365 Project: Photo 212

Personally, I couldn't give a rat's ass about the Olympics but I gather people find these buildings inspirational, which is handy for me because the theme was Inspiration. I just liked the pretty clouds.

365 Project: Photo 211

Intent. I guess a lot of people have the intent to run but what they often underestimate is the amount that running sucks. This is near the Copper Box arena in the newly opened up Olympic Park.

365 Project: Photo 210

I quite like this one. This is a little path that runs alongside a row of houseboats on the Regents Canal. The theme was Ride.

365 Project: Photo 209

I was at a friend's wedding today and managed to get a photo of them in the melee that I thought I could make something of. I've blended a lot of blur into the background to try and mask what would have otherwise been a very distracting setting. Hopefully they will like it. Congratulations Cerian and Steve!

365 Project: Photo 208

The theme today was Candid. I was on a photowalk with this bunch of miscreants in the Hyde Park area. We were waiting for a heron to do something other than stand there. After about half an hour of no action we admitted defeat.

365 Project: Photo 207

Today's theme is Science which, you may have noticed, is something I'm rather keen on. You'll be pleased to hear I'm not going to deluge you with science today but, as a change, I'm posting a short (6sec) video. It actually started life as a Vine and is of one of the robots I use at work to set up PCR reactions. 

365 Project: Photo 206

Progress. This is how far I've got on my damned matchstick bus project. Sigh.

365 Project: Photo 205

Action! Almost, if I'd been quick enough to get it in frame....

365 Project: Photo 204

I feel a science coming on....

The topic was Something Hot and I couldn't think of anything hotter than the sun, apart from other suns, and I decided I can't mention the sun without using it as an opportunity to talk about how cool it is, so to speak.

The Shell Building from Waterloo Bridge, a view I have used before on the blog

The sun is an unremarkable ball of plasma, neither particularly hot nor cold, not doing anything unusual, not overly large nor especially small, it's just hanging about approximately two thirds of the way along one of the arms of a bog standard, barred, spiral galaxy we call the Milkyway; the sun is also the single most awesome structure we're ever likely to encounter.

The sun, as you may have heard, it quite big. Jupiter is quite big too, as planets go. If you were to take all of the other seven planets (remember, Pluto is no longer a planet) they would all fit inside Jupiter; and if you took all the planets including Jupiter they would all fit, easily, inside the sun. Let's put it another way; if you were to tot up all of the matter in the solar system - the sun, all the planets, all the comets, everything in the asteroid belt and Kuiper belt, all the dwarf planets, everything - then the sun would make up about 99.86% of it, everything else would be less than 0.2%. So, pretty big.

I couldn't not put in this Hubble picture of a bog standard, and breathtakingly beautiful, barred, spiral galaxy (click to galactify)

The sun is also, you may have noticed, rather hot. How hot, though, depends on where you measure it. The sun has at least six distinct layers to it, the inner three of which can be thought of as the core, they are also the hottest; they weigh in at about 15 million degrees Celsius. This core behaves as a solid and rotates within the body of the sun. The layers outside the core; the convection zone, the photosphere and the chromosphere; behave like a viscous liquid something akin to magma on Earth. These layers rotate too but in different way to the core leading to a highly turbulent dividing layer called the tachocline. So, as we move out through the sun the temperature gets steadily lower until, at the surface, the temperature is only 5,500 Celsius. I know, surprisingly cold, right? The next time you hear something described as hotter than the surface of the sun you probably don't need to deploy your impressed face. That's not the end of the story though, something weird happens once you leave the sun. The area outside of the sun is known as the corona, it is this that you can make out during an eclipse when the moon is blocking out the main disc of the sun. The corona, oddly, actually gets much hotter, about 2 million degrees hotter. How it is that there is this vast temperature increase outside of the sun is not fully understood yet but the smart money appears to be on magnetic fields playing a role.

