APOD: A Strange Sunrise Over Argentina (2011 Oct 10)

[APOD Robot]

A Strange Sunrise Over Argentina

Explanation: Why would a rising Sun look so strange? No one is yet sure. What is clear is that the above unusual sunrise was captured last month from Buenos Aires, Argentina. The body of water in the foreground is Rio de La Plata, considered by many to be the widest river in the world. Although the above image is actually a combination of a normal and a very short exposure needed to avoid oversaturating the bright Sun, the photographer saw this unusual structure with his own eyes, indicating that this effect was caused by neither reflections nor distortions in the camera or lens. What looks like arms on this monster illusion might actually be, for example, low level clouds just thick enough to scatter sunlight without completely blocking the Sun. Additionally, the distortion visible on the lower part of the Sun's image might indicate a Etruscan Vase or Fata Morgana mirage possibly created by a curious refracting layer of air over the water. Unusual atmospheric phenomena are frequently thrilling to see personally, and although most can be traced to well known phenomena, others, for lack of more data, remain mysterious.

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[Ann]

Wow, that's a nice sunrise! It looks a bit like a super-gigantic viking poking his head slowly over the horizon... Not that the real vikings really had horns on their helmets, but still!

Ann

[alter-ego]

I've seen such phenomena on the Pacific (sunsets & daytime). What is required to maximize this illusion is a clean, sharp view of the horizon which this POD has. I believe that structure is a cloud, or cloud top which is not near the water at all. Under the right conditions, clouds at normal altitudes (say 5000 feet) will just become visible on the horizon when they are 100 miles to 150 miles away. This is a case where the well-lit, distant cloud presents itself as a "cloudrise", with the Sun right on it's wispy heels. It is the earth's curvature and clouds existing beyond the observers horizon that can create this strange effect. In fact, the photographed cloud may be a much bigger one with most of it below the horizon. I've seen this during the daytime when a fairly uniform distribution of cumulus clouds and clear sky covered the sky to the horizon. I refer to this phenomena poetically as "clouds crashing to the sea". I've been interested in visual detection of earth's curvature for years, and the different methods and detection sensitivities. Under the right conditions of visibility and cloud density, clouds crashing to the sea are most eye catching, and provides one of the strongest sense of earth curvature at ground level needing only your eyes. It is an extremely striking effect. In this picture, a mirage does appear to be occurring also, but it likely isn't the source of larger cloud-like structure.

Now, it could be it is a cloud forming near the water, much closer to the observer. Distance is unknown. Either way, this scene is not unusual to me. Uncommon yes, but not odd.

[Ann]

alter-ego wrote:
This is a case where the well-lit, distant cloud presents itself as a "cloudrise", with the Sun right on it's wispy heels. It is the earth's curvature and clouds existing beyond the observers horizon that can create this strange effect. In fact, the photographed cloud may be a much bigger one with most of it below the horizon. I've seen this during the daytime when a fairly uniform distribution of cumulus clouds and clear sky covered the sky to the horizon. I refer to this phenomena poetically as "clouds crashing to the sea". I've been interested in visual detection of earth's curvature for years, and the different methods and detection sensitivities. Under the right conditions of visibility and cloud density, clouds crashing to the sea are most eye catching, and provides one of the strongest sense of earth curvature at ground level needing only your eyes.

This sounds extremely interesting, but I didn't quite understand how the sight of these clouds can offer evidence of the curvature of the Earth. Can you elaborate?

Do you mean that if we keep watching this sunrise and "cloudrise", we will either see the clouds "leave the horizon", or else we will see more and more of the large cloud appear from below the horizon?

Ann

[simonate]

2012 coming soon?

[ChrisKotsiopoulos]

Nice sunrise!
Clouds form strange patterns some times like this black hole like sunset:
http://www.greeksky.gr/files/photos/sun ... Sunset.htm
(Do you see something similar or is it just me?)

[herbraab]

What a great image!
I have no explanation for it, but it looks just awesome!

Herbert

[Dan Fischer]

Please provide the *original* image and also the image scale, i.e. how large an undistorted Sun should appear in it. Otherwise it's all idle speculation.

[neufer]

Please provide the *original* image and also the image scale,
i.e. how large an undistorted Sun should appear in it.
Otherwise it's all idle speculation.

One can probably pretty much estimate how the undistorted Sun should appear by the ocean reflection.

[orin stepanek]

oversaturated?

Click to view full size image

[owlice]

Orin, I liked that link, too!

