which give the astrophotographer everything they need to plan specific shots.
'Planner' shows where on the horizon the sun, moon and Milky Way will set. The app can use your device’s GPS location, but it’s easy enough to drag the pin to where you’ll be on a future date for a specific shot.
The map in 'Planner' is customizable, too, with options to swap between Google, Apple and OpenStreetMap maps and between satellite, terrain and other styles. The dedicated Sun and Moon pages are much simpler, merely showing a text-based chronology for any particular day to include the exact rise and set times, the precise times of 'golden hour' and 'blue hour' as well as nautical twilight and the all-important astronomical twilight. There’s also a simple moon phase calculator, which makes it obvious which 10 nights of the month the night sky will be the darkest.
Elsewhere the app has a bunch of calculators that are similarly easy to use, typically on one page, and provide instant results. For most of them, the user needs to enter their exact camera and/or lens — searchable from an archive — to receive automatic recommendations for settings. These calculators are a huge time-saver and, crucially, they’re very easy to use, with all kinds of parameters that you can tweak for the perfect result.
On either side of the main Pills page are pages for both My Stuff and Academy. The former has a Plan section that details the shooting locations and positions you’ve previously researched (a Point of Interest can be shared, accompanied by a small KMZ file to export into Google Earth).
The Academy page brings you the community aspect of PhotoPills, which comprises a library of Points of Interest (a map infested with spectacular points of interest from which to take photographs, though not specifically geared towards astrophotographers) and an Awards section that highlights inspirational shots from the PhotoPills community. The fact that you’ll find plenty of recently viral astrophotography shots here is proof that PhotoPills is used by many of the best astrophotographers around today.
PhotoPills app: Key Features
- Sun, moon and Milky Way almanac
- Night AR mode
- Exposure calculator
There’s so much in PhotoPills that it can take many months, and even years, to fully learn to use it properly, much like a camera. The main feature is Planner, which shows you at a glance the exact sightline, azimuth and altitude for the sun and the moon. This allows photographers to shoot them, particularly at sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset, from any location on a map. The date and time can be easily changed, but sensibly not by accident since that menu is hidden in the 'More' section.
Previously saved plans can be loaded, as can specific points of interest across the globe from a database, while places you choose can also be saved for later (it’s even possible to load a location using a geotagged photo on your phone). For instance, say there’s a total solar eclipse coming up; it’s possible to plan exactly where to stand to have the eclipsed sun just above a mountain (thus avoiding a catastrophic mistake and making a beautiful image possible) and save that information for when it’s needed. In theory, you could skip through the next few years of solar eclipses, lunar eclipses and monthly rises of the full moon and prepare for them all in one long PhotoPills session.
Two other really useful tools, both for when you’re planning shots and for when you’re out in the field shooting on location, are AR and Night AR, which overlay the paths of the sun and the moon on the sky. The latter adds the Milky Way’s exact position, which changes according to the time as you move a finger across the screen. As visualizations go, these are simple but slick. Perhaps the only feature it lacks that would be useful, particularly by day, is a user-friendly AR visualization of the landscape and how the shadows will change upon it (something its rival The Photographer's Ephemeris offers).
Other features for general photography include Exposure and DoF (Depth of Field) calculators, alongside a Time-Lapse mode to aid in the calculation of the total number of photos required and the interval between them to produce a time-lapse of a specific length.
PhotoPills app: Astrophotography Features
- Planner has exhaustive features
- Night AR mode for the galactic center
- Works with solar and lunar eclipses
Although its data on the exact timings of 'golden hour' and 'blue hour' make PhotoPills an excellent tool for all kinds of photographers, it’s of most use if you want to capture sunrises and sunsets, moonrises and moonsets, meteor showers, star-trails, solar and lunar eclipses and the Milky Way.
A typical use-case for astrophotography — both wide-field and close-up — is the appearance of the galactic core, the part of the Milky Way richest in star fields and nebulas. Using Planner, it’s possible to pinpoint a location and get sightlines to the galactic center — the brightest part of the Milky Way, which is best photographed in spring in the northern hemisphere. At the top of the screen are the exact times for the rise and set of whichever object you choose, and as you fast-forward time the screen turns blue as twilight begins. Night AR mode then allows you to see where the galactic core will be as the night wears on.
You can go a little deeper by dropping a black pin on your target subject, which will give you the distance to it, the altitude difference and its azimuth position. That means that you can plan a photo with the Sagittarius cloud right behind, say, an observatory on a mountain ridge — and you can get a shooting schedule down to the minute. If you remember that azimuth reading and use a stargazing app (with an azimuth grid displayed), you’ll be able to find out exactly which stars, clusters and nebulas will be above your subject, and at what time.
It can get complicated, but most users are only going to need to know about finding their position and reading when and where the Milky Way will rise and set, when astronomical twilight will be and when the moon will rise. The main problem is that with so many different sightlines for the moon, sun and galaxy the screen can look really cluttered. We’re also not convinced that 'Visibility GC' for the galactic core is easy for beginners to understand. A third issue is that the app’s indication of the brightness of the galactic core doesn’t take into account the position of moonrise and moonset, only the phase of the moon.
Once in the field, PhotoPills continued to be extremely useful, mostly for its exposure calculator, which we used to calculate the correct exposure for the foreground. Rather usefully, it presents both 'Test settings' and 'Equivalent settings' so that it’s possible to take a very short 'throwaway' exposure using a very high ISO. Once you’re happy with how the foreground looks — save for the high ISO noise — PhotoPills can then calculate the equivalent shutter speed for a much lower ISO (resulting in a very long exposure). It’s also sensible here to move to a higher aperture figure to increase sharpness, which the calculator can also account for.
Other features specifically for astrophotographers include sections for meteor showers (a list of the peak dates of the most active ones together with moon illumination and rise/set times for the sun and moon), Star Trails (which gives a graphical representation of how long your trails will be for any given time period, as well as a simple timer to alert you when your trail is finished) and Spot Stars (which gives you the maximum exposure times for your equipment before stars begin to trail). It’s the latter feature in particular that is the most useful if you’re taking wide-field images of the night sky using a tripod and no star tracker.
Although these tools are easy to use and incredibly useful, perhaps the most impressive part of PhotoPills for astrophotographers is the tailored, up-to-date advice available on the PhotoPills website and the PhotoPills YouTube channel. Amid guides like Solar Eclipses 2023: The Definitive Photography Guide, How To Plan A Total Lunar Eclipse and Total Solar Eclipse April 8, 2024, it’s possible to carry out detailed preparations well in advance for some of the biggest sky events of the decade.
Should I buy the PhotoPills app?
If you’ve always wanted to capture a full moon rising behind a landmark, then the user-friendly PhotoPills is for you but there’s much more to it than that. Even if all you want to do is take a night-sky shot including a foreground, then PhotoPills will tell you exactly how long you need to expose for.
From moonrises and sunsets to eclipses and finding the bright core of the Milky Way, PhotoPills is ideal for anyone who wants to plan their astrophotography in advance — and that’s all astrophotographers. Add a useful Academy section packed with inspiration, tutorials and 'how to' articles and we think this feature-rich app is a must-have for all astrophotographers.
If PhotoPills app isn't for you
There are some alternatives to consider. Perhaps the main rival is The Photographer's Ephemeris, which also gives astrophotographers rise and set times for the sun, moon and the galactic center, and also deals in meteor showers and eclipses. It’s not as slick as PhotoPills, but landscape photographers will love how it shows a landscape’s changing light and shadow around sunrise or sunset. It’s only available for iOS devices and is similarly priced to PhotoPills at $11.99 (£9.99). However, it does have a useful, free desktop version called Photo Ephemeris Web.
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Photographers
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This week marks 15 years since the iPhone first went on sale and ushered in a new era: the age of the smartphone.It’s hard to imagine today how different mobile access was before that evening of June 29, 2007. The internet in your pocket didn’t look like, well, the internet. Social media — and the ability for everyone to respond globally to everything — was in its infancy. And while older phones certainly had cameras, the quality – and the potential for instant editing and filtering and sharing that exists today — wasn’t there yet.The modern smartphone has changed photography. To capture a snapshot of that change, we asked more than a dozen Associated Press photographers across the world who use iPhones — some of the most talented journalists in the business — to capture an image on their phone and submit it.Here is what they came up with. But first: Some words from Enric Martí, the AP deputy director of photography who oversaw the project — and who had his doubts about it at the outset. ___ENRIC MARTÍ, New York:You might call me a traditionalist. I’ve been a photographer for three decades and a photo editor for half that. I like negatives and the details they contain. I like physical things. I like full-on cameras. I liked the thought that went behind taking a 36-exposure roll of film and making tough choices about how to use each frame.Sometimes I feel photography has almost lost the magic it had before the means to take a photo and share it with the world was in our pocket. Now, you can go for an assignment and easily take 3,000 frames. And phones — everywhere, every day, millions of images. There is so much photography, and so much fake photography. You can buy a 99-cent app that removes people from photos. That’s not photography to me; to me, photography is documenting what’s really in the world.But I’m changing my mind about phone photography — sort of. I’ve been trying for a while now to see and feel the positive side of this technological evolution, so I am not perceived as a “dinosaur.” This project has helped me in that regard.The photographers whose work is shown here are pros. Colleagues. People I admire. People whose images — from our “work” cameras — I see and edit all the time. But they are also people with phones, and with cameras in their phones, and that vision — the one they use so well in covering the news — comes out in very interesting ways. I asked them to observe things, and they did — each in a unique way.In the end, I decided to add a photo of my own to this as well. Why not? I take them anyway, every day, on the street. I stopped carrying my “real” camera a long time ago, but I always have my phone. Which is kind of the point. You go through life having to change. The world is moving quickly. You have to adapt. What else are you going to do? YIRMIYAN ARTHUR, Kohima, India:The phone is a tiny, constant companion that I rely on for moments that take me by surprise. You have to be quick to catch these fleeting moments. They may not return. My phone can sing you the life story of my children in pictures.Yet a camera gives control that I don’t find possible on a phone. A lot of thought goes into building a narrative and expressing the idea embedded in the mind’s eye — even if, eventually, it is the eye behind the viewfinder. Catching the image of rain on a fast shutter would evoke a different feeling than seeing the image shot on a slow shutter speed. With a phone, I find it much harder to convert these ideas into images.I use my phone on early morning runs, a time when the moon flirts with daybreak in my mountain town and the sky displays its glory. Even cloudy days aren’t dull here, and I’m thankful that I can capture such moments on my phone.But this comes with a price. Instead of enjoying my front-row views, I’m looking into a screen. I feel increasingly dependent on this external memory keeper. It can feel intrusive. So I’m trying to convince myself to keep my phone in my pocket more, and just live the moment.BRYNN ANDERSON, Atlanta:Sometimes being a photographer with a larger camera can be intimidating to the person being photographed. Using a phone makes it easier for me to get intimate moments that might not happen. Being able to adjust the exposure to create dark shadows makes the iPhone my main camera in a pinch. If spot news occurs when I’m on vacation or out to dinner, I always have a quality camera to capture news.ODED BALILTY, Tel Aviv, Israel:Smartphones have come a long way in the last 15 years, but I don’t see them as a substitute for professional cameras.Some great work has been shot on smartphones. But it’s a lot easier to cut corners and manipulate images on smartphones — something we should all keep in mind in a time of rampant disinformation. I’m more likely to trust an image if I know it was taken by a photojournalist using professional gear (nothing to do with the gear but with the photographer’s responsibility to the truth). I don’t think there’s right or wrong. It just depends on which hat we wear on which day. It is a different tool that definitely has changed what we do. But it’s the photographer, not the device, that determines the quality of a photo.In a world with so many cameras, there are also more photography consumers. And the good thing is that photography is more popular than ever.WONG MAYE-E, New York:The only time I don’t have my phone on me is when I am asleep, swimming or reading a book. It has become completely integrated in my life. Once, someone asked me how I separate life and my work (photography); when I thought hard about it, I realized that there was no separation because I photographed life.I am a sentimental person. I love keeping memories. I photograph occasions in life that I want to remember; at work, I photograph life that happens for people. Sometimes it looks joyous and sometimes there is pain. The camera is just a tool that allows me to make snapshots of these moments. I have always done this with whatever camera that I have on me, and lately, while not at work, it has been my iPhone. I spend too much time staring at the screen, but because it’s right there in my hands at that moment, I find myself recording life in photos or video obsessively.I own many cameras. I love all of them. But admittedly having the phone with me all the time, in its small unintrusive form, has allowed me to capture moments that don’t make anyone’s head turn. Right now, my phone album has 13,793 images on it. That is a lot of moments. It is, I guess, my visual diary.NARIMAN EL-MOFTY, Cairo:The iPhone’s camera has become more of a sketch pad and personal space of thoughts, ideas, and inspiration. It’s a place I can think of process for an upcoming story and keep this ongoing stream of thoughts visually with no judgement. It has this ease on the street because of its size and familiarity. I felt like I was cheating when I used it for candid photos, and it never sat well with me. I like to manually control the whole camera to tell a story whilst physically being seen with the tool in my hand. People will then always have the right to react to me negatively or positively, and I‘m driven by that honesty. Years ago, I had a heated conversation with an Egyptian policeman. He took my camera and said I was not allowed to take photographs of the streets of Cairo. The body of my SLR is a threat, seen as a weapon. I told him: That is the main reason I love having an SLR in my hand. There is a real interaction with the environment you’re photographing, a true reaction to you as a photojournalist on the ground. It is part of the skill set and the