Tag: island

Zodiacal Light Vs. Milky Way

Posted by Nexus – 23/03/2010

[via APOD]

Ghostly Zodiacal light, featured near the center of this remarkable panorama, is produced as sunlight is scattered by dust in the Solar System’s ecliptic plane.

In the weeks surrounding the March equinox (today at 1732 UT) Zodiacal light is more prominent after sunset in the northern hemisphere, and before sunrise in the south, when the ecliptic makes a steep angle with the horizon.

In the picture, the narrow triangle of Zodiacal light extends above the western horizon and seems to end at the lovely Pleiades star cluster. Arcing above the Pleiades are stars and nebulae along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.

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That is one rare bird: Black penguin suffers from ‘one in a zillion mutation’

Posted by Nexus – 10/03/2010

[via dailymail.co.uk]

Some birds just like to stand out from the crowd.

And this all-black penguin on the South Atlantic island of Fortuna Bay is a ‘one in a zillion’ rarity experts say.

The bird on the South Georgian island, about 860 miles off the Falklands, is thought to suffer from a condition known as melanism, a mutation that turned it black.

After being shown the pictures by National Geographic magazine, Dr Allan Baker, of the University of Toronto, described them as ‘astonishing’.

Dark: The black penguin stands out from the crowd and has been hailed as 'astonishing'

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