There is a link to the full-size image; it's there if anyone wants it. There is also a link to other images which includes one taken a few minutes later.

Stunning APOD, great text, wonderful links! I give today's APOD an A+++++++++++++!!!

[moonstruck]

Nice one Luis

[neufer]

THE WORLD SCIENCE: October 10, 2011
Did a sea monster make an artwork… out of bones?
Courtesy of the Geological Society of America and World Science staff: Oct. 10, 2011

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Fossilized shon­i­saur ver­te­brae at Ber­lin-
Ich­thy­o­saur State Park in Ne­va­da.
(Cour­te­sy Mark Mc­Me­na­min)

<<In what must be one of the strangest theories to find its way out of the staid world of paleontology in a long time, researchers claim a gigantic octopus millions of years ago may have made a jigsaw-puzzle-like artwork out of its victims’ bones.

As if that weren’t enough to raise eybrows, there is more. According to the theory, the victims were not just anyone, but giant sea monsters in its own right—a tribute to the truly staggering size of the sticky assailant.

Had enough? But there is even more. The artwork was, it would seem, not just any old doodle, but a sort of Triassic self-portrait.

A husband-and-wife research team is presenting the proposal to explain the neat, almost systematic arrangement of bones in a sea reptile fossil that has puzzled scientists for over half a century. “We’re ready” for the skeptical questioning to begin, said geologist and paleontologist Mark McMenamin of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, who conducted the new research with his wife, Dianna Schulte-McMenamin, also of the college. They admit their case is circumstantial, but they point to evidence including modern cases of octopuses killing sharks; various feats of octopus intelligence; the fact that octopuses commonly leave piles of shells and bones in their dens from consumed prey; and the observation that they sometimes manipulate such remains. They are presenting their proposal Oct. 10 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

Around 200 million to 250 million years ago, the so-called Triassic period, predatory, dinosaur-like reptiles called ichthyosaurs prowled the oceans. Nine fossils of these beasts, about as long as school buses, lie at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada. They have a long history of perplexing researchers, including the world’s expert on the site, the late Charles Lewis Camp of the University of California at Berkeley. “Camp puzzled over these fossils in the 1950s,” said McMenamin. “In his papers he keeps referring to how peculiar this site is. We agree—it is peculiar.” Camp speculated that the beasts had died from an accidental stranding or a toxic plankton bloom. But no one has proven the water was shallow, and more recent work on the surrounding rocks suggest it was deep, McMenamin notes.

When the McMenamin and his daughter visited the fossils at the remote state park, “it became very clear that something very odd was going on,” said McMenamin. “It was a very odd configuration of bones.” Evidence sugested the shonisaurs weren’t all buried at the same time, he said. More strangely, it looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged. That it got him thinking about a modern predator known for this sort of intelligent manipulation of bones. “Modern octopus will do this,” McMenamin said.

McMenamin likens the proposed ancient octopus to the legendary “kraken,” an octopus-like sea monster with arms the length of ships and claimed to have prowled off the coast of Norway in the 1750s. The prehistoric animal must have been twice the length of the shonisaurs to kill them, he contends.

In the fossil bed, some of the shonisaur vertebral disks are arranged in curious patterns with almost geometric regularity, McMenamin noted: the vertebral discs are in double line patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted way as though part of a puzzle. The proposed Triassic kraken “could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever,” say the researchers in their report. Even creepier: The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on an octopus tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a sucker. In other words, the vertebral disc “pavement” seen at the state park “may represent the earliest known self portrait,” the report adds.

Could an octopus really have taken out such huge predatory reptiles? No one would have believed it until the Seattle Aquarium set up a video camera at night a few years ago to find out what was killing the sharks in one of their tanks, McMenamin argues. The aquarium staff was shocked to learn an octopus was the culprit. Video of one of these attacks can be found online by using the search terms “shark vs octopus.” The “Triassic kraken” was probably “doing the same thing,” said McMenamin. Among the pieces of evidence, he adds, are many more ribs broken in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental and the twisted necks. “It was either drowning them or breaking their necks.”

Of course, it’s the perfect Triassic crime because octopuses are mostly soft-bodied and don’t fossilize well. Only their mouth parts are hard. That means the evidence for the murderous Kraken is circumstantial, which may leave some scientists skeptical. But McMenamin said he isn’t worried: “we have a very good case.”>>

Ichthyosaurs
Posted on August 18, 2009 by Tim Messick

Shonisaurus vertebrae (round shapes at left) and ribs (linear shapes at right).