beauty of photojournalism. Rather than the idea of “stealing a picture” with my iPhone. I told the policeman I could’ve taken photos of him, and he would have never known. Governments have since caught up. Hence, if you’re detained and questioned, the first thing that is taken is the phone.AARON FAVILA, Manila, Philippines:The quality of the phone has become truly great in recent years. Now, I seldom bring a “real” camera during family trips. I have used the phone to shoot breaking news images so I can email them straight to the desk to be used as early photos for a story. I won’t replace it for professional work, but I’m confident that if something pops up in front of me, I can dig out the phone in my pocket and shoot pictures with good enough quality.VADIM GHIRDA, Bucharest, RomaniaThis is a good example of an image that I couldn’t have taken on my camera. Most vendors and, frankly, most people in Romania get nervous if they realize a photojournalist is taking their picture even in the most mundane situations. It often leads to unpleasant interactions. The smartphone, though, seems to be a magical stress-relief device. Even if people realize that you are a journalist, they no longer, in most situations, see you as a menace. They relate to you. In adverse situations, it can save the day.DITA ALANGKARA, Jakarta, Indonesia:Shooting with smartphones opens up more opportunities on the streets of Jakarta. People are so used to see others taking photos with their gadgets that they just ignore me. This gives me a whole new perspective to explore and easily get me to the nooks and crannies of a city of 10 million people — a place where a “real camera” would feel awkward to operate.DAR YASIN, New DelhiThe photos now shot on the latest phones feel like digital art more than photographs. What you see with the naked eye is not what you get on your screen. And that for me is very unsettling. For example, the colors are oversaturated and look “touched up” when I have done nothing but pressed the shutter. The portrait mode produces blur but it’s not the same effect my regular camera gives me. These pictures definitely don’t evoke a similar thrill of a taking a good picture. I’ll admit that there are instances when I love the pictures taken on my iPhone. There is no denying the phone captures those moments very well indeed. But it’s important to realize: The “pro” label on a phone doesn’t necessarily make every owner a pro photographer. On the contrary. The photographs on a smartphone are a product of machine learning, with the machine thinking and manipulating for you. It is also true that the iPhone is kind of setting a new ‘standard’ of what a photograph should look like — and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. KHALIL HAMRA, Istanbul, TurkeyI used my iPhone to take this picture, which is what I do when I see a beautiful view and I am not carrying professional cameras. But I mostly use the iPhone camera to capture family memories. In all cases, the use of the phone does not eliminate the need for professional cameras, neither in the beauty of the picture nor in the pleasure of capturing it. Truth be told, every time I take a nice picture with my phone, I feel that something is missing and could have been better if I took it with my professional camera.ARIANA CUBILLOS, Caracas, VenezuelaI do love taking pictures of my daughter and my pets with the phone and filters. Also, I take pictures with it when something grabs my attention and my cameras are packed in my bag. It helps me to remember the spot. It is an easy, light and fast tool.Does the smart phone give you a different perspective? For me, totally. At the moment I take a picture, it feels flat on the screen. It is not the same as taking a picture looking through the viewfinder of a full camera, controlling light exposition and speed at the same time you take the photo. EMILIO MORENATTI, Barcelona, SpainFor me, the use of the phone camera is just an alternative to my conventional camera, so I only use it on rare occasions and basically to photograph or capture on video family scenes or scenes with friends, with the simple idea of documenting banal moments. Shooting with a camera is much more serious, and the result differs dramatically from shooting with a phone. Composing and capturing a scene through a viewfinder while pressing a shutter release is part of the essence of photography, and you can’t do that with a phone yet. The flat image that a phone gives you can’t compete with the photography you get from an SLR camera and a good lens, no matter how much phone photography lovers say otherwise.NATACHA PISARENKO, Buenos Aires, ArgentinaI use an iPhone instead of a camera on diverse occasions. Sometimes it’s as a reflex, when I see something I want to keep at that moment during my daily life. Sometimes it’s just that I don’t have a camera at hand, even though I’d want to. Sometimes I use the phone camera when I want to send an image immediately by message or WhatsApp — a way to communicate something to someone through an image and no words. Sometimes it’s just something I want to keep.The irony: My phone is so full that at the end, I scroll down the pictures erasing everything that does not mean that much to me. That way, I can keep using it as a camera or video recorder — and then erase it again.RODRIGO ABD, Buenos Aires, Argentina:The phone allows me to practice street photography, a branch of photography that I like because it allows me to always be attentive to the everyday without a precise news event to cover, and with only the intention of documenting the most banal moments of life. But at the end of the road will be a record of a vital moment in the life of society.FELIPE DANA, Barcelona, SpainBeing a photojournalist, I try to always carry my professional camera with me in case I come across a nice scene or any breaking news. For a long time I considered the camera on my phone only usable in cases of emergency, when you really have no other option. But ever since the first iPhone appeared 15 years ago, phone cameras have come such a long way that I admit feeling a bit less anxious knowing that I always have a very capable camera in my pocket. I will still always pick my professional camera when going on any assignment. But nowadays the photos taken with smartphones are becoming harder and harder to distinguish from those captured on pro devices. J. DAVID AKE, director of photography, New York:The iPhone makes it really easy, when I spot something I want to share with my family, to just reach into my pocket, grab the phone and make a frame. I still carry a professional high-resolution camera most places, but the ease of the iPhone to snap and share via text message means my family and friends get see what I see at almost the moment I see it. When you travel a lot and are away more than you like, that instant connection matters.___For more Associated Press photography (not shot on a smartphone), visit https://apnews.com/hub/photography
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Photographers
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A new edition of a collection of the distinctive black and white photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson is to be published in France. Almost two decades after his death, the man nicknamed “the eye of the century” for his documentation of 21st-century history remains the focus for a new generation of photographers and art lovers.Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographie.It is not clear if this would have delighted or dismayed the man who abandoned his trademark Leica 35mm rangefinder camera in the 1970s to take up drawing and painting, declaring: “I have no interest in photography.”Henri Cartier Bresson: Photographe is the 11th edition of a set of 155 photographs taken between 1926 and 1978, four years after the French photographer had resigned from the Magnum picture agency he co-founded with several colleagues including war photographers Robert Capa, killed in Indochina, and David “Chim” Seymour, shot dead near the Suez Canal in 1956.Madrid, Spain (1933), by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Photograph: Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum PhotosCatherine Philippot, representing the French publishing house Delpire, which has produced the latest edition of the book, said despite Cartier-Bresson’s later dismissal of his work he remained one of the leading names in the history of photography.“The book has been out of print for some time but there was clearly a demand for it otherwise we wouldn’t be publishing this edition,” Philippot said. “Cartier-Bresson continues to fascinate because he is one of the key photographers of historical record.”Cartier-Bresson is described by some as the godfather of photojournalism, one of the first to practise the art. In his 1952 essay entitled “The decisive moment”, he described photography as a physical ability to capture the key instant. Alberto Giacometti à la galerie Maeght, Paris (1961), by Cartier-Bresson. Photograph: Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum PhotosThe book is an extraordinary walk through 50 years of history captured by a man who saw the camera as an extension of his eye, but who spent his later years downplaying what he had previously seen and captured on film.In 1937, he travelled to the UK to cover the coronation of George VI and Elizabeth for the French weekly magazine Regards. He took pictures of ordinary people waiting in the streets of London rather than the royals.He documented the Spanish civil war and the liberation of Paris in 1944. In 1948, he photographed Mahatma Gandhi hours before he was assassinated. In 1954, he was the first western photographer invited to the Soviet Union to record life after Joseph Stalin.At one point he decided to concentrate on portraits, capturing Pablo Picasso, Albert Camus, Colette, Henri Matisse and Alberto Giacometti.The American-born photographer Marilyn Stafford, who lives in the UK, was mentored by Cartier-Bresson and Capa in Paris after the second world war. She also took one of the very few existing images of the camera-shy Cartier-Bresson at that time.“Capa and Cartier-Bresson were photography idols at the time. They were the gods,” Stafford said.Volcano of Mount Aso, Japon (1965), by Cartier-Bresson. Photograph: Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum PhotosIn the three decades he wielded a camera, Cartier-Bresson travelled around Europe, America, India, Japan, Mexico, China and the Soviet Union. He spent his last years drawing and painting, as he had in the 1920s when he had mixed with the surrealists in Paris after studying art, literature and English at Cambridge University. When he died, he left behind an estimated half a million negatives.“Everyone keeps asking me about photography, but I don’t believe in my career as a photographer,” he said in a 2003 interview a year before his death. “Photography is just about clicking the shutter, bringing your finger down at the right moment. Drawing is what matters. Photography no longer interests me.”Boston, US (1947), by Cartier-Bresson. Photograph: Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum PhotosEmmanuelle Kouchner, the director of publisher Delpire & Co, said editors had worked with the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation to improve the images in the new edition.She said: “It’s important to remember that this is a book originally created with Cartier-Bresson with his choice of images. In the end he moved on to drawing and painting, but these were the photographs he wished to be remembered for.” Henri Cartier Bresson: Photographe is published in French by Delpire and Co, €65 (£57).
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Photographers
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As we get closer to Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days sale, photography enthusiasts and budding videographers are in for a delightful surprise as major retailers are offering some significant savings. Check out our top picks below:
Navigating through the buzz of Prime Day can be daunting, but those with an interest in photography and a keen eye can strike gold with the right guidance. This year, the deals are both plentiful and impressive, offering substantial savings on top-tier camera brands that cater to a range of budgets and skill levels.
Best body-only camera deal
Why we like it
The Sony a6600, available in a body-only deal, offers notable capabilities like a steadfast Real-Time Tracking focus system, enviable battery longevity, and 4K recording, ensuring powerful performance in various shooting scenarios. Its durable build, underscored by dust and splash protection, makes it a reliable companion for outdoor photography, despite a few drawbacks like a single, slower UHS-I card slot and the omission of an in-camera flash. Nonetheless, especially at a discounted price, the a6600 presents a compelling option, skillfully balancing durability and advanced functionalities in a compact form.
Best compact camera deal
Why we like it
The Panasonic Lumix GX85 meshes compact design with high-end features like quick autofocus and a substantial 8.6fps continuous shooting with a large buffer. Despite its petite frame, it hosts an integrated electronic viewfinder, flash, and five-axis image stabilization, ensuring your captures are both sharp and well-illuminated.
Potential buyers should note the slightly cropped 4K video and absence of weather sealing, which might deter outdoor adventurers or perfectionist videographers. Nevertheless, with the discount in play, the GX85 encapsulates a tempting offer, positioning itself as a robust yet affordable entry into premium mirrorless photography.
Best instant camera deal
Why we like it
The Fujifilm Instax Mini 12 is an affordable entry into instant photography with its user-friendly one-button operation and versatile film compatibility. While it entertains with a selfie mirror and relies conveniently on AA battery power, it sidesteps additional creative pursuits by omitting features like double exposure and a tripod socket. This isn't the best pick for photographers with film experience, but it makes a great, cheap gift for newbies.
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Photographers
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NEW YORK -- On Monday night, luminaries from the world of photography will gather in Chelsea to celebrate the 70th anniversary of a nonprofit organization called Aperture.The name refers to the adjustable opening through which light passes to make a photograph, but the value of this group in 2022 comes from the way the group nurtures talented, young photographers like Tommy Kha.At Higher Pictures, a Brooklyn gallery in the shadow on the Manhattan Bridge, Kha helps the future of photography come into focus; and this has earned him Aperture's Next Step Award."It means a lot to be recognized to confirm that whatever I'm doing has been seen in some way," the photographer said.Kha grew up in Memphis, Tennessee -- the son of immigrants from Vietnam."We had a very difficult time growing up," he said, adding that there were times during elementary school when his classmates and teachers, "would comment on my accent, and my facial features" which would make him "feel really different."Kha put what he was feeling into his work. Much of his giant photographs feature his mother, and they attracted the attention of Aperture, where Sarah Meister is the Executive Director."Aperture has been connecting people through photography for 70 years," noted Meister, and she pointed out a big part of that mission has been encouraging diversity.In a presentation for Monday night's gala, Aperture Trustee Kwame S. Brathwaite calls the organization a guiding light in, "finding voices that need to be amplified and making sure that they have a platform and place to express themselves."The brief video shows how a group of famous photographers, including Ansel Adams, came together 70 years ago to put out a magazine.The organization helped establish photography as a fine art and soon grew to mount exhibits and publish books.Today, these outlets are used to encourage the next generation of artists, said Meister."The idea of the Next Step Award is to give artists at emerging stages of their career the opportunity to work with us," she said.That means Tommy Kha will get his own book and his own exhibit at Baxter Street Camera Club.The idea is to propel Kha forward to the next level in his career because, as Meister explained, "one of the most important things we can do is to support and elevate voices of artists who might otherwise not be heard."This will help to ensure Aperture can last another 70 years.ALSO READ | Andrew Lloyd Webber to transfer his 'Cinderella' to Broadway----------* Get Eyewitness News Delivered * More New York City news* Send us a news tip* Download the abc7NY app for breaking news alerts * Follow us on YouTube Submit a tip or story idea to Eyewitness News Have a breaking news tip or an idea for a story we should cover? Send it to Eyewitness News using the form below. If attaching a video or photo, terms of use apply. Copyright © 2022 OnTheRedCarpet.com. All Rights Reserved.
