Alaid Volcano, Kuril Islands, Russian Federation (NASA, International Space Station, 05/18/12)

A few nice space images I found:

Alaid Volcano, Kuril Islands, Russian Federation (NASA, International Space Station, 05/18/12)

Image by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
Alaid Volcano in the Kuril Islands of the Russian Federation is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 31 crew member on the International Space Station. The Kurils chain extends from the Kamchatka Peninsula to the islands of Japan, and contains numerous active volcanoes along its length. Alaid is the highest (2,339 meters above sea level) volcano in the Kuril chain, as well as being the northernmost. The textbook conic morphology of this stratovolcano is marred only by the summit crater, which is breached to the south (center) and highlighted by snow cover. The volcano rises 3,000 meters directly from the floor of the Sea of Okhotsk, with the uppermost part of the volcanic edifice exposed as an island. Much of the sea surface surrounding the volcano has a silver-gray appearance. This mirror-like appearance is due to sunglint, where light reflects off the sea surface and is scattered directly towards the observer onboard the space station. Sunglint is largely absent from a zone directly to the west of the volcano, most likely due to surface wind or water current patterns that change the roughness — and light scattering properties — of the water surface in this area. Volcanoes in the Kurils, and similar island arcs in the Pacific "ring of fire", are fed by magma generated along the boundary between two tectonic plates, where one plate is being driven beneath the other (a process known as subduction). Alaid Volcano has been historically active with the most recent confirmed explosive activity occurring in 1996.

Image credit: NASA/JSC

Original image:
spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/station/crew-31/html/…

More about space station research:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

There’s a Flickr group about Space Station Research. Please feel welcome to join! www.flickr.com/groups/stationscience/

View more than 400 photos like this in the "NASA Earth Images" Flickr photoset:
www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/

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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin…

Mercury Capsule, Space Center Houston

Image by DaveWilsonPhotography
A Mercury project capsule on display at Space Center Houston, Texas. It’s amazing to think that a human could shoehorn his way into this tiny capsule given all the switches and controls it also contains. It’s even more amazing to me to wonder what all those switches and controls could be doing on such an apparently simple cone.

It was really dark in here! So dark, in fact, that the camera meter was essentially useless. For at least one shot, the exposure was indicated as longer than 30 seconds at f/2.8 and 3200ISO (even though the actual exposure was about 8 seconds at 800ISO and f/5.6). As a result, I pretty much winged it, taking test shots in manual until I found what seemed to be a reasonable center exposure then bracketing from there.

I would greatly appreciate your vote in the 2010 Photoblog Awards. Thanks!

View on black
View large on black.

“Harasser” Capital Ship (Fractured Space “Hunter” inspired)

Image by wray20641
More on this ship on its album!!!

Two weeks of design and rendering have finally come to an end, here it is, based on the original Zarek "Hunter" i built my ship from the ground up to follow the same design language and yet being a new ship on its own, the "Harasser"!!!

The ship is built following the same principles of a classic "ship of the line" whit cannons linned on every side intended to cause the maximum damage every time it passes near to an enemy ship, for this it has reinforced armour at the cost of mobility and a special feature (replacing the "detect" ability on the original Hunter) the tractor ray, it can drag other ships out of the bases and attach to a dissabled ship for point blank damage and then blink away to safety before suffering too much damage.

It was such a challenge to design the ship, some parts were pretty easy while others took me entire days to figure out, im happy whit the final outcome, a total of 5138 bricks whit a massive size of 158 studs long, a third for the blink drives, another third for the armour and walls and the rest on the rear part of the ship, and im planning on buying all the bricks for shiptemeber xD

Rendering here is of lower quality than the other renders because having such a complex design my computer was unable to move simlab for this rendering so i had to use CATIA as a last resort

Thanks to Edge Case games for an awesome game, a wonderfull and inspiring world whit huge capital ships tearing appart their enemies on the most intense space fight i ever had!!!

Download the LDD file for this ship on my mediafire folder