---

<<I’m standing on a hillside in the Shoshone Mountains of central Nevada, nearly 7,000 feet above sea level, 280 miles from the ocean, at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. At my feet are the fossilized remains of several huge, ocean-dwelling reptiles. They died one day in the Triassic, probably together, perhaps poisoned by a toxic bloom of red algae, then sank to the ocean floor, far out on the continental shelf of a nascent North America that had not yet drifted apart from Pangea.

The reptiles’ bodies were covered in mud, and while the earth circled the sun another 210 million times, the continental shelf edged up onto dry land, North America drifted from the tropics to mid-temperate latitudes, the Shoshone Mountains rose, miners came and found huge vertebrae on the ground (which some used as dinner plates), and Shonisaurus popularis became the Nevada state fossil.

Today the Ichthyosaurs and the miners are gone from this place, but vestiges of both linger. All things may be impermanent, but most things get recycled, and traces of things past can resurface unexpextedly after a very, very long time.>>

---

Lair of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Discovered
By Jeanna Bryner: October 10, 2011

<<A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have swum Earth's ancient oceans, snagging what was thought to be the sea's top predators — school bus-size ichthyosaurs with fearsome teeth.

The kraken, which would've been nearly 100 feet long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis, likely drowned or broke the necks of the ichthyosaurs before dragging the corpses to its lair, akin to an octopus's midden, according to study researcher Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

There is no direct evidence for the beast, though McMenamin suggests that's because it was soft-bodied and didn't stand the test of time; even so, to make a firm case for its existence one would want to find more direct evidence. McMenamin is scheduled to present his work Monday (Oct. 10) at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis.

Evidence for the kraken and its gruesome attacks comes from markings on the bones of the remains of nine 45-foot (14 meter) ichthyosaurs of the species Shonisaurus popularis, which lived during the Triassic, a period that lasted from 248 million to 206 million years ago. The beasts were the Triassic version of today's predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales.

Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts was interested in solving a long-standing puzzle over the cause of death of the S. popularis individuals at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada. An expert on the site, Charles Lewis Camp of U.C. Berkeley, suggested in the 1950s that the ichthyosaurs succumbed to an accidental stranding or a toxic plankton bloom. However, nobody has been able to prove the beasts died in shallow water, and recent work on the rocks around the fossils suggests they died in a deepwater environment, McMenamin said. "I was aware that anytime there is controversy about depth, there is probably something interesting going on," McMenamin said. And when he and his daughter arrived at the park, they were struck by the remains' strangeness, particularly "a very odd configuration of bones."

A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have taken out ichthyosaurs the size of school buses, arranging their vertebrae in curious linear patterns with nearly geometric patterns.

The etching on the bones suggested the shonisaurs were not all killed and buried at the same time, he said. It also looked like the bones had been purposefully rearranged, likely carried to the "kraken's lair" after they had been killed. A similar behavior has been seen in modern octopus. The markings and rearrangement of the S. popularis bones suggests an octopus-like creature (like a kraken) either drowned the ichthyosaurs or broke their necks, according to McMenamin. he arranged vertebrae also seemed to resemble the pattern of sucker disks on a cephalopod's tentacle, with each vertebra strongly resembling a sucker made by a member of the Coleoidea, which includes octopuses, squid, cuttlefish and their relatives. The researchers suggest this pattern reveals a self-portrait of the mysterious beast.

Next, McMenamin wondered if an octopus-like creature could realistically have taken out the huge swimming predatory reptiles. Evidence is in their favor, it seems. Video taken by staff at the Seattle Aquarium showed that a large octopus in one of their large tanks had been killing the sharks. [On the Brink: A Gallery of Wild Sharks]

"We think that this cephalopod in the Triassic was doing the same thing," McMenamin said. More supporting evidence: There were many more broken ribs seen in the shonisaur fossils than would seem accidental, as well as evidence of twisted necks. "It was either drowning them or breaking their necks," McMenamin said.

So where did this kraken go? Since octopuses are mostly soft-bodied they don't fossilize well and scientists wouldn't expect to find their remains from so long ago. Only their beaks, or mouthparts, are hard and the chances of those being preserved nearby are very low, according to the researchers. Though his case is circumstantial, and likely to draw skepticism from other scientists, McMenamin said: "We're ready for this. We have a very good case."

