Ahhhh….., good to be home from vacation after a week or so. So a little update is needed to round things out here at AJayswebcams.com. First off I need to update the cam of the week, then figure out why my cam is no longer broadcasting. Here shortly I will add some new cams I have waiting in the wings.
This week we visit Venice, and take a veiw of cams on the canals.
Venice is world-famous for its canals. It is built on an archipelago of 122 islands formed by about 150 canals in a shallow lagoon. The islands on which the city is built are connected by about 400 bridges. In the old center, the canals serve the function of roads, and every form of transport is on water or on foot. In the 19th century a causeway to the mainland brought a railway station to Venice, and an automobile causeway and parking lot was added in the 20th century. Beyond these land entrances at the northern edge of the city, transportation within the city remains, as it was in centuries past, entirely on water or on foot. Venice is Europe’s largest urban carfree area, unique in Europe in remaining a sizable functioning city in the 21st century entirely without motorcars or trucks.
The classical Venetian boat is the gondola, although it is now mostly used for tourists, or for weddings, funerals, or other ceremonies. Most Venetians now travel by motorised waterbuses (”vaporetti”) which ply regular routes along the major canals and between the city’s islands. The city also has many private boats. The only gondolas still in common use by Venetians are the traghetti, foot passenger ferries crossing the Grand Canal at certain points without bridges.
The last two weeks have been busy for space fans.
The Cassini mission to Saturn surveying Saturn and it’s moons (all 35 of them) has photographed more lakes of methane on Titan near the poles, that are larger than the lakes that were spotted near the equator.
Also the New Horizons space craft just got a major sling shot boost from Jupiter adding almost 9000 MPH on its way to visit Pluto in 2015, thus making it the fastest man made object in the solar system traveling at about 52,000 MPH. To put that in perspective, you could fly from New York to Tokyo in under 8 minutes. As NH was passing Jupiter, it took some amazing photo’s of Jupiter and its moons. One in paticular is a shot of Io and its volcano, Tvashtar, with a volcanic plume 180 miles into space. Like earth, Io is one of the most volcanic planets in our solar system.
We move a little closer to home where on the ground at Mars the twin rovers continue their incredible extended mission after arriving on mars in 2004, two and a half years after landing, and both rovers are still working and have far exceeded their initial 90-day warranties on Mars. They both are still seeking out water, and some type of proof that there was life on Mars.
The rover Opportunity just passed the six mile mark, and continues to gather data in search of a potential future entry point into “Victoria Crater.” The rover is traversing the crater rim near an alcove known as “Bottomless Bay,” assessing whether it might eventually serve as an entry point, and collecting images of the crater’s interior cliffs, while Spirit, continues driving, searching for dust devils and clouds using WATCH computer commands, and acquiring other remote sensing data.
Up in the sky at Mars, Mars Global Surveyer, which was launched in 1997 which has not been heard from since November of 2006 is the oldest of the satellites and is feared lost, looks to be written off for good. While orbiting Mars for almost ten years, it provided a lot of good science prior to the arrival of the rovers and the newer satellites.
Mars Odyssey, which is the second oldest satellite (arrived 2001) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which arrived in 2006 continue to send back great images and information.
However, MRO seems to be having a few issues that the science team is looking at.
Last but not least was our Moons full lunar eclipse friday night. It’s not a too unusual thing to happen, but it none the less is always fascinating to me to go darkish red, then go back to normal.
If you like following any of the events I mentioned above, you can go to NASA’s Portal, and search for your favorite.
