I always enjoy getting some perspective on my own life by seeing it from different angles. You know, when you crouch down in your bedroom and look under the furniture, sometimes it looks like a whole different world populated by all the things you thought you had lost. Pretty sure there are books written with that as the launching point, actually.
The point is, it’s worth looking where you normally don’t and refreshing yourself on what’s out there. Here are a few of the rarer views to start.
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Drink it in.
This spider’s web has bowed, but not broken, under the weight of some water, showing the strength of the silk as well as the tightness of the web’s construction.
This is a map of the orbits of more than 18,000 objects in the solar system.
I don’t even want to know how much work went into this map, assembled by Eleanor Lutz on her Tabletop Whale blog , but the result sure makes you feel small, doesn’t it?
Also, it’s even more amazing that we haven’t been wiped out by a giant meteor with all that traffic out there, don’t you think?
Some smaller scale astronomy.
In this case, an amateur astronomer has projected the Moon onto a piece of paper using his telescope.
It does make sense when you think about it, telescopes are all about mirrors, so reflecting the Moon isn’t out of the question. It’s just a matter of finding the perfect focal point.
The most tempting icicles.
But you wouldn’t want to lick these sap icicles if you encountered them. Not all saps are like maple sap — some contain nasty toxins that can cause severe problems.
Best to stick with the stuff you find at the store. Still, it’s cool to see sap frozen after pouring out of the tree.
Nature has served up a visual feast here.
Not only could students get a good lesson in botanical anatomy, but it’s gorgeous, too. Nature is an artist!
Often, white lights in street lamps don’t start as white.
Instead, it starts as both red and blue, which combine to make white. You can tell, because this sign casts shadows in both red and blue.
You might never look at your morning cup the same.
This is the entire life cycle of that coffee, from blossom to cherry to bean to cup. What a process! And it all ends in something I know I couldn’t live without.
Not sure we could ever get used to this.
The world’s largest firework, which weighed about the same as a Toyota Corolla, was launched in Colorado, and to say that it lit up the night is almost an understatement.
This is equal parts glorious and insane.
This image isn’t as phony as it seems.
Yes, it has been worked up artificially, a composite of a couple of different pics, but it’s a representation of what the night sky would look like if the Andromeda galaxy were only brighter.
That’s really how big it is in the sky, several times larger than the Moon.
Both fascinating and chilling.
A Medieval surgeon attempted to strengthen a broken bone with a copper plate, including three rivets. It looks like the surgery was successful, too, as bone has grown back around the plate.
As amazing as that is, it’s hard to imagine the surgery the patient must have undergone.
Only models, but they show how these planes are basically family.
This is just a fascinating arrangement to show off the B-2’s flying wing pedigree, with its YB-35 and YB-49 predecessors.
Hard to stay neutral about this view.
Astronauts on board the ISS captured this image of Space Shuttle Discovery over Switzerland back in 2005. Just stunning.
Someone out for a stroll on a foggy morning got a shock to wake them up.
Just enough light reflected off a building poked through the fog, making a surreal sight.
Depending on where you live, black squirrels are either something you never see or something you see every day.
But even in locations where they’re commonplace, I think we can agree that it’s not so often that we see one with a blonde tail.
I guess the melanin distribution here was pretty uneven.
I don’t know how easy it is to find this Apple store in Taipei, Taiwan from street level, but it’s a piece of cake from above.
Not only does the roof clearly display the Apple logo, but it’s been stylized to look like a Macbook. Someone definitely went the extra mile.
This perfectly round hole in some beachside rock has a lot of possible explanations.
The most popular theory suggests that this is evidence of some kind of drilling operation, but others have suggested either volcanic activity or a tunnelling mollusk could responsible for it as well.
Bill Gates’ office is about as elaborately nerdy as we might expect from a tech billionaire.
Here we see each of the elements of the periodic table represented in this expansive wall display.
Some of the little cases showing them off have actual samples of the elements, while the more unstable elements are simply represented with photos.
I think the way they represented neon is my favorite.
If you were to visit the grave of presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth, you’d likely see a collection of pennies on or around it.
The pennies obviously bear Abraham Lincoln’s likeness and they’re apparently placed face down so Lincoln can stare at Booth in judgment from beyond the grave.
While many of the slugs we see on land can be pretty unsightly, the slugs we find at sea are a different story.
For instance, here we see the brightly colorful Hermissenda Opalescens, or opalescent sea slugs.
According to the University of Puget Sound , these slugs are able to keep predators at bay by reminding them that trying to eat the sea slugs will just leave the beast with a whole bunch of stinging cells in its mouth.
It’s obviously pretty hard to tell now, but this was a “no littering” sign before it came loose from the adhesive.
Still, it seems that it managed to do its job regardless as it stopped this can from falling into a storm drain.
This Panasonic typewriter worked a little differently from other models and the fact that it’s called a “penwriter” should give you a clue as to why.
Rather than stamp letters onto the page as other typewriters did, this one actually had miniature pens write them out for you. This allowed users to print text in different fonts and sizes, as well as create charts and graphs as desired.
This was pretty impressive in 1986, but all of those things can obviously be done much easier on a computer now.
Although it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t a tree, it may not be so clear that it’s a cell phone tower.
Since they’re apparently considered eyesores, it’s common to try and dress up these towers as trees.
Some of these camouflage jobs are actually sophisticated enough to seem like trees at a glance, but we can see that isn’t true for all of them.
The Baths of Saturnia are thermal springs in Tuscany, Italy that remain at a constant temperature of 99.5 Fahrenheit.
While that may make them seem like a soothing place to visit when temperatures get colder, it’s also worth noting that there’s some significant sulphur content in these springs, so they actually smell really bad.
That clearly doesn’t bother these people too much, but it’s good to know.
As we can see here, it’s apparently possible for some cacti to grow hair.
Considering what shape this hair can end up taking, it’s not much of a surprise that this variety of cactus is known as an “old man’s cactus.”
Most of us don’t see a raccoon riding a crocodile every day and this case tells us that there’s probably a reason for that.
Although this hasn’t been confirmed, there’s a lot of suspicion that we’re actually looking at a staged display featuring a taxidermy raccoon and a taxidermy crocodile.
Even allowing that it’s not complete impossible for a raccoon to convince a croc not to eat it, that doesn’t seem like a natural stance for the raccoon, does it?
This isn’t an aquarium — it’s a hotel room.
Not the kind of “ocean view” room we usually have in mind, right? But this lets its occupants see the world below the waves right outside the window.
Not sure I want to know how much a night there would cost, however.
Would you look?
This peephole is located in a restaurant’s bathroom. When you press the button to look through, you just get a desert scene. Nice try.
I wonder how many Amazon orders are in there.
This is a typical view for a stevedore, working at the loading docks for cargo ships. Looks like a busy day ahead!
Just a little weather rolling in.
A whole lot of people on the ground below are in for some fun times — it’s not every day that you get to see a cold front moving in so clearly.
Speaking of cold fronts…
Okay, it’s not unusual at all for Quebec City to see some snow. It’s just that Quebec City has a way of making it look enchanting rather than depressing.
Target just doesn’t look the same with the shelves removed.
Looks like a fun place to run around for a while, maybe shop on roller skates or something, don’t you think?