[OrionEridanus]

It obviously looks like an isolated cloud in between the sun and the camera. It looks kinda cool, but I don't understand what the excitement is all about.

@Ann. The cloud demonstrates curvature because you don't generally see a cumulus cloud with its base right at see level. The unclouded air gap between the cloud base and the ocean surface (and maybe the cloud base itself) are below the horizon.

[NoelC]

atmospheric phenomena...
...can be traced to well known phenomena

I have to agree with Chris' analysis on this one. An insect, caught by an opening-curtain flash, flying lower-right to upper-left.
I did a bit of analysis beyond what was done before. I created a color differential image comparing the center frame (with the anomaly) against an average of the before and after images. Some noise reduction helped make the object and flight path more obvious, and notably in the place one might expect bug eyes we see a bright orange reflection - very typical of some nocturnal flying insects.



-Noel

[Ann]

I finally got around to checking out all the links. Very nice! Orin, I, too, loved the cat. Chris, thanks for explaining the "insect track" over one of the images, and Noel, thanks for confirming the insect!

Ann

[Wolf Kotenberg]

I am not even going to try to help explain this and reveal my ignorances. I am just going to sit back tonight, grab a ice cold one and look at this on a big screen tv. Oh yeah, off topic of course, but last night on channell 9 they featured a report of a yopung lady named sarah, who is using space photography to find buried piramids in Egypt. And she found some. Dr Hawass started digging where she thought the piramids were buried anbd guess what, they found stuff just like the space images showed.

[PhilHibbs]

The "others, for lack of more data, remain mysterious" link has, in my opinion, been satisfactorily explained on this forum - the streaks are iridium flares.

[luigi]

Hi all,

Thanks for the kind comments!
If it helps for the measurements I used a 400mm lens in a 1.6 crop body and added a 1.4x teleconverter.

I'm very happy and grateful this was selected as an APOD. I was photographing sunrises mainly looking for green flashes and this one was a really strange sunrise, I was happy to show in the photo what I saw with my eyes.

Thanks!
Luis

[bystander]

... others, for lack of more data, remain mysterious.

http://www.twanight.org/newTWAN/mystery ... es&id=1003

[luigi]

Quick correction:

I used a fullframe camera not a 1.6 crop body, the 400mm and 1.4tc are right

[nstahl]

I'm with alter-ego and OrionEridanus. Fun to look at and conjecture on but I also don't see the big deal.

But, just for the record, let me be the first to mention Cthulu.

[Chris Peterson]

The "others, for lack of more data, remain mysterious" link has, in my opinion, been satisfactorily explained on this forum - the streaks are iridium flares.

They are absolutely not Iridium flares. They are satellite flares, but not from Iridiums.

[islader2]

This is not a political commentary==which is frowned upon on Asterisk. Calling the Rio Plata the widest river revives the Brazilian-Argentinian controversy on the matter. These two bordering countries have been enemies in the past. They continue to disagree on many matters==including the widest river; the Amazon, to most Brazilians. Even the wiki entry on the matter is on the Brazilian side. Rio de la Plata is not a river but a gulf. The Amazon is a true river at its mouth==and as wide as "it gets.'' Sorry about the diatribe: the picture is fabulous. Thanx.

[luigi]

This is not a political commentary==which is frowned upon on Asterisk. Calling the Rio Plata the widest river revives the Brazilian-Argentinian controversy on the matter. These two bordering countries have been enemies in the past. They continue to disagree on many matters==including the widest river; the Amazon, to most Brazilians. Even the wiki entry on the matter is on the Brazilian side. Rio de la Plata is not a river but a gulf. The Amazon is a true river at its mouth==and as wide as "it gets.'' Sorry about the diatribe: the picture is fabulous. Thanx.

Thank you for the comment about the photo!

About river or not river Wikipedia says:

"is the river and estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River on the border between Argentina and Uruguay. It is a funnel-shaped indentation on the southeastern coastline of South America, about 290 kilometres (180 mi) long."

"The Río de la Plata widens from about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) at the inner part to about 220 kilometres (140 mi) at its mouth.[4] It forms part of the border between Argentina and Uruguay, with the major ports and capital cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo on its western and northern shores, respectively. The coasts of the Río de la Plata are the most densely populated areas of Argentina and Uruguay."

I'm from Argentina and to me the river doesn't look like a river, to be honest I wouldn't know how to call it geographically. Many sources agree to call it a river then it's the widest river in the world. Maybe we should call it "mega-estuary" or something like that