It's like the smoke monster on Lost.

Aww, dammit!! They moved the drive-in again!

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Big pic apologies...but it's an awesome pic.

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Is that the Chateau up at Exclamation Point?

I thought it was one of those icons that show up when you search for something in GoogleEarth.

Only life size.

My cousin took this picture and posted to Facebook.

We've all seen pictures of bald eagles catching and eating fish.

I've never seen one eating a deer.
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I wonder if it took the deer down, or if it found the deer injured or dead on the ice and scavenged it.

I have a hard time picturing an eagle taking down a healthy deer.

An adult eagle might take a fawn, but, not a full growed deer.

Meal of opportunity, methinks.

I read the other day that these guys are now the fastest, highest-flying pilots in the world, since the Shuttles (and BlackBirds) have been retired.

Either that, or, it's a Daft Punk tribute band.

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My daughter works in downtown PDX, and sent this email to me today.

Eagles

To most of us that's pretty cool, however Seakdiver would scoff just more feathered rats, since they have an abundance up there in Alaska. I'd be majorly fascinated if they were near me, thanks. :thumb:

We're seeing eagles pretty regularly on the Susquehanna now. It is still cool.

A friend of mine lives on a fair sized lake about forty miles from me.

He had two nests in sight of his front window a few years ago.

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Bastidge.

Yeah now that they'd 86'd the DDT we're lousy with eagles.

Cats are on the rebound too...

Wow!

Bad link?

It worked when I posted it. Looks like the site is down.

www.bryanrapoza.com (Bryan Rapoza is the photographer of Zen's picture)

Werkt fer me.

Awesome pic!

It's working now, but I can't figure out where he parachuted 900 ft down from.:confused:

I think he's not saying so he won't be prosecuted. Has to be a radio tower of some kind. Florida is flat. Nothing else is that tall.

I wondered if it was a balloon, but it's hard to keep them steady for long shots. Radio tower would be a good guess. :thumb:

Wait a goddamn minute.

This dude has unlawfully scaled a 900 foot radio mast at night, artfully photographed a rocket launch, and got home by parachute???!!!

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

Well, that's a guess, since the highest elevation in the whole damn state is about 350 ft. But it seems the most logical solution, although I can't find it on Google Earth.

He also made a "hasty egress" which, to me, means that he got the hell out of there before he could be spotted.

There are nine little red dots in a vertical line in the lower left of the picture. Could this be another 900 foot radio tower? If so, this theory seems more plausible.

Think I got it, 1,549 feet, Guyed mast UHF/VHF-transmission U.S. Holopaw, Florida. It's about 30 miles from the cape.

At 28 degrees 36' 35" N and 81 degrees 03' 34" W, there is a roughly 2500 foot tall tower 28 miles away from launch pad 39A.

He could have been halfway up that one. I didn't look for the tower that is in the shot. Depending on the zoom he was using, that one could be pretty close to his camera, or really far away.

That takes me to the Philippines?

Maybe I typed it wrong?
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Copy/paste that (^^^) , without the words 'degrees' & 'and', into GooglEarth. You get Glatt's pic.

Six times, no less!

Too much of a time waster.

I think the picture was taken at the coordinates I gave before, and the tower in the left side of the image is located at 28°46'39.22"N, 80°53'18.17"W.

Hard to tell from the photo if the lights are the town of Titusville or the NASA facility.

Anyway, I'm done looking.

I did, 28, 36' 35" N and 81, 03' 34" W, and it takes me to the Philippines. I just did it again without the comma after 28 and 81 and got same thing. :confused:

OK, had to take out the "and", then it went to Florida. :blush:

Damn if it don't. That's just weird, as none of those numbers are even close.

I should think Google Earth would disregard the "and", hell, they do other places. :facepalm:

It doesn't take you to a very nice neighborhood in the Philippines either. Can you imagine living in one of those shanties on the canal right next to the sewage treatment plant? How do you even get to your shanty? Do you have to walk through everyone else's shanty for a mile until you get to yours? And do you have people walking through yours to get to theirs? I don't see any room between them for a path.

Why those are beautiful waterfront villas, you might even see one of Imelda's old shoes float by. :haha:

Man, Team Cellar really went to town on this one.

So, what was the guy's third grade teacher's middle name?

Pay attention Z, we've been thru this before.

... his name is "Wilie E Coyote" and he buys his gear from the Acme Parachute Company.

from APOD

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ETA: I don't actually know where I found this pic, solly.

I've seen these types of images before, but they are still so impressive. That thing is flying very fast, so the timing is critical, as is getting the right location to take it from. And then little details like getting the focus and exposure right. Most impressive!

For scale, note that the moon is over 1000 times farther away than the ISS.

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The shape reminds me of the first generation floppy disks.

I'm impressed with your skills of deduction, I knew it would just be a matter of time before someone figured it out, eventually.

Well done. Glad you like the image, it was a lot of work.

http://500px.com/bryanrapoza

Yes, it sounded like a physical challenge, as well as the photo-technical end being pretty daunting too. And it ain't like a seagull taking off that you can do a million times if you want. You only get so many shots at the shuttle, and I think a remarkable job. Kudos.

Hi Avenfoto!

Thanks for taking it. It must have been an amazing adventure to get it.
I like your shot of the space launch coming out of a thunderstorm too.
And thanks for being cool about me posting it here. :)

Thanks for checking in! I love the photo. It's extremely impressive on its own merits, and the story behind it is pretty wild.

Edit: And looking through the images at your link, I see a ton of amazing shots. You have mad skillz.

We are a regular brain trust here. Awesome work and excellent armchair adventure for us!

Yeah, Brain Rust R Us. :haha:

Just stumbled across this one. This is from some guy's Facebook page on the abandoned coal mines of NEPA.
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Apparently, when they stopped coal mining in NE Pennsylvania in the 1960's they shut the pumps off in the mines, and the mines filled up with ground water. The people living in the low parts of the valleys started to get flooding in their basements as the water in the lower parts of the mine was under intense pressure and was looking for a way out. In the winter, the water would freeze and would act like a slow moving glacier, destroying foundations and damaging houses in these valleys. Since Wilkes Barre and Scranton are both in the valley, this meant that lots of houses were potentially at risk. So officials came in to figure out what to do, and they decided to drill holes down into the mines down in the valleys to let the water escape. So for the last 50 years, there has been all this water coming up out of the mines at these boreholes. It's pretty nasty water. Fairly acidic, and with an extremely high iron content. It kills all aquatic creatures in the creeks that are fed in part by these bore holes, and goes on to pollute the Chesapeake Bay before it reaches the Atlantic ocean. The biggest point source of pollution for the Chesapeake is one of these boreholes called the Old Forge Borehole. There's talk of building water treatment plants to treat this water, but it hasn't happened in the last 50 years, so we'll see.

Anyway, I think it's a cool picture of an interesting thing I'd never heard of before. This particular borehole is in Wilkes Barre in Solomon creek, behind the Dollar General.

Wollenda over the Little Colorado River 6/23/13

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I agree with my wife... we should not reward bad behavior :eyebrow:

Whoa

Protesters try to blind a government helicopter.
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A friend sent me these pictures of the 4th of July in Boston Harbor. They drag the Constitution out of it's berth with tugs, then surrounded by Harbor Police boats to fend off tourists, they fire it's cannons.

That's really cool that they still use those cannons. It's still considered active duty or fully commissioned or something like that, isn't it?

Whoa. No ƒuckin' shit...?


Story in English...?

Oh yes, fully commissioned with a crew of 60 officers and men. Last year we spent $7 million for some repairs/face lifting.