russia’s lake baikal - the world’s oldest, largest and deepest freshwater lake - freezes over for half the year, creating clear, turquoise shards of ice. (photos x, x x, x, x, x)
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I know the sunrise is something special when I start getting calls from community members who are making sure I am aware of what is going on outside and ready with my camera! Tulit’a, Northwest Territories, Canada. December 30, 2015.
This amazing video is well worth taking a moment to watch, via NBC News.
Uptown Eric Holubow
“The Uptown Theatre, also known as the Balaban and Katz Uptown Theatre, is a massive, ornate movie palace in the Uptown neighborhood ofChicago, Illinois. Designed by Rapp and Rapp and constructed in 1925, it the last of the “big three” movie palaces built by the Balaban & Katz theatre chain run by A. J. Balaban, his brother Barney Balaban and their partner Sam Katz.“
Milky way over the Mackenzie River. Tulit’a, Northwest Territories, Canada.
More such titles are always possible, we’ll just need to see what develops.
while people think of the birds and the bees pollinating the flowers and the trees, there are also hundreds of species of nectar feeding bats which pollinate thousands of species of plants. known as chiropterophilous plants, many grow flowers that open at night so that the bats, attracted to the sugary nectar, get a dusting of pollen that is carried along with them to the next flower.
these plants and bats have shaped each other through coevolution, with the flowers, usually white in colour and pungent in scent so as to be conspicuous at night, often taking a vase like shape to accommodate the face of the bat. the bats, for their part, have particularly good eyesight and a fine sense of smell, but their sonar is often reduced.
chiropterophilous plants even manufacture substances that are useless to themselves but helpful to the bat; because bats often eat the pollen in addition to the nectar, the pollen of these plants contain an amino acid, proline, which is needed to build strong wing and tail membranes.
also worth noting: compared to say birds and bees, bats have heavy wings for their body size. consider that bats beat their wings up to 17 times per second while the bumblebee can approach 200 wing beats per second. and while those comparatively cumbersome bat wings seem like a detriment to maneuverability, new research shows this extra wing mass makes possible their ability to land upside down, like when roosting. (videography)
From water on Mars to Pluto’s heart, 2015 was a huge year of discovery for NASA. These don’t even mention, the “close encounters” we had with celestial objects this year.
2015 WAS AMAZING!