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Photographers
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Eamonn McCabe, who has died suddenly aged 74, was a photographer, photo editor, educator and broadcaster, and served as the Guardian’s picture editor for 13 years. And when he wasn’t shooting, editing or talking about images, he was collecting awards for doing so. His work won him picture editor of the year an unprecedented six times and sports photographer of the year four times, creating groundbreaking photographs for the Observer. From his early pictures, such as one of a table tennis player with a very high throw, or an image of Björn Borg’s gimlet eyes on a tennis ball, it was recognised that Eamonn, like Borg, had his own way of perceiving the world. He was bringing something different to sports photography and his trophy cupboard started to fill.In 1985 he won news photographer of the year for his photographs of the Heysel stadium disaster in Brussels. He was there to cover a football match, but sport was forgotten when the tragic events unfolded. He said that witnessing this horror had a lasting effect on him and perhaps hastened his departure from sports photography. “I went as a sports photographer, thrilled to be covering Juventus against Liverpool, and ended up a news photographer, as the whole thing turned into a terrifying disaster in which 39 supporters were killed … I never processed the films from the game itself. They didn’t seem to be very important.”Phil Thompson and Phil Neal of Liverpool celebrate winning the European Cup in Paris in 1981 against Madrid. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The GuardianEditing pictures became the route out of weekly witnessing English football at its worst, and in 1988 Eamonn was recruited as picture editor of the Guardian by its then editor, Peter Preston, to help the paper see off the new Independent with its well-printed photography. Eamonn’s unique way of seeing and framing the world worked as well behind a desk as behind his cameras. He understood how a news or feature photograph is used and cropped is often as important as its content.Eamonn was born in Highgate, north London. His father, James McCabe, was a taxi driver and his mother, Celia (nee Henchy), a hotel receptionist. They went on to open a hotel in Manor House opposite Finsbury Park. The young Eamonn grew up among the same postwar streets as another photography great, Don McCullin. At Challoner school in Finchley, it seems he spent most of the time playing football and boxing – he left school with just a couple of O-levels. He started work in a solicitor’s office, then in the accounts department of a brewery, but ledgers and spreadsheets were not for him and he got a job as a junior in an advertising agency. A previous incumbent of his lowly position had been David Bowie.After a couple of years he got the travel bug, left the ad agency and headed to the capital of flower power in the 60s, San Francisco. He enrolled for a film-making course, but discovered a love for stills photography rather than movies. Eventually he had to leave – with the visa he held, he was in danger of being sent to Vietnam. But first he had a Rolling Stones gig to go to: “Mick Jagger laid on a free Stones concert on 6 December 1969 at the Altamont Speedway, northern California. Three hundred thousand people turned up. I had my cameras and pushed my way upfront to the tiny stage that had been hastily produced. By most accounts, the Hells Angels were hired as security for $500 worth of beer. If Woodstock was the dream, Altamont was the nightmare – the stage was much too low and the Angels didn’t like the sight of nudity and weighed into the crowd with snooker cues. A big guy next to me got the worst of it and I just ran. You don’t argue with the Angels high on beer.”Harold Pinter at home in Holland Park, London. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The GuardianReturning to the UK, he worked in the photo unit of Imperial College, followed by a job with the London Photo Agency (LPA). He worked in the darkrooms and took pictures at rock concerts. This was a far more exciting world for a 23-year-old. Eamonn said: “The Rolling Stones, the Who, the Beach Boys – they were our heroes. Theirs was the music we listened to anyway ... there was a rawness about them that made good pictures.”However, in the LPA building, there was another picture agency, Sporting Pictures, where Eamonn got some shifts shooting football matches. He had always been keen on sport, specifically football, and he was a lifelong Tottenham Hotspur fan. Like many sports photographers, if he hadn’t been sent to an event to take pictures, he might well have been there as a fan.In 1974 Eamonn decided to set up his own picture agency in north London – working for the local papers in the area, but crucially shooting all the home matches of the north London rivals Spurs and Arsenal. He distributed pictures to the national papers. Within a couple of years he landed a contract with the Observer. The paper allowed and encouraged him to develop a style – what became known as “an Eamonn McCabe picture” – a different angle, perhaps away from the peak of the action; a detail; something graphic; a strong use of black and white; a touch of humour. The Guardian’s sports photographer Tom Jenkins said: “Formal shape and a whimsical sense of humour played a large part in McCabe’s sports work, like his picture of the bald Bristol City goalkeeper John Shaw looking like he was about to boot his own head into the centre-circle. Eamonn was always on the lookout for something different.”According to Jenkins, a picture of the boxer Sylvester Mittee wrapping his hands with bandages before a training session is a prime example of this: “A close-up moment that probably no other photographer at the time would have bothered with.” Eamonn himself explained the choice of lens: “I grabbed a 180mm lens, quite long for indoor work, but it paid off. The effect was to throw everything out of focus except the bandaging and texture of his fingers.”He documented just about every sport and covered three Olympic Games. And he photographed the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer – as a sports photographer he was able to capture the kiss on the palace balcony with his long cricket lens.Frank Bruno. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The GuardianThe peerless sports journalist Hugh McIlvanney wrote of being Eamonn’s colleague at the Observer in a foreword to his first book, Sports Photographer (1982): “Working with Eamonn McCabe can be hazardous to a reporter’s ego. His photographs often convey the essence of an event or a performer with such dramatic succinctness that the writer assigned to the same job is left with the feeling of having turned in a 1,500-word caption.”As well as shooting sport, Eamonn also played for an amateur team, the Nine Elms Dynamos: “One morning, when we were getting a real spanking,” he wrote, “a long-haired centre forward scored yet another goal and ran back past me as I was lying face down in the mud: ‘You didn’t get a picture of that one, did you?’”After Heysel, Eamonn was offered his first picture-editing job, on a new magazine, Sportsweek. It seemed a perfect journal for the move from shooting to editing photography. Unfortunately, the proprietor was Robert Maxwell. It was a good product with great photography, edited by Eamonn, but it lost money and Maxwell soon tired of the losses. The Guardian needed a new picture editor. Perhaps an award-winning sports photographer with very little editing experience might not have been everyone’s choice, but Preston knew it could work.Paul Johnson, until recently deputy editor of the Guardian, said that Eamonn “transformed the look and feel of the newspaper almost overnight. Some senior colleagues felt the photographs were just too big and were squeezing out words, until gently reminded, with a smile, that no reader had ever complained about the lack of words in the Guardian (the wrong words, yes, all the time, but not lack of them).”The boxer Sylvester Mittee taping his hands, 1984. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The GuardianEamonn recruited new photographers and ensured that photography was not an afterthought. He got his picture choice printed on 20in x 16in paper by the Guardian darkroom and argued hard for his selection in news meetings. Johnson said: “Eamonn had a compelling visual literacy but also warmth and charisma. People loved working for him, people loved working with him.”Eamonn was in his element as the Guardian covered the big news events that seemed to come with increasing frequency at the time – the downing of the Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, the Clapham rail crash, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.In 2001 Eamonn decided to “go back on the road”. He had a need to create his own images. He stayed on at the Guardian, but this time shooting something a bit quieter: portraits. He photographed many notable people, from Tony Blair to Iris Murdoch, Lou Reed to Desmond Tutu. The Guardian feature writer Simon Hattenstone said: “Eamonn was astonishingly quick, he never panicked, and he was fantastically unobtrusive. Often the photo was done before the subjects had time to smile or stiffen up.” He favoured a direct approach with his portraits. He liked his subjects to confront his camera and, by extension, the viewer.Bridget Riley in her studio in Holland Park, London. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The GuardianMany of these photographs are in the National Portrait Gallery collection. He also photographed artists and their studios for the Guardian and the Royal Academy magazine, including Frank Auerbach, Grayson Perry, Bridget Riley, Howard Hodgkin and Maggi Hambling.Eamonn was keen to pass on his knowledge and inspire others. A steady stream of hopefuls brought portfolios to his desk, where he dispensed advice and encouragement. His educational work extended to TV programmes such as Britain in Focus (2017) for the BBC. He was often chosen by the broadcast media as a photo pundit – he was recently interviewed about imagery of Queen Elizabeth – and his relaxed manner and thorough knowledge made him a natural on TV or radio. He published six books – the last one, on aerial photography, demonstrates the breadth of his photographic knowledge.As well as honorary professorships at Thames Valley (Preston responded to the appointment by nicknaming him “Prof”) and Staffordshire universities, Eamonn was visiting senior fellow in photography at the University of Suffolk and held an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia.He moved to Suffolk a few years ago and immediately got involved with photography in the county. He taught at the university in Ipswich and when PhotoEast – the Ipswich-based photo festival – was founded, Eamonn was asked if he would become the patron. He agreed without question. Eamonn was always a dapper dresser and, once he had left his sports photographer’s waterproofs behind, his tweed coat and jaunty hats looked the part in the small town of Saxmundham where he lived. Although he was a Londoner who enjoyed the pubs, jazz clubs and art galleries of the city, life in the country gave him land- and seascapes to photograph and a vegetable garden to tend. He swapped soccer for golf – he played a round two days before he died.Maggi Hambling’s ‘Scallop’, Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The GuardianOn hearing the news of his death, Eamonn’s erstwhile neighbour McCullin said: “McCabe was like all great photographers – he never stopped working. Like most of us, his life was photography.” The answer to which is one of Eamonn’s favourite sayings, “It’s better than working, Rog”.In July 1997 Eamonn asked Rebecca Smithers, a Guardian journalist, to marry him while they were on a press trip to New York – they were married at City Hall a couple of days later. He is survived by Rebecca and their daughter, Mabel; by Ben, his son from a previous marriage, to Ruth Calvert, that ended in divorce; and by Marian, his sister.Roger ToothAlan Rusbridger writes: The email from Eamonn McCabe popped into my inbox just after breakfast one day in the spring of 2009. “What is it with X [here was the name of an internationally acclaimed fashion photographer whose work had been featured in that day’s Guardian]? I don’t get it. That photograph (?) of Y [here was the name of the subject in the offending portrait] has to be one of the worst we have ever printed ... I spent years trying to get that sort of crap out of the pages. What next, handshakes and big cheques?”I revisited the image this week. It was, indeed, sensationally bad – poorly lit, awkward shadows, overexposed, lazily composed, clumsily cropped and barely in focus.I don’t think Eamonn was bitter about the prices his fellow lensman could command (upwards of £40k for a plate). More likely, he felt puzzled – and, on behalf of press photographers the world over, a bit insulted. As a former picture editor, he knew that a dozen or more staff or freelance photographers – none of them remotely household names – would have come up with a better photograph given five minutes and a bare wall.Eamonn was a press photographer to his fingertips. As a sports photographer on the Observer, he had lightning reactions and an instinctive eye for composition. Even if you didn’t know the name, you’d recognise many of the iconic images from his years on the touchline.The former Times writer, Simon Barnes, wrote of his images: “People in sports journalism talk about an ‘Eamonn McCabe shot’ even when McCabe did not take the picture. They are talking about a style, a vision, a way of looking at sport.” The cricketer Bob Willis with the physio Bernard Thomas, Edgbaston, 1979. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The GuardianIt was an inspired move when my predecessor as editor of the Guardian, Peter Preston, hired Eamonn to be picture editor in 1988 – the time of a crucial redesign. The paper had always employed distinguished staff photographers, but they were often let down by the quality of printing and by lacklustre design. Eamonn did, indeed, ban the “crap” – especially the cliched picture that told you nothing. He favoured the bold, the unexpected – images that not only caught your eye but lingered in the mind. He was encouraging to young photographers; always approachable … and always up for a pint or two at the end of his shift.He was a late convert to the power of colour – once railing against the distracting glare of hi-vis jackets in an image of rescue workers at a train crash. But, in time, he came to accept the inevitable.And then, remarkably, he had a third career (via a flirtation with landscape) as a portrait photographer, usually illustrating the culture pages’ profile of distinguished writers, artists and musicians. Unlike some internationally acclaimed photographers he could mention, he might only be given a few minutes and inadequate light in which to bag his shot. Nine times out of 10 he memorably and sensitively captured his subject.It’s difficult to think of a comparable figure in photography – one who successfully crossed genres and who also had a spell generously editing the work of his peers. He was also one of the warmest and most collaborative figures in Fleet Street.“Journalists are far too bashful to refer to any of their newspaper work as ‘art’,” wrote Barnes in an introduction to Eamonn’s work in 1987. Hence, perhaps, Eamonn’s snort of derision for the picture in the Guardian back in 2009. But Eamonn was truly a kind of artist, as well as an unpretentious pressman. He was a very rare thing.
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Top 7 Best AI Photo Editing Software Editing photos can...Read More
Skylum Luminar is a game-changing photo editing software that leverages the power of AI to enhance images and bring them to life. This innovative software is designed to cater to the needs of photographers of all levels, from amateurs to professionals.
