Pixie Trix Comix & Hiveworks Community

Great shots, Gil!!

So, what were you observing? Or is it hish-hush?

Ironic that I spent nine weeks of last year on La Silla and don't have a single picture to prove it...

I was using the 2mm receiver on the 12m to look at the star IRC+10216, AKA the galaxy's junk drawer for AGB carbon chemistry. This project is trying to find evidence of the radical C2Cl, which some astrobiologists convinced my boss is possibly a precursor to amino acids, maybe they think. Astrobiologists love things they think are precursors to amino acids, maybe.

I always take my camera when I go up to Kitt Peak, because its really nice up there and I like to go hiking when I'm not helping the operators or doing observing. It's really peaceful, about 20 degrees cooler than the city, and you don't have to worry about your cell phone (which is off... radio telescopes don't like cell phones).

Admittedly not 100% according to the rules of the thread, but I wanted to share it and deemed it is a beautiful scenery, indeed:

Hubble Space Telescope WFC3 image of R136 star cluster in 30 Doradus, the Tarantula Nebula, in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

I remind the honoured Green of the existence of the Random Pics thread.

Which is also meant for pictures taken by us which are neither of us, nor show beautiful sceneries. I think it fits better here.

Looking back, you may wish to adjust the current OPs with guidelines for thread usage then. It seems this thread and Random Pics were originally created by Teacher and since those posts were expunged we are missing that content now.

This was the view from the basement door this morning.

Downtown Mobile, from the 7th floor of the AT&T building.

Yes, yes, yes, I admit it, the following image does not entirely honor the rules of this thread, but it IS a beautiful scenery for sure!!!

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1301/ng ... t_1280.jpg

I'm still not 100% sure this applies... as it contains... ME!

Went hiking today in a place called Los Cahorros.

You mean you being in them isn't what makes them beautiful? ;)

I logically know that bridge is probably safe and yet I'm still going NOPE

Back in Spain, I take it?

It looks like, what, three inch steel cable for the suspension and steel bars on the support up-rights. So yes as these things go, very safe. But, I hear you on the "Nope", too.

Three inches??? Nah, more like one. But the boards... creaked. And they were quite weather-worn...

This bridge was one of several but the others were way shorter. This was the only one that had a big warning sign at the beginning stating only four people at once were allowed on it (just as we arrived, a contgent of five people and a dog were coming over... Spaniards... ), and some other stuff.

Interestingly enough, my acrophobia did not trigger at all. The bridge swayed quite a bit which was disconcerting but the railings looked very secure.

Not long after, my trip was over, though... :S The canyon became really tight, and the walkway was a concrete wall next to the little river, about a foot wide and six feet high. To the right it was filled with dirt/rocks, but this part, usually another two feet wide, was eroded down a bit - and then came the vertical cliff wall rising up. So here, you had a three-feet wide walkway - NO railing. But that was still fine. I'm a wide load but it's not that bad!

But then a part came where the fill-in part is reduced to half a foot and the cliff wall HANGS OVER. If you're really scrawny, you can still walk past this upright (or if you are a little kid), everyone else has to grab on to some handholds in the cliff face and lean out over the river to get past.

I tried. But then, right in the middle, I massively went NOPE! and had to back backward while somehow holding on to the fucking cliff face which was pretty much polished stone. I crouched down to get my center of mass low and not tip over... It was really, really ugly.

I had to go back. My friend who had gotten past easily went and explored a bit further while I walked back and over that bridge. She then returned which I had actually not expected (I had suggested meeting back at the car). We took a "high route" back (which is when the second picture was taken). We had one really funny moment when we hiked up to a little hilltop where a flat, round, 20-foot diameter stone platform had been built at the peak. My friend: "What is this, a helicopter landing pad?" And in that moment, we see the faded white huge "H"...

I don't think there's a "Nope" big enough for that second part. Handholds. You needed handholds.