We have some wildlife photos and one space picture today. The wildlife pictures come from reader Tony Eales of Brisbane, Australia, whose notes are indented:
More pics from my trip to Brunei, Borneo. Enter the arthropods. Here’s a collection of the more unusual creatures in the rainforest at Ulu Temburong National Park. Colourful rainforest crabs were pretty common on the night walks. Probably Geosesarma sp. One of the so called Vampire Crabs.
There were also plenty of fairly large Harvestmans (Order Opiliones); I have no idea of even the family. They are such weirdos with their eyes on stalks.
I only saw one giant tropical centipede but it was impressive even though the old hands assured me it was a medium-sized one.
We saw lots of giant ‘house’ centipedes, Scutigerids. This one was mind boggling. The body looked so thick and large, more like a sardine sized fish than any myriapod I’m used to. Just all legs and fangs.
A personal favourite was the Vinegaroon, also known as Whip Scorpions, Thelyphonida. An impressive beast.
And an astronomy photo from another Aussie, reader Tim Anderson:
NGC2070 [JAC: also called the “Tarantula Nebula”] is an emission nebula embedded in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This image derives from sixty 20-second sub-frames taken in each of the red, green and blue wavelength channels.Technicals:
127mm refracting telescopeASI1600 monochrome camera cooled to -10 degrees CZWO RGB filtersEQ8 mountProcessed in Nebulosity 4 and Photoshop
The Whip Scorpion looks as if it’s been flattened. I’m sure it’s not though.
The cool looking Tarantula Nebula continues the arthropod theme.
Oh… my! I do love these kinds of things. It must seem strange to see crabs crawling around in the underbrush of a forest, but one does remember that technically insects are crustaceans.
Not just crawling in the underbrush, we most often found them up in the branches of bushes and saplings
The Tarantula Nebula. I’ve always wanted to see it. Fits well with all the other arthropod pictures.
More land crabs? Wacky! Something I had no idea existed until reading this site.
Impressive arthropods!