One of the key features that sets Skylum Luminar apart from other photo editing software is its advanced SkinAI & FaceAI technologies, specifically designed for fashion makeup portrait photography. With just one click, users can transform their portraits into stunning works of art that showcase the beauty of the human face.
Skylum Luminar offers more than 20 unique features and effects, each designed to help users achieve spectacular results quickly and effortlessly. Its intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate, even for novice photographers who are just starting to explore the world of photo editing.
One of the greatest advantages of Skylum Luminar is its ability to work on both MacOS & Windows platforms. This means that users can create and edit stunning photographs regardless of their operating system, making it accessible to everyone.
The software includes dozens of powerful editing tools that allow users to adjust colors, contrast, and lighting, as well as perform more advanced tasks such as whitening teeth and removing blemishes. This makes Skylum Luminar a versatile tool that can be used to achieve a wide range of specific results.
In summary, Skylum Luminar is a revolutionary photo editing software that combines the power of AI technology with an intuitive interface to deliver stunning results. With its advanced SkinAI & FaceAI technologies, versatile editing tools, and compatibility with both MacOS & Windows platforms, Skylum Luminar is a must-have tool for anyone who wants to take their photography to the next level.
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Photographers
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Nikon has announced the 45.7-megapixel Z8, a powerful full-frame mirrorless camera with up to 8K60p RAW video, 20fps RAW burst speeds and more. It's effectively a slimmed-down version of Nikon's Z9, and shares the latter's stacked, backside-illuminated (BSI) sensor and complete lack of a mechanical shutter. The main thing the Z8 lacks next to the Z9 is unlimited video recording, but it's also $1,500 cheaper.
Nikon is best known for photography, but the Z8's headline feature is the 8K60p N-RAW video. There's an interesting story there, as the cinema camera company RED has used its patents to stop other camera companies from using RAW video in the past. However, RED's lawsuit against Nikon was dismissed late last month, allowing Nikon to use N-RAW (a compressed 12-bit RAW codec developed in conjunction with a company called intoPIX) in any of its cameras. It can also capture 12-bit ProRes RAW video.
Along with 8K60p, the Z8 supports 4K capture at up to 120fps and 10-bit ProRes, H.264 and H.265 formats. It also offers exposure tools like waveforms, customizable autofocus and more. As mentioned, the smaller body means it can't record all video formats for an unlimited time like the Z9. Rather, you're limited to 90 minutes for 8K30p and two hours for 4K60p without overheating. With the stacked sensor, rolling shutter should be very well controlled, just like on the Z9.
In terms of photography, the Z9's burst speeds aren't restrained by a mechanical shutter, because there isn't one. As such, you can capture 14-bit RAW+JPEG images at up to 20 fps, mighty impressive for such a high-resolution camera. It comes with settings designed for portrait photographers like skin softening and human-friendly white balance.
It offers face, eye, vehicle and animal detection autofocus, promising AF speeds at the same level as the (excellent) Z9. It can recognize nine types of subjects automatically, including eyes, faces, heads and upper bodies for both animals and people, along with vehicles and more.
The Z8's magnesium-allow body may be smaller than the Z9, but it's equally as dust- and weather-resistant. It's also much the same in terms of controls, with a generous array of dials and buttons to change settings. Battery life is good at 700 shots max (CIPA) and two-plus hours of 4K video shooting, but if you need more, you can get the optional MB-N12 battery grip ($350).
Other features include 6.0 stops of in-body stabilization with compatible lenses, which is good but not as good as recent Sony, Canon and Panasonic models. The electronic viewfinder (EVF) has a relatively low 3.69 million dots of resolution, but also very low lag and a high 120Hz refresh rate. Unfortunately, the 3.2-inch, 2,100K dot rear display only tilts up and doesn't flip out, so the camera won't be suitable for many vloggers — a poor decision on Nikon's part, in my opinion.
It has one SD UHS-II and one CFexpress card slot that supports speeds up to 1,500 MB/s required for internal 8K RAW recording. That differs from the Z9, which has two CFexpress card slots. On top of the usual USB-C charging port, it has a super-speed USB communication terminal for rapid data transfers. It also comes with a full-sized HDMI connector for external video recording and monitoring, along with 3.5mm headphone and microphone parts.
The Nikon Z8 goes on sale on May 25th, 2023 for $4,000. That's $1,500 less than the $5,500 Z9, $2,500 less than the Sony A1 and $700 more than Canon's R5 — with far less serious overheating issues.
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Photographers
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This content originally appeared on Mashable for a US audience and has been adapted for the UK audience.
Drones and quadcopters are increasingly popular and accessible. As the cost of designing and manufacturing a good quality drone has gone down, more people have been able to get into drone flying as a hobby — or to up their photography game.
There are different types of drone-based fun — from aerial photography to FPV racing — plus regulations you need to know about before spending any cash.
But how to get started? Here's some key information to help you get in the air.
What is a drone?
A popular gadget of recent years — not to mention big news thanks to their role in military and security tech — drones are remote-controlled aerial vehicles. The most common type for leisure activities is the quadcopter — a small drones with four rotors.
They can be small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. This is common with beginner-level models. They're controlled and utilised in a variety of ways and flown at various distances and heights. This all depends on how advanced the drone is.
What is a drone used for?
The most common uses for drones are photography and racing. Drones can be fitted with HD cameras and are capable of recording and transmitting 4K quality footage. Depending on the drone, device, and app you're using, they may be able to transmit this footage in real time or even post straight to social media. Drones are used by filmmakers and professional photographers, but are also great for taking fun snaps.
How do you fly a drone?
If you know your way around a games controller, it’s a breeze to learn. Drones are controlled by either a handheld controller or a smart device app.
What is FPV racing?
FPV drones are their own category of drone — generally the same as regular drones in how they’re built and fly, but with a key difference: how you control them. FPV drones (First Person View) are flown as if you’re in the cockpit, with a camera transmitting the drone’s point-of-view to your device or a set of VR-style goggles.
How far does a drone fly?
Basic drones tend to fly between a range of 80 and 500 metres. Top drones, however, will fly out several miles. It all depends on the kind of tech you want and how much you’re willing to spend.
How fast does a drone fly?
Once again, it all depends on how hi-spec and advanced your drone is — or how much it’s geared towards racing and high-speed performance. The kinds of drone we’ve included in this list will go somewhere between 29 mph and 45 mph.
Do you need to register your drone?
If your drone weighs 250 grams or more, you need to register the drone with the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) for a small fee — even if it's just a hobby and you're only planning to fly it in your garden. Piloting an unregistered drone is against the law.
Even if your drone doesn't weight 250 grams, visit CAA.co.uk(opens in a new tab) for all the rules and regulations and CAA Consultations(opens in a new tab) for drone registration.
What is the best drone?
We've done the research and put together a list that has something for every kind of drone pilot — whether you're a novice, an expert, a photographer, or racer, we can recommend a drone that's perfect for you.
These are the best drones in 2023.
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Photographers
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Samsung’s One UI 6 update brings a number of features to the Galaxy camera that promise to improve your photos. These six new features are marketed to both serious photographers as well as the average smartphone user.
The Enhance X-App aims to minimize the steps required to take a picture and also attempts to make sure all your pictures turn out great. It offers a couple of interesting features:
- Sky Guide allows you to take a picture of the sky and learn about which constellation, nebulas, stars, clusters, or galaxies you captured with the help of AI integrated in the camera.
- You know when the picture you take comes out blurry because your camera lens is dirty? Clean Lens will automatically remove blurriness caused by fingerprints on your camera lens.
- If you ever make a regular video and later wish you filmed it in slow-motion, the Slow-mo feature does that for you by generating extra frames within your video.
Taking a page out of iOS’ features, AI Image Clipping lets you clip an object from a picture, save it as a sticker, and add it to other pictures or videos.
The new update offers multiple AI-integrated scanning features. Document scan will come up automatically when a document is detected. It will also recognize fingers or bulldog clips and remove them from your images so that it only shows the document you intended to scan.
With the High Resolution Quick Setting, when you take pictures in Photo or Pro Mode, you get a Resolution button in the Quick Settings menu at the top of your screen that allows you to instantly switch to high-resolution shooting and take 200MP pictures.
Custom Camera Widgets aim to speed up the time it takes for you to open your camera app and choose the right settings for the object you wish to photograph. It tries to make sure you don’t miss the perfect moment by offering to save your go-to shooting modes as camera widgets that you can just quickly tap on.
This one’s very similar to the last feature. It brings up a new Tools menu on your camera with all the features you use the most. You can also fix the vertical and horizontal alignment of your picture on one screen with the integration of the Straighten and Perspective functions in the Transform edit menu.
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The best point-and-shoot cameras in 2022 have their advantages—particularly for capturing great-looking images on the go. The cameras built into the latest smartphones (including the Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max, Google Pixel 6 Pro or the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra) can produce images that rival those from point-and-shoot cameras. But standalone point-and-shoot cameras remain a strong choice for amateur, enthusiast and professional photographers alike. These cameras are typically small in size and weight compared with their larger mirrorless or digital SLR cousins. Some have ruggedized designs or extra-long zoom lenses. All offer an Auto mode, which means you simply frame shots using the viewfinder or rear display and then press the shutter button to snap a photo. Most also offer specialty photo preset modes for use in specific situations. All can shoot at least high-definition video, and many can shoot 4K or higher resolution video. The Olympus Tough TG-6 is an example of a point-and-shoot camera that's waterproof and rugged. Olympus Whatever your photography needs, budget or skill level, you can find a point-and-shoot camera to boost your image game. Let’s release your inner Ansel Adams and take a look at 12 of the best point-and-shoot cameras for 2022. Best Point-And-Shoot Camera Overall: Ricoh GR IIIx Best Point-And-Shoot Camera For Beginners: Panasonic Lumix ZS100 Best Point-And-Shoot Action Camera: GoPro HERO 10 Black Best Point-And-Shoot 360-Degree Camera: Insta360 One RS Best Waterproof Point-And-Shoot Camera: Olympus Tough TG-6 Best Premium Point-And-Shoot Camera: Leica D-Lux 7 Best Point-And-Shoot Instant Camera: Polaroid Go Best Point-And-Shoot Camera For Vlogging: Sony ZV-1 Best Point-And-Shoot Camera for Live-Streaming: Canon G7x Mark III Best Pro-Level Point-And-Shoot Camera: Sony RX100 VII Best Point-And-Shoot Camera Overall
The Compact And Versatile GR IIIx Produces Great Images Camera Type: Point-and-shoot | Resolution: 24.2MP (still images) | Weight: 1.4 pounds | Who it’s for: This pocket-size point-and-shoot camera has a fixed lens and wide aperture, making it ideal for capturing sharp images in many types of shooting situations. The Ricoh GR IIIx uses a wide-aperture fixed 40 mm f2.8 lens, and it packs an APS-C sensor—larger than the typical point-and-shoot camera has. Those attributes together make this camera strong great for capturing images that are close to your eye’s field-of-view—even in low light. These core features make this a great camera choice for street photography, portraits and a range of everyday photos. In Auto mode the camera basically sets itself up for you, based on your current shooting situation. When you switch to manual mode, you gain full creative control over your photography experience. The lightweight magnesium alloy body makes the camera sturdy, and the generous built-in camera grip makes it easy to hold. It has shake reduction to reduce the impact from vibration. If you want a traditional electronic viewfinder (as opposed to using the three-inch rear touchscreen display which is not adjustable), you can attach the GV-3 as an optional accessory. Pros: Sharp, wide-aperture fixed lens Lightweight, sturdy design Cons: Relatively short battery life Only shoots 1080p video Best Point-And-Shoot Camera For Beginners
Point, Press And Shoot Using The Lumix ZS100 Camera Type: Point-and-shoot | Resolution: 20.1 MP | Weight: 0.68 pounds Who it’s for: It’s ideal for those looking for a pocket-sized general-purpose camera that capably handles stills and video. Whether you’re looking to capture breathtaking digital images or eye-popping 4K video, the Panasonic Lumix ZS100 has a wide range of features to meet your everyday shooting needs. The Leica lens has a 1-inch sensor for optimal captures in low-light situations, and a 10x optical zoom that ranges from 25mm to 250mm (35mm equivalent). That means you can switch from wide shots to tight images without changing lenses. The camera has a slim, smooth body that is perfect for sliding into a pocket. It has full manual control, an unusual find in a point-and-shoot camera that experienced photographers and videographers can appreciated. Another great feature is the built-in 0.2 inch 1,166K-dot electronic viewfinder in addition to the 3-inch rear touchscreen display; electronic viewfinders are a rare find in point-and-shoot cameras. And, this camera has in-body, 5-axis stabilization to mitigate the effects of shake. Pros: Has face and eye tracking autofocus Optical zoom lens with long reach Bluetooth-enabled wireless control Cons: Fixed rear display No weather sealing Best Point-And-Shoot Action Camera
