The house of pain and pride
While you are visiting beautiful beaches and charming streets of Corfu town, you will find a simple house among tiled streets and flowered balconies. You will notice it’s some kind of a museu…
Source: The house of pain and pride
No Food, No Teachers — Discover
“But her 7 a.m. art class was canceled when the instructor called in sick. History class was suspended. There was no gym class because the coach had been shot dead weeks earlier.” At AP Images Spotlight, view a photo collection of a collapsing Venezuelan school.
Barefooted
Shape of my heart
Check out my new project 🙂
Brzina svetlosti — astronomyinfoblog
Brzina svetlosti u vakuumu (obeležava se sa c), je važna fizička konstanta i iznosi 299792458 m/s (3×108 m/s). Prema specijalnoj teoriji relativnosti, c je maksimalna brzina kojom bilo kakva materija u svemiru može da se kreće pa samim tim i maksimalna brzina kojom može da se prenese bilo kakva informacija. Da bismo govorili o brzini svetlosti, […]
And off we go!
Last week before the trip was crazy and I surly didn’t got enough sleep and with other things to do at home, there really was not time to even think about Iceland. When I finally got in a plane, I could hardly believe it is happening.
It was Saturday, and our trip was not going to be short and easy. We were first going to Oslo and had a layover there for 9 hours during night. That could not be fun, you would say? I though so too, because we could not make a plan how to go from the airport in the middle of the night and get back in the crack of dawn and actually make our risk worth it in 3 o’clock in the morning. So, we decided to stay at the airport. We expected metal, uncomfortable chairs and a lot of boredom and freezing, but it was kind of great. People at the airport were not bugging us at all and we could stay at closed cafe which had comfortable chairs and was pretty worm. We watched a movie and I actually fell a sleep for about hour and a half so when I woke up I felt I could stay a bit longer. But, it was time to catch another plain and go to our destination.
We were so lucky to fly over Iceland on a beautiful day. Guy next to me probably had some trouble sleeping because of my camera clicking all the time, but I was too exited to care. Seeing ocean turning into ice and combing with the land, this was something I never sow before. The coast was so curious because there was this distinct gray line, like a painting, between blue ocean and white land. It looked like it was painted with the brush. Landing started and we were just about to touch Iceland and discover how beautiful and inclement it can be.
Dance with Aurora Borealis
Looking at shimmering lights from the ground is one astonishing experience but flying in the night sky filed with colors produced by solar wind is truly remarkable undertaking. Believe it or not, such thing was done by Horacio Llorens, pioneer in aerobatic paragliding. Although this happen in Trømso, Norway and is off topic for my research, I couldn’t resist from sharing. Take a look at the pictures and get inspired!
You can find more about this undertaking Paraglider flying in the Northern Lights.
Princess of Iceland – the Arctic fox
The cutest little creature can be found in Iceland – the Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus). This was the only terrestrial mammal that had been living in Iceland before the Vikings’ settelment of Iceland. The assumption is it arrived to Iceland over a frozen sea during the last ice age. It can also be found in the colder parts of Finland, Greenland (Denmark), Norway, Russia, Sweden, Alaska (United States), and Canada.
It’s very small with an average length of 52 to 55 cm and an average weight around 3kg. With its thick white fur during winter, when it settelment of Iceland to retain heat, and brown lean look during the summer, to blend with the environment, it is a real chameleon of Iceland.
Unfortunately, it is an endangered species in Scandinavia mostly due to global warming and expansion of a the red fox. Population of the red fox was regulated by the grey wolf, its natural enemy, but since the grey wolf is being hunted to near extinction, this has lead to expansion of the red fox to the habitat of the Arctic fox. It seems there were cases of red fox showing up in the Iceland where it represents a real danger to the arctic fox (A Red Fox in Iceland?).
This beeing a wild animal, my only chance of seeing it would be somewhere in captivity, maybe in the Arctic fox center placed in the Westfjords. Looking forward to meet face to face with this magnificent animals!
Geysers – as if volcanoes and glacier caves are not enough
I’m planing to visit Geysir in Haukadalur. This geysir is, in a way, The Geyser of the world because it was the first known geyser to modern Europeans and the one that all the others got a name after. English word geyser originate from the Icelandic verb geysa, “to gush” (gjósa).
Secret of a geyser is in pressure. But for geyser to form, we need two things. Water supply and heat supply. Water supply would be some underground river flow, and heat supply the most wondrous of them all – volcano. So, if you have these two under a surface mixing up, you have a great chance for geysir to pop out. As water is heated up by magma under the surface, on a very limited space, it starts to boil and expand. Pressure is growing and water is trying to come out. Once it finds its way up, it can reach remarcable heights. The biggest geyser ever known was Waimangu Geyser in the Taupo Volcanic Zone on New Zealand’s North Island. It was active for a very short period of time, between 1900 and 1904 and its eruptions were up to 450 meters high.
Back to Haukadalur. Although Haukadalur is a name for three different areas (in region of Snæfellsnes, peninsula Westfjords and Golden Circle) the one I’m planning to visit is valley Haukadalur which is part of the Golden Circle. This is the most popular locality for tourists. Haukadalur is geothermal area active since 1294 when local hot springs were activated by earthquake.
The Strokkur and the Geysir are two biggest geysers. Although Geysir is bigger it erupts rarely, unlike Strokkur which erupts every 5 to 10 minutes. There are also more than 40 other fumaroles, little hot sprigs, mud pots and nearby.
A fumarole (ultimately from the Latin fumus,” smoke”) is an opening in a planet’s crust, often in the neighborhood of volcanoes, which emits steam and gases such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen sulfide. The steam forms when superheated water vaporizes as its pressure drops when it emerges from the ground.
Meet Iceland 