So, before the Government decides that the solar system would be better off privatising the sun because its function could be performed more efficiently and cheaply by private companies, let's establish what it is the sun actually does and why it's so good at it. Put simply, the sun is a fusion reactor, which is sort of the opposite of what happens in a nuclear reactor. It takes 4 protons (hydrogen nuclei) and fuses them together to produce an alpha particle (helium nucleus). This, normally, is an extremely difficult thing to do; protons are positively charged particles and, as every 12 year old knows, oppositely charged particles attract each other and particles with the same charge repel each other. This is one of the principles of electromagnetism which is, itself, one of the four fundamental forces of the universe (the others being gravitation, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force). It is the strong nuclear force that holds the elementary particles within nuclei together and so nuclear fusion is the process by which the strong force manages to overcome electromagnetism. It is only in the insanely hot and dense conditions that exist in the sun's core where protons can be pushed near enough to each other such that the strong nuclear force can win out and, in the process, release a whole bunch of energy, generally in the form of gamma radiation. Each gamma ray is absorbed in just a few millimetres of solar plasma and released in a lower energy state having given off, over the course of its journey, several million photons - the source of all the marvels we are but one small part of here on Earth.

Image used under a CCL. Warning: image contains science

My favourite ever sun fact is one I only encountered a year or two ago but I absolutely love it. I particularly enjoy it when it is contrasted with this preliminary fact: the sun is approximately 8.5 light minutes away. What this means is that it takes a photon of light, once emitted from the sun, only 8.5 minutes to get to the surface of the Earth; the sun may be a very long way away but when you're travelling at just shy of 300 billion metres per second the distance is soon covered. Here is the fact I love: for a newly created photon in the sun's core to reach the surface of the sun takes about 170,000 years. That blows my mind. But why is this the case? From what I can tell it mostly seems to be a function of the sheer density of matter in the core. The heat and pressure is so great that hydrogen atoms are being fused together into helium atoms and the maelstrom is simply to difficult for the photons, massless and speedy as they are, to get through.

Okay, I've just checked and I'm at 1,000 words, which is unfortunate because that's probably somewhat more than you had bargained for when you clicked the link and I haven't even got to the specific topic I wanted to discuss yet. I think I'll quit while I'm ahead, thank all of you that have read this far and leave you with a promise of a follow up sun-based post later in the year where I'll ramble on about....
- How we are trying to solve the world's energy needs by creating the sun on the Earth
- How solar weather can affect us all
- And helioseismology, the study of sunquakes, the whole reason I started writing this post in the first place!!

365 Project: Photo 203

Framework. This sculpture is enormous and literally engulfs the Serpentine Gallery cafe. Patrons have to pick their way through it to even get to the counter and then find what space they can amongst the irregular lattice.

365 Project: Photo 202

Urban Art, down on the South Bank.

365 Project: Photo 201

So I decided I wanted to take a photo of a flame. Turns out this isn't all that easy; not without a set of clamps and a retort stand anyway. Given I had decided to have a dark setting I was left trying to photograph an extremely high contrast scene, not an easy task. Also, I had to strike the match, get it into frame, in focus, hold it still and trigger the shutter all before I burnt my fingers. I think I'll have another crack at this once I get a set of clamps or equivalent gizmos to do the hard work for me.

365 Project: Photo 200

The theme was Two Scoops. This bunch of miscreants are fellow 365 Project brothers (sisters) in arms. We had met up to go to the Travel Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society, which I highly recommend, and then went on a photowalk together. We walked about 8km from Kensington, north to Little Venice and thence to Camden Lock.

365 Project: Photo 199

I don't have a musical bone in my body but I do, nonetheless, have a passionate love of music. Some of the most moving musical experiences of my life have been in this building, The Royal Albert Hall. Known most commonly for classical performances, most notably the Proms, it also does the odd pop and rock concert, ballet and sports and circus type events. My two favourite events I've attended here have been the Classical Spectacular and Mozart By Candlelight; both of which tend to be regular gigs on their calendar in the month of December; I highly recommend you take a look.

Four years of construction resulted in what has become one of the most iconic buildings in the capital. Originally it was to be called The Central Hall of Arts and Sciences but, upon laying the foundation stone in 1867, Queen Victoria rather hijacked things and decided to name it after her deceased husband, the Prince Consort Prince Albert. Albert was a true champion of both the arts and science in an age when the two were not as opposed as they sometimes seem in more recent times. You might be able to see that there is a frieze running around the top of the elliptical hall, it goes by the name of The Triumph of Arts and Sciences. In an anticlockwise direction there are 16 scenes glorying in the joy of said subjects.