GoPro HERO 10 Black Goes Wherever You Go...Even Underwater Camera Type: Action camera | Max Video Resolution: Up to 5.3K (up to 60 fps) | Still Image Resolution: 23.6 MP | Weight: 0.3 pounds | Viewfinder Type: Front and rear display Who it’s for: Adventure-seekers whose videography involves action sports or harsh conditions can’t go wrong with this tiny action camera. Whether you want to capture first- or third-person content, the GoPro Hero 10 Black can be taken and used in ways that most other cameras cannot. Not only is this camera small and powerful, but it has a large ecosystem of attachments, mounts and mods to customize how—and where—you use the camera. Use your camera underwater with a waterproof housing, mount your camera on a helmet, or mount your camera at the base of your skateboard. The possibilities are endless. When connected to Wi-Fi, the camera can upload your content directly to the cloud. Using Bluetooth, you can easily transfer content to a smartphone, tablet or computer for editing and sharing. Or, pop out the microSD Card. Thanks to the rear and front displays, you can position the camera in any direction and see what you’re shooting. All features are accessible from the rear touchscreen display, and some actions—for example, starting a recording— work via voice commands. The camera can also be remotely controlled via a smartphone, tablet or smartwatch. Pros: Waterproof and rugged Multiple still image shooting modes Built in GPS records location Cons: GoPro-branded accessories are expensive Battery life limited Best 360-Degree Point-And-Shoot Camera
Unique Modular Design Captures 360-Degree Images Editor’s Pick Forbes/Jason R. Rich Insta360 ONE RS Twin Edition Camera Type: Action camera | Resolution: 48 MP | Weight: 1.23 pounds Who it’s for: For outdoor adventurers, this durable, modular action camera is also your best choice for still images thanks to its ability to switch among its wide-angle and 360-degree lens modules. As its name implies, the Insta360 One RS Twin Edition’s most impressive feature is its modular design. The camera splits into three parts—the lens, the viewfinder/display and the camera base. This design lets you separately position the lens and display to face forwards or backwards, enabling easy selfies. This camera’s design is both versatile and durable, but it lacks the availability of a strong specialty mount ecosystem. The 4K wide-angle lens captures images at up to 48 megapixels, making it a good choice for landscape or action shots. The 360-degree lens also captures stills at 48 megapixels, and video at up to 5.7K. If used with the optional Insta360 selfie stick, the camera will automatically edit the stick out of your shots, making it invisible. As you’d expect from an action cam, this model has image stabilization. Pros: Swappable 4K wide-angle lens and 5.7K 360-degree lens modules Active HDR Rugged and waterproof Cons: Battery life mediocre Finicky rear touchscreen Best Rugged Point-And-Shoot Camera
Use This Camera Anywhere—Be It Underwater Or In The Desert Olympus Olympus Tough TG-6 Digital Camera Camera Type: Point-and-shoot | Resolution: 12 MP | Weight: 0.56 pounds Who it’s for: Someone looking for a rugged, waterproof point-and-shoot camera to take on all of their adventures. Regardless of where you’re shooting in, the Olympus Tough TG-6 is designed to withstand harsh conditions. Its distinctly rugged design is waterproof up to 50 feet deep, dust proof, drop proof up to 7 feet, crush proof up to 100 kgf, and freeze proof to 14 degree Fahrenheit. The camera has an 8x optical zoom lens and wide 2.0 aperture. It has four macro shooting modes and 5 underwater modes, and integrated GPS so your images and videos get tagged with your location. The biggest drawback to this camera is its still image resolution, which is just 12 megapixel. When the camera was first released in mid-2019, this might have been acceptable, but by today’s standards, the resolution is just too low. That said, it remains the best pick among rugged cameras available today. The Tough TG-6’s traditional handheld shape and optical zoom lens make it an attractive pick for rugged photography over an action camera like the Go Pro Hero 10—in spite of its lower image resolution. Pros: Waterproof and rugged Five underwater shooting modes Shoots 4K video Cons: Comparatively low 12 megapixel resolution Best Premium Point-And-Shoot Camera
The D-Lux 7 Is An Affordable Leica Camera Camera Type: Point-and-shoot | Resolution: 17 MP | Weight: 0.9 pounds Who it’s for: Consider this the Rolls-Royce of point-and-shoot cameras. It features Leica’s reknown optics and features that optimize images captured in low light. Leica cameras typically can cost a few months rent—up to $10,000. The Leica D-Lux 7 brings the Leica’s well-reputed optics and design into a 4K compact camera. While this model is a fixed lens camera, it is distinguished by its Micro Four-Thirds imaging sensor—which is large and more capable in low light than the usual sensors seen in point-and-shoot cameras. This model has a wide-aperture f1.7 to 2.8 lens, which lets in lots of light. And the lens is a reasonable 24 to 75 mm (35mm equivalent), which gives you enough reach to not have to get right up close to your subject. The D-Lux 7 has both an optical viewfinder and a fixed 3-inch rear touchscreen. It is a versatile camera with convenient top-mounted controls, a dedicated hot-shoe for a flash and a hand-grip to make it easier to hold. It has both integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, and can connect to a smartphone to transfer images. This camera can grow with your photography skills, whether you shoot full auto or use one of the manual modes. And it captures 4K video at up to 60 frames per second as well. Pros: Wide-aperture lens for low-light use Three-inch fixed touchscreen viewfinder/rear display Shoots 4K video Cons: No built-in flash Best Point-And-Shoot Instant Camera
Snap A Photo And Get A Print Quickly Amazon Polaroid Go Instant Mini Camera Camera Type: Instant Film Camera | Resolution: Generates square (2.12-inch) prints | Weight: 0.66 pounds Who it’s for: This fun retro-styled compact instant camera produces prints on-the-go. This Polaroid instant camera is among the smallest in the instant film category. It fits comfortably in hand and is smaller than the vintage Polaroid instant cameras that generated those classic 3.5-inch square images and developed right before your eyes. Instead, the Polaroid Go uses Polaroid’s instant film technology to create a square, 2.12-inch print each time you snap a photo. Each box of film includes eight sheets of instant photo paper. A two box film pack prints 16 photos and sells for $20 on Amazon, making the ongoing costs a bit pricey. The other drawback: It’s analog only, which means you won’t have a digital version of your images. Once a photo sheet is ejected from the camera, it takes about 15 minutes to develop. The camera is powered by a rechargeable battery. In every aspect, this is a smaller version of a classic Polaroid instant camera—and it’s extremely simple to use. Pros: Retro, compact design Built-in flash and viewfinder Generates 2.12 inch square prints Cons: Expensive film packs Best Point-And-Shoot Camera For Vlogging
Well-Suited To Influencers And Amateur Videographers Best Features Camera Type: Point-and-Shoot | Max Video Resolution: 4K (up to 120 fps) | Still Image Resolution: 20.1 MP | Weight: 0.7 pounds | Viewfinder Type: 3-inch touchscreen Who it’s for: This camera’s design—with its light weight, flip-up screen and subject tracking—caters to the needs of vloggers, social media influencers and streamers. And it takes good still images, too. The Sony ZV-1 is the top choice for social media influencers and enthusiast videographers on-the-go. It is small and lightweight, making it easy to hold in one-hand while walking and documenting the moment. The LCD display can be flipped outwards and rotated 180-degrees to face forwards or backwards, making it simple to frame yourself in photos or videos. The ZV-1 works well for one-handed operation with Sony’s optional GP-VPT2BT wireless grip and mini-tripod ($60). The menus and buttons are easy to use, and the camera shoots stunning video while simultaneously capturing high-quality sound thanks to the large, top-mounted microphone and included wind shield. The camera’s one-inch sensor captures high-resolution images in lower light better than a cell phone camera or a typical point-and-shoot camera would. Sony’s bundled Imaging Edge mobile app makes it easy to quickly and wirelessly transfer content to a smartphone for editing and sharing online. The app saves time by auto-formatting videos and photos for specific social media platforms. Pros: Fully adjustable display/viewfinder 24 fps continuous shooting speed 24-70mm f1.8-2.8 lens Cons: Premium price for point-and-shoot camera Disappointing battery life Best Point-And-Shoot Camera for Live-Streaming
Capture Your World In Real-Time B&H Photo Video Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III Camera Type: Point-and-shoot | Still Image Resolution: 20.1 MP | Weight: 0.67 pounds | Viewfinder Type: 3-inch rear touchscreen Who it’s for: This point-and-shoot camera has a small and lightweight design that makes it a joy to shoot with in any occasion. With its compact design and flip-up rear-display, the PowerShot G7X Mark III is a prime option for social media influencers and YouTubers. It captures 4K video and also serves as a versatile still image camera. The 4.2x optical zoom lens covers 24 to 100mm (35mm equivalent), a reasonable range for casual shooting. Notably, the lens’ aperture ranges from a wide-open f1.8 to f2.8, a tight range that means this is a terrific camera choice for getting the most out of shooting in low light. These impressive optics help account for why the G7 X Mark III is more expensive than the typical point-and-shoot camera. The PowerShot G7 X Mark III also supports live streaming and has both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity options. It has manual and program mode shooting, with a finger-friendly control dial at top in addition to the touchscreen controls. The camera is small, but it has thoughtful design and a gently curved grip on the right makes it easy to hold. Pros: Versatile touchscreen display Built-in external microphone port Excellent image stabilization Cons: No built-in viewfinder Best Pro-Level Point-And-Shoot Camera
Leave Your DSLR Camera At Home Best Features Camera Type: Point-and-shoot| Resolution: 20.1 MP | Weight: 0.61 pounds Who it’s for: This is a feature-packed point-and-shoot camera that’s slim enough to slide into a pocket, and powerful enough to grab sharp images from across field while using manual controls. The Sony RX100 VII isn’t like other cameras in this category. The RX100 VII has one of the slimmest profiles around for a point-and-shoot, and yet it is still jammed with such enthusiast level components as a 1-inch sensor and far-reaching 24 to 200 mm zoom lens with a reasonable f2.8 to 4.5 aperture. This model’s versatility comes from the winning combination of its manual controls, its tiny size and its ability to capture images in wide variety of circumstances, including low light (less so when maximizing the zoom). The RX100 VII’s has so much flexibility that you can leave your cumbersome DLSR camera at home and take this terrific on-the-go companion instead. As with other Sony cameras, the RX100 VII has eye-tracking autofocus for humans and animals. The camera’s array of features and shooting modes are accessible via the touchscreen display; the small chassis has little room for buttons and dials. One interesting feature is the pop-up viewfinder, an unusual find in such a small camera. Pros: Eye-tracking autofocus for humans and animals Shoots 4K video Impressive 24 to 200mm equivalent f2.8-4.5 lens Cons: Expensive What Is A Point-And-Shoot Camera?
Point-and-shoot cameras traditionally occupied the lower end of the cost spectrum. But that’s changed over the past decade. While inexpensive models are still out there, today’s point-and-shoot cameras are ever more capable and competitive with more the larger DSLR (digital single lens reflex) and mirrorless cameras offered by companies like Canon, Nikon and Sony. Today’s point-and-shoots focus more on providing better performance in a smaller, lighter container than DSLR and mirrorless cameras can provide. The category has broadened over the years, now encompassing action cameras, ruggedized cameras and instant film cameras. the definition of a point-and-shoot camera is broader than ever, all offer the convenience of portability and the simplicity of Auto shooting modes. Most point-and-shoot cameras allow you to take pro-quality photos without having to carry around a ... [+] lot of equipment. getty Point-and-shoot cameras are great for capturing places, moments and memories without requiring you to become a master photographer who understands things like aperture, depth-of-field, exposure, ISO, shutter speed and the focal length of a lens. That said, if you’re familiar with these terms or want to grow as a photographer, the more advanced point-and-shoot models—many showcased here—have you covered.
These powerful, compact cameras literally fit in the palm of your hand and have a comparatively negligible carry weight. Aside from a few specialty exceptions, all point-and-shoot cameras take high-resolution digital photos—and many also shoot video at up to 5.7K resolution. All have an Auto mode that makes it a snap to shoot great images; the more advanced models have other presets and manual modes, so you can have maximal control over your creative output. Point-and-shoot cameras have a built-in lens (the exception here is the Insta360R action camera that comes with two lens modules). What To Consider When Buying A Point-And-Shoot Camera
Before purchasing a point-and-shoot camera, think about the types of pictures you shoot and the conditions under which you shoot. Also think about whether you want a camera that’s super simple to use, or if you’re willing to invest some time and practice learning how to use a more advanced camera. The Leica D-Lux 7 offers both an Auto mode and complete manual control when taking photos. Leica Here are some other features to look for and things to consider when choosing the ideal point-and-shoot digital camera to meet your needs. Regardless of the camera you choose, remember to tap your creativity, experiment and have fun while you’re snapping photos.
Camera Resolution
A camera’s resolution is measured in megapixels (MP). One megapixel is equal to one million individual pixels (or colored dots). The higher the resolution of the camera, the better, as this will translate into more detailed images with greater color vibrancy and accuracy. A higher resolution image will also allow you to create large-size prints without pixelation and give you greater control when cropping images after they’ve been shot. In general, you want to take photos in the highest resolution possible. During the editing process, you always have the option of reducing an image’s resolution as needed. However, once a photo has been taken, you cannot enhance its overall resolution easily (without using additional software). Display / Viewfinder
Some point-and-shoot cameras have a traditional viewfinder you can look through with one eye. However, most do not offer this feature. Many models have a touchscreen display for controlling both the camera and your focal point while framing a shot. Cameras with a traditional viewfinder are easier to use in direct sunlight, when glare and reflections impact a digital display’s clarity. The Sony RX100 VII is an example of a point-and-shoot camera with a rear-display that rotates and ... [+] flips up. Sony Some cameras have an articulating display, convenient for capturing low or high angles. If you shoot selfies, look for a display that rotates or flips forward.
