"My mind sees that I am nothing, my heart sees that I am everything, between these two poles my life unfolds."

Friday, June 3, 2011

Happy Friday :) A few jewels before we get to the second part of our African Lion Safari tour. A faithful reader forwarded me this video. I don't think I would have envisioned this design if I'd tried. Innovation never stops - I guess it is at the heart of man.


In science/space news, the uncanny resemblance of a galaxy about 30 million light years 
away from Earth, to our own Milky Way has astounded astronomers.


This is the best-yet picture of NGC 6744, a spiral galaxy described as a "sibling" of our own Milky Way.

The image was snapped by the European Southern Observatory's MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope in Chile.

The galaxy lies 30 million light-years away, in the constellation Pavo.

While it is almost twice as large as the Milky Way, it exhibits the same sharply-defined spiral arms and stretched central region.

There is even a small companion galaxy, visible at the lower right of the image, which is analogous to our own galactic neighbours the Magellanic Clouds.

Those arms host many star-forming regions; the glow coming from hydrogen gas in these active regions shows up as red in the image.



This is the second installment in our African Lion Safari tour
(a backrest on a chair in the restaurant)

Fyi: the monkey in the background is playing with someone's side mirror..!
Hate to admit it, but I am not the Monkey's biggest fan!
Perhaps we are the main attraction but don't realize it?
The ostrich above was chasing off one of these characters.
These guys made me kind of nervous...
They could make mincemeat out of any vehicle. 



After our lunch, we moved on to the petting zoo

I didn't try to pet this one lol!


8 comments:

  1. That galaxy is simply amazing. I didn't know it existed, thanks for posting about it. I'm going to go to do some exploring.

    I love monkeys but they sure can be asses,lol
    My grandma had peacocks as pets, they were so lovely.
    Awesome photos!

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  2. Great photos from the Safari Park. I particularly like the last sign - it would have no credibility as a tourist destination if there were no gift shop!

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  3. Hi LaelShine, Space fascinates me and they just keep finding out more and more - sometimes I wish I'd been born 50 or even 100 years in the future. Wow, I have never heard of someone actually having peacocks - they sure would be amazing to look at everyday.

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  4. Hi Tricky Nag, Thanks, the thing I liked about the park was that, unlike a lot of other attractions, you did not exit through a gift shop. They had their own separate buildings.

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  5. Wow, this safari looks simply amazing. I 'gotta get me over there' one of these days :) Love the photos.

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  6. That galaxy would be worth some research on.

    Just think how far that is away from ours.

    Would say, "It's out of our world."

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  7. I could spend hours upon hours reading all the space articles they have posted on the internet. Some of the hubble telescope pictures just blow me away. It really brings to light just how vast our universe is.

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  8. Hi Martha, You certainly should consider going seeing as you are so close - your family would love it.

    Hi Lorene, Seeing as it is our twin glaxy, perhaps we would find our doubles living there... only they'd probably be richer and better looking lol!

    Hi WebDebris, I agree, I really love the Nasa website - I used to have their space photo of the day app along my sidebar at one time.

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Thanks for stopping by - and leaving your comments! I love reading them :)