The £200,000 it took to build was taken from the proceeds of the Great Exhibition of 1851 which was very much the pet project of the Prince. It was one of the wonders of the age that showcased Britain's world leading grasp of science and engineering. In 1951, to mark the centenary of this landmark event, we had The Festival of Britain which was very much the kickstarter of the regeneration of south London; the cultural goldmine that is the South Bank wouldn't exist without it. Good work Albert.

Oh yeah, and the theme today was Source of Happiness. You can probably tell this place makes me pretty happy.

365 Project: Photo 198

Something Beginning With S. Naturally, sunset. The sky was most impressive over Pudding Mill Lane and the Olympic Park tonight, there has been very little processing done here, I just added a frame. I took this on my phone, if it were on my proper camera I would have cloned out those annoying lamp posts at the bottom.

365 Project: Photo 197

The theme today was Dry and so, having taken this snap of the steadily expiring grass outside the flat, I processed it in such a way as to emphasise the parched, bleached nature of it.

365 Project: Photo 196

It's a scary, haunted bag dispenser!!

365 Project: Photo 195

I'm sure this won't win me any prizes, or friends, but it's the only photo I took today. The aftermath of a friend's 30th birthday party. Note it has become light outside.

365 Project: Photo 194

I snapped this as I crossed over into Mordor, sorry, I mean Wales. The gaol like bars are the suspension cables of the second Severn Bridge. The theme was Cropped, which this photo is; slightly. Unfortunately you can still make out some of the reflection from the coach window.

365 Project: Photo 193

The theme was Stacks. As you can see, I can't stack much more into here.

365 Project: Photo 192

On the Street. This unusual bunch were hanging about outside of Stratford Station.

365 Project: Photo 191

The prompt said Ordinary Moment.

365 Project: Photo 190

I'm off topic today but on Westminster Bridge; a frequent viewpoint in the 365 Project. 

365 Project: Photo 189

The theme was One Flower and so this is another bloom from the bunch that has been up on my windowsill for a good few months now. They're positively brittle but still, I think, increasingly beautiful.

365 Project: Photo 188

No prizes for guessing what the theme was today. I was actually working on a different idea with my main camera and quickly snapped this with my phone before Snapseeding it to death.

365 Project: Photo 187

Another lazy one from me today. Blue Sky.

365 Project: Photo 186

These are the fountains by the Royal Festival Hall down on the South Bank of the Thames. The aspect ratio of the photo is a little odd and that is because I have heavily cropped it to remove a bunch of tourists off to the left. Total time spent planning and executing this photo: approx. 0.4 seconds.

365 Project: Photo 185

So, the 4th of July or, as I like to call it, Thursday. For some reason the theme today is Fireworks; go figure. Anyway, there are no fireworks going on near me so I decided to try and make my own fire. It turns out that trying to capture the exact moment a match bursts into flame is bloody difficult, this terrible photo should be testament to that. It is out of focus, blurred and barely shows the effect I was aiming for at all. Still, here it is. I am now on the look out for a retort stand and/or set of clamps; this would have been infinitely easier with the right kit.

365 Project: Photo 184

I went for a walk along the South Bank tonight, and very pleasant it was too. The theme was Contrast. It doesn't get much more contrasty than a silhouette.

365 Project: Photo 183

So, summer eventually arrived. Now, it happens to be the case that I'm more of a winter sort of person; give me a biting northerly wind over 30 degree heat any day of the week. It is also the least inspiring season for photography; the light is high, harsh, flat and uninteresting. Summer can, on the whole, kiss my ass, on the hole. I've developed many techniques and tactics over the years to survive the estival onslaught, stay in the shade; cover up; don't go out in the hottest part of the day; but these can be very restrictive - far more so than the worst that winter can throw at us. If I am forced to go out though then I have to don a hat or my pasty skin won't last ten minutes. My favourite sun hat is this one, made from springbok leather and fur. It's got a good broad brim and fits perfectly so that, even in a wind, there's no chance of it going anywhere. Admittedly, walking around east London with it on my loaf does draw some odd looks but, hey, who cares. The theme today was Whiskers; I've decided the trim on the hat will cover it.

365 Project: Photo 182

Today we are, sort of, half way through the year. The idea behind this photo is not original to me, I blatantly ripped it off from today's email prompt, in fact I tried to copy it exactly.