Image Stabilization
This feature is most important when you’re shooting video, using the camera’s zoom or taking pictures while you are in motion. For example, image stabilization can help counteract the sway of a moving boat, or the natural minute movements of your hand when shooting handheld video. Without image stabilization, any motion of the camera when you press the shutter button may result in a blurry image. The Best Accessories For Your Point-And-Shoot Camera
Most point-and-shoot cameras come with what they need to get up and running. Nonetheless, some accessories are required and some will simply make life easier. Read on for the extras worth adding to your arsenal.
Extra Batteries And A Specialty Charger
All point-and-shoot cameras come with a charger or the ability to recharge the camera’s battery by connecting it to an external power source using a supplied USB cable. However, point-and-shoot cameras are not known for having long battery life, by virtue of the simple fact that the batteries are so small. If you shoot video or plan to use the zoom lens, those activities will drain your battery faster. In most cases, you can purchase genuine replacement batteries from the camera’s manufacturer. However, there are also third-party companies that make OEM batteries that’ll work with your camera, but that will be less expensive. If you use a third-party battery, you may lose some compatibility with the camera’s ability to report battery status, for example. Wasabi Power is an example of a company that sells replacement batteries compatible with popular Canon, Nikon, GoPro, Sony, Fujifilm and Panasonic cameras.
Memory Cards
The majority of point-and-shoot cameras and action cameras do not come with a required memory card. First, determine what type memory card your camera uses. Then, figure out the maximum capacity memory card the camera can support. You'll ultimately want to choose memory cards that offer the fastest read/write speeds available. This means you can do continuous shots, or more speedily transfer images to your computer. Make sure you choose the appropriate memory card for your camera. Select one with the highest ... [+] capacity and fastest read/write speed you can afford. Forbes/Jason R. Rich It’s always a good idea to carry around at least one extra memory card. This will allow you to continue taking pictures if the card within the camera reaches its storage capacity. Learn more about some of the best memory cards available by reading, The Best SD Cards And Memory Cards Will Add Fast, Reliable Storage For Your Smartphones, Cameras, Gaming Systems And More.
Tabletop Tripods And Selfie Sticks
Virtually every point-and-shoot camera and action camera has an industry-standard tripod mount on the bottom. This allows you to connect it to any tripod or tabletop tripod. A tabletop tripod or portable tripod is useful for setting up the camera and being able to keep it ultra-steady when taking photos. Gain more shooting flexibility with an adjustable, bendable tripod that contorts to fit anywhere—including mounting on a railing. Tripods for Phone, Camera & Tablet | JOBY The GorillaPod 3K Pro Kit is an example of a higher-end and extremely versatile portable tripod. What sets it apart is its bendable legs. They allow you to set up a camera on an uneven surface or wrap the legs around an object (such as a railing or tree branch) to hold a camera steady. Meanwhile, if you’re out and about and your camera is capable of taking selfies, using a Bluetooth selfie stick will allow you to extend the camera out while still holding it and give you much greater creative control over angles when snapping photos of yourself and the people you’re with.
Cases
While most point-and-shoot and action cameras are designed to be self-contained, not all of them are durable. If not carried correctly, you run the risk of scratching the camera’s lens or crushing the camera in a backpack or purse. Some manufacturers sell a case designed to fit the camera; or, seek out a third-party alternative to provide protection for your investment. Specialty Mounts And Mods
Action cameras typically offer a wide range of optical mounts and mods that make it better suited for shooting in very specific types of situations. For its Hero 10 Black, for example, GoPro offers a wide range of specialty mounts and mods for attaching the camera to your body or specific gear you’re using (such as a bike, surfboard, skis, helmet, vehicle dashboard, or even your dog). GoPro’s mount hasn’t changed over the years, and you can find a healthy selection of third-party attachments and accessories beyond GoPro’s own offerings.
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Photographers
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Photo: CanonEvery photographer eventually runs into the question of how to make prints. Maybe a client wants one as part of their package for a wedding, or a follower absolutely loves a shot you posted on Instagram and wants to hang it in their home. Maybe you just want to hold the work you’re proud of in your own hands and hang it on your own wall. Whatever the reason, if you can’t afford to work with a pro photo lab, you’ll need another way to make a print. These photo printers can help you do it.OffEnglishWhat to Look For in a Photo PrinterLike any piece of gear or tech, the best photo printer for you is the one that best meets your specific needs. If you’re a pro photographer that wants to make their own prints, you’re going to need a photo printer that can create very high-quality images, preferably in a variety of sizes. If you just want to print photos of family and friends to hang on the wall, you might not need that level of output. In general though, there are a few factors you’ll want to consider when shopping for a photo printer, no matter what.Color quality and reproduction is obviously important regardless of why you’re making prints. Your typical all-in-one home office printer uses a combination of four inks — black, cyan, yellow, and magenta. Pro-level printers use a mixture of 10-12 inks to get much more precise color reproduction so images look true-to-life, even at larger print sizes.If you’re a pro photographer that wants to start adding physical prints to their client packages, you’ll want to avoid cheaper printers with one color and one black and white cartridge each. That said, there are very affordable printers that offer surprisingly good color reproduction. So if you’re just looking to print personal photos, you don’t have to sacrifice quality for cost.G/O Media may get a commission*lightsaber hum*SabersProFor the Star Wars fan with everything.These lightsabers powered by Neopixels, LED strips that run inside the blade shape that allow for adjustable colors, interactive sounds, and changing animation effects when dueling.The physical footprint of your photo printer also matters. Will it fit on your desk or into your dedicated workspace without cluttering it? What size paper does it use? If you need something portable, how easy is it to take the printer with you? Think about your workspace when browsing for a home photo printer.Cost is also a major factor. Professional grade appliances cost more up-front for both the printer itself and ink replacements. Pro machines usually go through ink faster since they use more for each print, and they’re probably turning out photos at a higher volume than a typical home printer. Do the math and see if the cost is worth it to you in the long term. If it isn’t, go with a less expensive product.Photo paper is another cost that can add up. If you want the highest quality prints, you’ll have to pair your pro photo printer and ink with high-quality, archival photo paper. Epson and Canon make their own, and you can see a more detailed rundown of top-quality photo paper here.Print speed can make a big difference in the amount of work a professional photographer can produce, so it’s an important consideration if you’re working at that level. The highest-grade photo printers on this list can crank out a nice print in minutes or less, though that speed does come with a higher price tag.More expensive photo printers will also have extra features, like larger touchscreens, wifi connectivity for easier file transfer, and an anti-clog function so the ink doesn’t dry up after sitting for a while. Compare the printer you want against these criteria, keeping in mind what you absolutely need and what you can afford to do without if you need to go for a less expensive or less specialized model.MethodologyAs much as I’d love to (because I have a few images I’d love to print large-scale), I can’t personally test every photo printer on the market. I can, however, scour the web for expert opinions, customer reviews, and real-world tests that lend insight into how these appliances work. So that’s exactly what I did.In addition, I drew on my experience and knowledge as a photographer to determine what a professional would need out of a print. A lot of pros working at the higher levels of the industry partner with professional print labs for physical copies of their work. Sean Tucker, for example, partnered with Genesis Imaging in the UK to make large prints of some of his favorite images. Ted Forbes made platinum palladium prints with his friends at Hidden Light studios in Arizona. And Peter McKinnon, YouTube’s top photography channel, opted to make physical prints of his work instead of hopping on the NFT trend. If you can afford to do that, I would highly recommend talking to some labs in your area. For those just starting out or who have to be more budget conscious, a professional home photo printer can be an excellent alternative.Even if you don’t take photos full time, you’ll still find an option on this list to make prints (and maybe leaflets or documents) with. We’ll start with the pro level and work from there. The Best Home Photo PrintersThese appliances are in the very highest price bracket: dedicated pro-level photo printers. These are machines specifically for printing out high-quality, gallery-worthy images, and in some cases, even banners. They don’t have the option to print documents or scan papers — they just do amazing photo prints. As such, they’re probably only a worthwhile investment for a professional who knows they’ll make money from using them long term, or a serious enthusiast with extra cash to drop.Photo: B&HBest Pro Photo Printer Overall: Epson SureColor P900—$1999.95 Pros:Amazing image qualityFast print speedViable option for pro photographers that need prints made at homeCons:ExpensivePro ink and photo paper replacements can be costlyThe Epson SureColor P900 is a pro-grade printer that combines ten different inks to produce high-quality prints that will last. You can even make banners up to 17 inches wide and 11 feet long if you buy the additional roll adapter. Not only does it make these stunning images at home, this printer can turn them out quickly — a 17 X 22-inch fine art print is done in under three minutes. The SureColor 900 also has a relatively small footprint considering its capabilities. A handy LCD screen lets you adjust the settings before printing.This printer uses high-capacity ink cartridges instead of bottled inks, unlike some other higher-end printers, so keep that in mind when factoring in the cost of replacement ink. Each color cartridge has to be bought separately (though you might be able to get 2-3 at a time in combo packs), so it adds up. You can get combo packs of bottled ink for eco-tank printers as well, and some third-party options are available, so that saves you a bit of money even if the up front cost is still higher. Though expensive, the Epson is fairly efficient with ink, so you should be able to go for a while between replacements if you’re not cranking out a super high volume of prints.Overall, this printer is a good option for pro photographers who shoot events like weddings, family sessions, or fine art portraits that don’t always want to outsource photo printing services to a professional lab.Photo: AmazonBest Pro Inkjet Photo Printer: Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000—$1999.99Pros:Pro-quality prints that lastWi-fi capability makes transferring files easierAnti-clog function means the printer can sit idle for a while and still be ready when neededCons: High price tagGoes through ink quicklyCanon’s imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 is another respectable pro-grade option for home prints. Its 12-ink mix makes great-looking photos that’ll impress those wedding or engagement clients (or look good on a gallery wall). Keep in mind that the professional ink it uses works best when paired with the right photo paper, so you’ll want to buy that to get the most out of your prints. The PRO-1000 also goes through ink pretty quickly, which can get expensive, so be sure it’s worth the investment before you buy.This printer works with wi-fi devices, so you can transfer photos to it from any connected device, like a late-model DSLR or smartphone. There’s also a built in anti-clog function, an important feature if your photo printer isn’t always in use.Like the Epson, it has a high up-front cost but could be worth it for the pro photographer. If you’re more of an enthusiast looking for the occasional print, I’d recommend one of the cheaper options on this list.Photo: CanonBest Mid-Range Photo Printer: Canon PIXMA Pro 200—$599.00Pros: Decent price point for the print qualityPrints very quicklyEight-ink mix produces deep, detailed colorsCons:Prints aren’t as large as other options on this listNot as much detail as pro-gradeAbout half the cost of the Canon PROGRAF printer, the PIXMA Pro 200 is a nice balance of price and quality for photographers just starting out and looking to up their print game. It uses an eight-ink combo to create images with a much higher level of depth and detail than a typical home printer, and can make prints up to 13 inches (size A3+ paper). That’s a little smaller than pro grade, but still not bad for most situations.If you need speed, the PIXMA Pro 200 is very quick, churning out those A3+ prints in about 90 seconds, according to Canon. You can also make bordered 8 X 10 prints in just under a minute, or print out eye-catching panorama shots. All-in-all, a good option for the serious photographer who needs to print their work on a budget.Photo: B&HBest Budget Photo Printer: Canon TS6420a—$79.00Pros:Good for photo prints and everyday printing like documentsVery affordableIncludes a scannerCons:Not as high-quality as dedicated home photo printersCanon’s TS6420a is an affordable everyday printer that produces great results for its price point. For the person who doesn’t want (or need) to shell out a grand but still wants nice prints of their vacation or family to frame, this printer is worth a look. Even early-career photographers might find the TS6420 to be a good entry point.Since it’s designed as more of an all-around household printer, the TS6420 is an all-in-one with a built in scanner. Scan old film prints to share online, or just set it up in your home office for printing documents and the occasional photo. It only uses five inks as opposed to the pro-grade 10 or 12, but that’s still slightly better than your run-of-the-mill, two-cartridge office machine.Photo: AmazonBest Portable Photo Printer: Kodak Mini 3 Retro—$129.99Pros:Produces fun, small prints quicklyHighly portableDoesn’t need replacement inkCons:Prints are very small, so not great for professional useNo WiFi connectivity, just BluetoothKodak’s Mini 3 Retro pocket printer is relatively affordable and makes it easy to produce small prints on the go. It uses Zero Ink (Zink) paper that burns the image onto the print instead of ink or instant film, so there’s no need to worry about replacing cartridges.Prints are high quality for a pocket printer, but very small. Unlike cheaper pocket printers, the Kodak has wireless connectivity, but only over Bluetooth and not WiFi. The dedicated app lets you add minor customizations before printing, like borders or filters. This is mostly a for-fun product, unless you’re packaging mini-photos with a product like a wedding photo box. 83% of Amazon users rate this pocket printer 4-5 stars, and reviewers note that you’ll get the most of of this printer and avoid wasting Zink sheets if you read the directions.For more capability and larger prints, the Canon PIXMA TR150 can fit in a backpack and produces much better photos for about $100 more.That’s a wrap on this list of the best photo printers. Whatever your level of photographic experience, I hope you were able to find your next printer here, and that I can get my hands on a pro-grade one to print some black and white portrait work soon. As always, we provide the information here to let you make a well-informed decision — what you choose is ultimately up to you.
