September 2010 Archives

1. 

   Fun with Stereographic Projections

   Posted September 29, 2010. Filed under: Photography. Leave a comment.

   One perk of owning a fisheye lens for my underwater photography is that this makes it extremely easy to create a cool kind of panorama known as a stereographic projection, like this one of the Balloërveld. It’s sometimes also referred to as a hyperbolic projection.[1] Little Planets A stereographic projection is a way to map [...]

2. 

   Compass Jellyfish

   Posted September 21, 2010. Filed under: Photography, Underwater. Leave a comment.

   I’ve shown you a photo of a compass jellyfish Chrysaora hysoscella before, but that really didn’t do justice to this cnidarian. It’s beautiful. Be careful, though. Compass jellyfish are reported to have a nasty sting!

3. 

   Who’s Our Closest Relative?

   Posted September 2, 2010. Filed under: Biology, Photography, Research, Underwater. Leave a comment.

   Yesterday I made this photo of a green shore crab Carcinus maenas between transparent sea squirts Ciona intestinalis in the Oosterschelde. Which do you think is more closely related to us? Although these adult sea squirts, or tunicates, don’t consist of much more than translucent sacks with intestines, their larval “tadpole” stage exhibits all characteristics [...]