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Photographers
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Grace Torres' photography business is more than a passion project that turned into a career. To the 23-year-old, it represents financial freedom.
After falling in love with photography at age 13, Torres spent years documenting Sweet 16 parties in New Jersey for little pay and working at Chick-Fil-A to afford a $500 set of camera equipment. While attending Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, she earned some clients and cash – but wasn't confident that photography could pay the bills after college.
Then, she learned that successful freelance photographers often start by investing in high-quality equipment. So, after graduating college in December 2020, Torres invested in new cameras and lenses, and gradually took her photography side-hustle full time.
All told, Torres says she's spent roughly $45,000 getting her business off the ground. It's paying off: In 2021, she made $177,000 in revenue — and today, she grosses more than $10,000 per month, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
"I always worked multiple jobs throughout college, and so being able to just have one job that is my own setting, my own hours, making my own schedule has been such a blessing for me," Torres tells CNBC Make It. "I wake up every morning so excited to work with the clients that I work with and to do what I love."
Here's how Torres turned a hobby into a side hustle, and then into a six-figure full-time business.
Torres bought herself her first camera – a Canon Rebel T3 – in 2012, ahead of a family road trip from New Jersey to Colorado. Along the way, the family stopped at several national parks, and Torres fell in love with capturing nature from behind the lens.
"Even as a 13-year-old, I saw it as an investment," Torres says. "I bought [it] with the money I had saved up from birthdays and Christmases."
Initially, her plan was to pursue science in life after college. So in high school, she geared her focus toward academics, carving out time to photograph portraits and birthday parties for fun – occasionally earning $100 for four hours of work.
Then, in college, her side hustle gained traction: In 2019, at age 20, she made roughly $2,000 through freelance photography and graphic design. She started to consider what a full-time photography gig would look like.
At first, Torres says, the outlook seemed bleak: She already worked two to three other jobs throughout college, largely to help her afford her camera equipment. But after following other photographers on Instagram, she realized that if she balanced her equipment costs with more shoots, she had a chance of making a full-time living at it.
She increased her availability, and started booking gigs every other week instead of every other month. Roughly a year later, she graduated from Southeastern University and took a paid, part-time internship with a nonprofit to help supplement her finances until she could get her bearings as a full-time freelance photographer.
"I'm not a huge risk taker, especially when it comes to finances," Torres says. "Having that part time job really just gave me the stability and the confidence that I needed to put more time into photography."
Torres spent a couple months researching sustainable business practices and working on client acquisition through social media. In May 2021, five months after graduating college, she took her photography business full-time.
Over the past year and a half, Torres has delegated some of her responsibilities. She invested in legal service to help with contracts, hired a CPA to teach her how to file her fledgling business' taxes and has a contractor who helps her edit photos.
Most days, she says, she feels like she's living a dream. Other days, however, remind her of the challenges of being a young entrepreneur.
Last year was a banner year for weddings, following the nationwide Covid-19 restrictions of 2020 – and Torres says certainly felt the pressure. She shot 46 weddings in one year, 10 of which were in a single month.
To combat burnout, she's learned to schedule fewer weddings, even though that means sacrificing income. This year, she's committed to 34. She plans to cap off next year's count around 27. She also started outsourcing some of her services from her home office in Lakeland, Florida, paying contractors to edit her photos and manage bookkeeping.
The more of a work-life balance she can build, Torres says, the better.
"I want to continue building my company and growing and scaling, so that I just have more opportunities to work with more couples who I really connect with, and to travel to places that I've always wanted to go," she says.
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Photographers
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We have long lived in the age of paparazzi, yet the public in general is ignorant about the reality of how these images are created. Many people believe that freewheeling photographers happen to stumble across reality TV stars working out in full makeup, or musicians walking very slowly to their cars outside five-star hotels, or soap actors frolicking in the surf in Dubai. What the public does not see: the paparazzi who go on holiday with celebrities; the agents who have paparazzi on speed dial; the paparazzi who give a cut of their income to the people they photograph.But recent months have seen the paparazzi thrust, blinking and unwilling, into the spotlight. In the recently concluded “Wagatha Christie” libel case, text messages were submitted to the court in which Rebekah Vardy and her former agent Caroline Watt discussed tipping off the photo agency Splash News about the arrest of the footballer Danny Drinkwater, as well as arranging for a paparazzo to photograph – without their consent – a group of footballers’ partners leaving a restaurant during the 2018 World Cup. (Splash News and Backgrid are the leading photo agencies in the industry, responsible for most of the images sold into newspapers and magazines.)Meanwhile, the public mania for paparazzi shots continues to grow. In January, the pop star and beauty entrepreneur Rihanna announced her pregnancy with a set of staged photographs showing her walking with her boyfriend, the rapper A$AP Rocky, in Harlem, New York City. In March, the internet went into a paroxysm of nostalgia when Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck recreated a scene from Lopez’s 2002’s music video Jenny from the Block for the benefit of a conveniently positioned photographer with a long-lens camera. In June, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling were snapped looking like a nightmare in neon while filming the much-awaited Barbie film on Venice Beach, Los Angeles.“I think a lot of people are quite dumb to how it works,” says the Manchester-based paparazzo Aaron Parfitt. “People think we are scumbags hanging out of trees. But these celebrities are ringing us.” He estimates that 80% of his shots are set up in advance. “I’ve been on holiday with celebrities,” says Parfitt, 22. “Most of them are reality stars. We go to Spain, shoot six bikini sets and stick them out throughout the month.”Under the spotlight … Rebekah Vardy at the high court in London in May for the ‘Wagatha Christie’ trial. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesA culture of omertà prevails. “No one wants to talk about it,” says Malin Andersson, a 29-year-old influencer and mental health podcaster from Bedfordshire. “But I have done it. I openly admit to that.” After leaving Love Island in 2016, she routinely posed for arranged shots. “It was so fucking weird,” she says. “I’d pretend to be on my phone. I felt so awkward doing it. But then it became a norm.”Fellow Love Island alumna Rachel Finni, 30, remembers the moment she was inculcated into this secret practice. She was having dinner with a minor celebrity, having just left the show. “He said: ‘I am going to text the pap guy.’” Finni was confused. “He said: ‘Honey, paps only come if you call them!” Over the next few months, she routinely let paparazzi know her plans. “Seeing yourself in the papers and magazines every other day is the most incredible feeling,” she says.Finni and Andersson are not alone. “When you come off Love Island, you have a year to cash in until the next season,” says Jesal Parshotam, 32, a paparazzo who works in London and LA. “The people who make it are the ones who are regularly appearing on MailOnline. Love Island people go out to be photographed. They have their guy.”Rihanna with her favourite paparazzo, Miles Digg. Photograph: SplashNews.comIt is not only lower-tier stars who contact paparazzi routinely. “Kim Kardashian has a unique relationship with the paparazzi,” says Emily Rose, whose pop culture podcast It’s Become a Whole Thing dissects the relationship between celebrities and paparazzi. Kardashian has admitted to seeking out paparazzi when she was up-and-coming; she is understood to work with favoured photographers.Rihanna has a close relationship with the paparazzo Miles Digg, who shot her pregnancy reveal photos. “He is trusted,” says Parshotam. “She’s worked with him for over 10 years. If we’re in a crowd of 10 photographers, I’ve seen her stop and hug him.”Whether A-lister or otherwise, the reason that celebrities notify paparazzi of their whereabouts is the same. “It’s an exposure game,” says Chad Teixeira, the chairman of the celebrity PR firm Daddy the Agency. “It’s about keeping relevant.” Teixeira often contacts paparazzi on behalf of his clients. “What everyone has to remember is that everyone is just doing their job,” says Teixeira. “Celebrities need paps to promote their profiles. Papers need celebrities to earn an income. One can’t exist without the other.”‘Celebrities can’t be seen to be working with paps’ … Aaron Parfitt, a Manchester-based paparazzo. Photograph: Joel Goodman/The GuardianFor lower-tier celebrities, being papped regularly helps them to increase their social media following and secure brand work. Higher-tier celebrities are papped while on promotional tours for their latest project. “A common trope is famous people who are usually fairly reclusive suddenly being photographed every day canoodling with their new love, who happens to be a co-star in their movie,” says Rose. Other times, paparazzi are used to rehabilitate a celebrity’s public image after a controversy. “I know one high-profile footballer who’d had an affair,” says Parshotam. “He organised pictures of him holding hands with his family, to take the heat off the story.”If the public has a basic understanding of paparazzi, it goes something like this: paparazzi are the cruel men, usually bald, who hounded Britney Spears to a breakdown. “I was definitely a part of that,” says 53-year-old Giles Harrison, an industry veteran who lives in LA. “That was one of the darker times in the industry.” As such, paparazzi are commonly despised. “We’re hated more than traffic wardens,” says Jaimie Harris, 31, a paparazzo turned picture editor from Essex. “People used to shout at me: ‘You killed Princess Diana!’” In her decade-long career, Harris saw much reprehensible behaviour. “High-speed chases,” she says. “All of us would go through red lights.”‘That was one of the darker times in the industry’ … Giles Harrison, pictured at his office in 2011, on the hounding of Britney Spears. Photograph: Reed Saxon/APThe period 2004 to 2016 was a “golden era”, Harrison says. “That’s when we were making more money than we knew what to do with.” His company generated about $1.5m annually in picture sales. In the UK, the Leveson inquiry heard evidence in 2011 from witnesses including Sienna Miller, who said she was spat at and verbally abused by photographers, and JK Rowling, who said that paparazzi targeted her daughter’s primary school. But most paparazzi insist that the bad old days of Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Charlotte Church et al being taunted and harassed are in the past. “When people think of paparazzi, they think of that Britney Spears gold rush era,” says Parshotam. “But that photography was disgusting and doesn’t exist any more. We are all against it.”With the advent of social media, margins have been squeezed. Newspapers and magazines are less willing to pay for photographs when they can lift them from Instagram for free. Celebrities unhappy about being papped can upload an image of themselves on to social media, killing the value of a paparazzi photograph. While photo sets of rarely spotted A-listers still sell for tens of thousands of pounds, mostly paparazzi make no more than a few hundred pounds at a time. “I know so many people who are giving it up or struggling,” says Harris.Because there is less money at stake, paparazzi have calmed down. “It’s not the feeding frenzy it once was,” says Harrison. “When people can get tens of thousands of dollars for a shot, it can make people bloodthirsty.” That is not to say that intrusive behaviour does not take place. While Parshotam says he wouldn’t take someone’s photo if they asked him not to, Parfitt and Harris have done so. “I think if you’re following someone, doing covert pictures out and about, that’s fair game, even if they don’t know you are there,” says Harris. “That’s what paps are there to do. We’re there to take pictures.”Many A-listers have reached an accommodation with the people who take their images. “Celebrities understand the benefits of it now,” says Parshotam. Harrison agrees. “It’s a lot less adversarial. As much as people overtly seem to dislike the paparazzi and the product, behind the scenes, people like it and embrace it.” This is not to say that all A-listers call the paparazzi on themselves. As a rule of thumb, the more famous someone is, the less likely they are to do this, although there are high-profile exceptions.‘Golden era’? Lindsay Lohan, pictured outside court in 2010, was a frequent target of paparazzi for many years. Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesBut when celebrities are spotted in public, most don’t mind having their photos taken, says Parshotam. “The other day, I photographed [the American model] Hailey Bieber,” says Parshotam. “I asked if it was OK to take some pictures and she said: ‘Give me a minute.’ When she was ready, I took them. I made sure there were none of her looking bad, none with her eyes closed.”The A-listers who aren’t OK with paparazzi? Adele. Prince Harry. David Beckham. Woman-of-the-moment Coleen Rooney varies, says Parfitt. “If you get her on a good day, she doesn’t mind,” he says. “On a bad day, she tells you to fuck off.” Those who want to avoid being papped know to avoid notorious celebrity hangouts such as Carbone in New York or Chiltern Firehouse in London. “The people who want to be seen will be seen,” says Harris.By contrast, celebrities desperate to stay newsworthy may resort to degrading antics. In 2016, Parfitt photographed a former Big Brother contestant posing naked on Blackpool beach. “She messaged me on Twitter and said: ‘I have an idea. What if I go skinnydipping on Blackpool Beach?’” he says. “I picked her up and she went on the beach and started stripping off and rolling around in the sand.” The images went viral. “She loved them. It got her back in the press, put it that way.”But other celebrities grow tired of the hamster wheel. “You’d be going to events just to get papped,” says Andersson. “That’s how sad it was. And so was everyone else. The next day, you’d look at the Mail to see if you were on there and you’d feel inadequate if you weren’t.” When flashes start to illuminate other, fresher talents, the sense of loss can be crushing. “Seeing myself in the Mail gave me validation, but it was empty validation. Because the article would drop down in five minutes and you’d want the next one. It becomes a bit of an addiction and you start chasing it more.”The issue with inviting paparazzi to photograph your life, says Finni, is that you start to think of every aspect of your life, even your darkest moments, as monetisable moments. “You see people who have gone through traumatic events who are in the Mail the next day,” she says. “You think: you’re going through something so disturbing, but you called someone to come to take a picture of you? Where do you lose the sense of value of your own privacy? What message are you giving out to people who follow in your footsteps, in terms of stepping into the spotlight?” Andersson and Finni no longer arrange paparazzi shots. “It doesn’t do anything for me, but to remind people I exist,” says Finni. “And how does it benefit me to remind people I exist? It’s so empty.”Everyone in this ecosystem is required to perform a complicated charade. Celebrities pretend they haven’t contacted paparazzi; photographers accept the public’s dislike as a necessary price for doing their job. “I’ve had people walking past going: ‘Leave them alone!’” says Parfitt. “And I’m thinking: they rang me to shoot these pictures. But celebrities can’t be seen to be working with paps. So they have to say: ‘It’s fine – I’m used to it.’” They partake in this unholy dance because it is considered unforgivably gauche to seek fame, rather than to stumble upon it en route to another destination. “We hold our hands up and say: ‘It’s set up,’” says Harris. “It’s the celebrities themselves who are embarrassed about it.”The public partakes in this collective denial, too. As much as we heckle paparazzi in the street and pontificate about the invasion of privacy, we consume these images voraciously. Indeed, the market wouldn’t exist without customers. Harris says: “People moan: ‘Leave them alone!’ but they’re the ones looking at the pictures.”
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Photographers
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These stars are ready to party.
Hollywood's biggest night isn't over yet, as the stars have made their way from the Dolby theater to the Vanity Fair 2023 Oscars After-Party at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills. (See all the celebrities on the Oscars 2023 red carpet here).
Hosted by the magazine's editor in chief Radhika Jones, this annual event is attended by all types of celebrities: from movie stars to athletes to super models, this is one invite you definitely want to nab.
But before the big players enter the bash, celebrity photographer Mark Selige is at the blue carpet ready to capture the nights hottest looks. Some A-listers who have graced the carpet in Oscar's after-party past: In 2022, Emma Chamberlain, who rocked Louis Vuitton and accessorized with Cartier jewelry, Normani, in Jean Paul Gaultier and Halsey sporting Dolce & Gabbana.
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Photographers
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Photography is an expensive hobby. Cameras, lenses, and accessories like tripods can cost thousands. But we can help you with the latter: Adorama has 30% off the Peak Design Travel Tripod this Black Friday, giving a whopping $180 saving on one of the best tripods around.
Usually $599.95, the Peak Design Travel Tripod can be picked up for just $419.97 in this super Black Friday offer. That 30% saving is not to be sniffed at, particularly if you're in the market for an exceptionally lightweight yet solid tripod.
We reviewed the Peak Design Travel Tripod back in 2021, and two years later this is still one of the best on the market. We called it a "key piece of kit" for photographers and astrophotographers who like to travel around. Its narrow design is one of the most compact we've seen while still offering a very sturdy tripod when unfolded.
Made from carbon fiber, it's incredibly lightweight too, weighing just 2.8 lbs (1.27 kg). It's not going to weigh you down when you're on the move, and despite its own lightness, it can still hold up to 20 lbs (9.07 kg). Even at full price, we rated Peak Design Travel Tripod as one of the best tripods for portability, and with a $180 saving, it's a better buy than ever.
Peak Design Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod:
was $599.95 now $419.97 at Adorama
Save 30% on one of the best tripods money can buy. The Peak Design Travel Tripod is one of the most portable tripods on the market, boasting extreme lightness while still being incredibly sturdy. We named it the overall best for portability in our best tripods round-up.
- Read our Black Friday 2023 deals page for big discounts on space gifts
Peak Design describes its own Travel Tripod as having "groundbreaking design". It sounds a little big-headed, sure, but we'd have to agree: very few tripods offer the same level of stability while also being compact. The fact it's made of carbon fiber helps keep its weight down without ever losing any sturdiness.
The Travel Tripod can hold up to 20 lbs of weight, so even your biggest lenses shouldn't be a problem here. But it's fine for shooting small with, too: it's suitable to mount your phone on if that's how you prefer to shoot.
Peak Design has so much faith in its product, in fact, that when you buy it, it'll come with a lifetime guarantee. That means should it break, the company will replace or repair it.
If you want a similarly good tripod but don't want to spend quite as much, Adorama is also offering 15% off the aluminum version of the Peak Design Travel Tripod. Normally $379.95, it's currently available for $322.96.
Key Specs: Carbon fiber body, weights 2.81lbs, max load 20lbs, 15.4in folded height, ball head, 5 leg sections
Consensus: One of the best travel tripods around, you can't get much sturdier and lighter than the Peak Design Travel Tripod. Made of carbon fiber, it's incredibly lightweight but can hold up to 20 lbs of gear.
Buy if: You're a serious photographer or videographer who frequently travels with all their gear.
Don't buy if: You're on a budget, or have a static photography setup
Alternative models: The Benro Mach3 TMA37C is one of the best all-around tripods, but it's significantly heavier than the Peak Design Travel Tripod. We're also fans of the 3 Legged Thing Punks Brian, not only does it have an excellent name but it's a solid all-around performer (and it won't break the bank).
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Photographers
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By Nicola BryanBBC NewsImage source, Jenny HibbertImage caption, Jenny Hibbert's photograph of a brown bear guarding its kill is on display at the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain's Inter-Federation ExhibitionWhen Jenny Hibbert turned to photography as a distraction during her difficult divorce, little did she know it would take her around the globe and bring her face to face with some of the world's largest predators. The great-grandmother, 70, has visited Mongolia, where she walked up to 19 miles a day in -25C (-13F) conditions. She has also travelled to the Arctic, where she was chased by a polar bear, as well as Japan and Poland.But her favourite place is Finland where she photographs Europe's largest predator - the brown bear.Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, Jenny visited Mongolia in 2016 to photograph a nomadic ethnic group the KazakhsNow one of her pictures is part of an exhibition that will travel around the UK and is currently at Swansea's Quadrant Shopping Centre.Her photo of a brown bear guarding its kill, a moose, was taken on her most recent trip to Finland in April. Jenny, who has four children, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, has always loved photography and was given her first camera for Christmas when she was 11.She was 62 when she bought herself her first digital camera. Image source, Jenny HibbertImage caption, Jenny has already visited Finland twice this year to photograph brown bears"I was going through a really messy divorce," said Jenny, who lives in Margam, Neath Port Talbot. "Any divorce is a nightmare. It kind of took my mind off everything so I threw myself into photography."She began taking photos of Welsh landscapes and wildlife, such as Skomer's puffins, and released a photography book about dippers on the River Ogmore.Image source, Jenny HibbertImage caption, Finland's brown bears hibernate from October to AprilShe then began taking photography trips abroad, but capturing the photos featured in the exhibition was an arduous task. "Basically I was in a hide for 16 hours," she said."You sleep in this hide, it's extremely cold, probably -20C... the only bit of heat I had was nine little candles."And you're just there, hoping that a bear or two, which would be even better, will turn up."Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, Bear attacks on humans are extremely rare in Finland"This bear came in the early hours of the morning, so it was really hoar frost and covered," she said. "It was just an amazing time to be able to photograph this bear with the dead moose that was there because they'd just come out of hibernation."Image source, Sarah KelmanImage caption, Jenny's friend and fellow photographer Sarah Kelman took this photograph of a bear trying to get into her hidePhotographing bears is not without its risks and Jenny has found herself in a hairy spot on more than one occasion.In 2010, she and a small group of photographers sailed around the Arctic in a yacht.After days on board they finally got to spend some time on land, but it was short-lived.Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, The brown bear is Europe's largest predator"We got chased off the beach by a polar bear, which was extremely scary - we just had to run," said Jenny. Then, while on a trip to Finland in 2020, a hungry bear was drawn to the chocolate she had with her in her hide."This brown bear could smell it and was trying to get into the hide - so you're just banging on the side of this hide to scare it away," she said."Your mobile phones don't work because you're out in the wilderness, so yes, it was quite scary."Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, Jenny walked up to 19 miles a day with nomads in MongoliaOne of her most challenging adventures was a trip to Mongolia in 2016, travelling with the Kazakhs, a nomadic ethnic group.Before being selected to go on the trip she had to demonstrate she could get on with people, was fit enough to walk up to 19 miles a day and could withstand very cold conditions. During the trip she slept on a mattress on the floor of a Mongolian ger in -35C (-31F) conditions. "This just shows you how stupid I was, or naïve, the first night I changed into my pyjamas and I couldn't understand why people were wearing their thermals, their hats," she chuckled."Well, that was the first time and the last time that I ever did that." Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, Jenny was able to speak to the Kazakhs through a translatorShe would sleep with her wet wipes and her toothpaste to try and stop them from freezing overnight. She said spending time with the Kazakhs was a privilege. Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, The Kazakhs migrate seasonally to find pasturage for their livestock"It is a really hard life for them, extremely hard, and yet they are the happiest people that you could possibly meet," she said."The children have absolutely nothing or very few things - a tatty party pack of cards and a really scruffy little teddy - but they were lovely and they just got on with it."She said she loved the photos she took of the children and the animals.Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, A camel cried out for its missing calfOne photo was taken after a camel lost its calf when it wandered off and got lost during a storm."She was just calling for this young camel and it was awful to hear, it was really heart-breaking," said Jenny. Thankfully the Kazakhs found the calf safe and well and it was reunited with its mother. Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, An exhausted cow was loaded into a truck during the gruelling journeyAnother of her photos shows the group loading one of their cows, which had become exhausted, on to a truck."That just shows you how really important their animals are to them," said Jenny.Jenny, who is president of the Welsh Photographic Federation, has enjoyed success as a photographer.Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, The Kazakhs keep livestock including horses, sheep, goats, cows and camelsShe earned herself the nickname Miss September in her camera club after her photographs were featured on the BBC Countryfile calendar for both September 2016 and September 2022.She said she hopes one day she will be able to go to Alaska to photograph bears catching salmon and Yellowstone National Park in the winter.But for now she is spending her time in Swansea, manning the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain's Inter-Federation Exhibition.It features 150 photographs from photographers across the UK, selected from a collection of 1,300.The Photographic Alliance of Great Britain's Inter-Federation Exhibition will be in Swansea's Quadrant Shopping Centre until 30 July.Image source, JENNY HIBBERTImage caption, Camels play an important role in the life of nomads as both working animals and as a source of milk, meat, wool and leatherBearsArcticPhotographyWildlifeJapanMongoliaMargamFinland
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Photographers
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Chris Killip’s 1988 book In Flagrante, his indelible black-and-white record of the fraying of industrial communities in the north-east in that decade, won him a Henri Cartier-Bresson award. It also contained something of an omission. Between 1981 and 1984, Killip worked extensively in the remote North Yorkshire coastal village of Skinningrove, but only four pictures from that body of work made it into his book. There were reasons for this.In a short film about Skinningrove in 2013 Killip talked of some of the emotional complications of those pictures. It had taken him a long time to be accepted in the village. “Like a lot of tight-knit fishing communities, Skinningrove could be hostile to strangers, especially ones with a camera,” Killip recalled. “Skinningrove fishermen believed that the sea in front of them was their private territory, theirs alone.” He eventually won the trust of some of the wilder lads who went out to check the lobster pots each day, but his photographs became something more tragic when, in 1986, one of their small boats overturned and two of the lads drowned. It was only right at the end of Killip’s own life – he died of cancer in 2020 – that he felt able to publish those pictures. Before he did so, he personally posted an edition of the photographs through every letterbox in the village.This picture – now included in a full retrospective collection of Killip’s work – captures a lot of the defended insularity of the place, where many of the men worked the boats and did shifts at the steel mill. The family out on a Sunday walk have an untamed edge that matches their time and place. Killip’s camera loved the otherworldly light; a grounded man, he nevertheless talked of these pictures in terms of 19th-century German romanticism. In Skinningrove, he felt he came close to catching a poet’s sense of the sublime in images of hard lives on the shoreline. Chris Killip, retrospective is at the Photographers’ Gallery, London W1, from Friday to 19 February. A book to coincide with the exhibition is published by Thames & Hudson
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Photographers
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Artists, illustrators and photographers have often led the way in embracing new technology. The concerns that creators such as Harry Woodgate have about AI programs (‘It’s the opposite of art’: why illustrators are furious about AI, 23 January) that “rely entirely on the pirated intellectual property of countless working artists, photographers, illustrators and other rights holders” must be heeded.
Evidence published recently by the House of Lords, gathered from the first-hand experience of visual artists, galleries and experts, demonstrates that the government’s proposed copyright exception will have far-reaching, detrimental consequences.
The UK’s £116bn cultural and creative industries have an opportunity to be world leaders in developing and sustaining talent in emerging technologies, but the government must ensure that artists’ rights are protected. We must recognise the critical importance of strong copyright law and fair remuneration, not just to protect individual artists, but to safeguard the UK’s cultural and creative industries as a whole.
Christian Zimmermann
CEO, Design and Artists Copyright Society
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Photographers
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Subsets and Splits
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Simple retrieval of unique topics from the dataset, useful for basic exploration but lacks deeper insights.