Forest Service in quandary about Colo. frozen cows

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By STEVEN K. PAULSON | Associated Press – 14 hrs ago

DENVER (AP) — It may take explosives to dislodge a group of cows that wandered into an old ranger cabin high in the Rocky Mountains, then died and froze solid when they couldn’t get out.

The carcasses were discovered by two Air Force Academy cadets when they snow-shoed up to the cabin in late March. Rangers believe the animals sought shelter during a snowstorm and got stuck and weren’t smart enough to find their way out.

The cabin is located near the Conundrum Hot Springs, a nine-mile hike from the Aspen area in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness area.

This April 6, 2012, photo, provided by the U. S. Forest Service shows the Conundrum Creek Cabin, in the White River National Forest, near Aspen, Colo., where as many as six cows remain that froze to death. U.S. Forest Service spokesman Steve Segin said Tuesday they need to decide quickly how to get rid of the carcasses. The options: use explosives to break up the cows, burn down the cabin, or using a helicopters or trucks to haul out the carcasses. (AP Photo/U.S. Forest Service, Brian Porter)

Michael Carroll, a spokesman for the Wilderness Society in Colorado, said cattle are often allowed to wander on federal wilderness lands as long as ranchers get a permit from the Forest Service, and sometimes the animals get separated from the herd.

The Forest Service said Tuesday the animals came from a herd of 29 cows that went missing last fall from the nearby Gunnison National Forest where the rancher had a permit. An aerial search failed to turn up any sign of the animals.

Forest Service spokesman Brian Porter said rangers saw about six cows inside the cabin, and several dead cows lying around the building.

This April 6, 2012, photo, provided by the U. S. Forest Service shows the Conundrum Creek Cabin, in the White River National Forest, near Aspen, Colo., where as many as six cows remain that froze to death. U.S. Forest Service spokesman Steve Segin said Tuesday they need to decide quickly how to get rid of the carcasses. The options: use explosives to break up the cows, burn down the cabin, or using a helicopters or trucks to haul out the carcasses. (AP Photo/U.S. Forest Service, Brian Porter)

 

“There is a lot of snow, and it’s hard to determine how many cows are there,” Porter said.

U.S. Forest Service spokesman Steve Segin said Tuesday they need to decide quickly how to get rid of the carcasses.

“Obviously, time is of the essence because we don’t want them defrosting,” Segin said.

Segin said officials are concerned about water contamination in the nearby hot springs if the cows start decomposing during the thaw.

The options: use explosives to break up the cows, burn down the cabin, or using a helicopters or trucks to haul out the carcasses.

But Segin said using helicopters is too expensive and rangers are worried about using trucks in a wilderness area, where the government bars permanent improvements and tries to preserve the natural habitat.

Carroll praised the Forest Service for trying to remove the animals while doing the least damage. He said burning down the cabin or packing out the carcasses are probably the best solutions.

“They need to use the minimal tool to get the job done. They don’t want to leave the land scarred,” he said.

Segin said the Forest Service occasionally uses explosives to destroy carcasses of animals that can’t be retrieved.

“We’ve used them as a means of disposal to remove dead horses, elk and other animals in areas where it’s impossible to get them out,” he said.

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Information from: Aspen Daily News, http://www.aspendailynews.com

 

 

 

Amazing Hubble Photo Reveals Tarantula Nebula’s Star-Filled Web

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By SPACE.com Staff Space.com | SPACE.com – Tue, Apr 17, 2012

This new Hubble telescope image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and includes observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys released …more by NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore in celebration of Hubble’s 22nd anniversary on April 17, 2012. REUTERS

A stunning new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope has captured an unprecedented panoramic view of the Tarantula nebula, revealing its bright heart of massive stars.

The photo is actually a colossal mosaic — one of the largest ever built from Hubble images — and shows an intense star-forming hotspot called 30 Doradus. Hubble’s science team unveiled the image today (April 17) ahead of the 22nd anniversary of the iconic space telescope’s launch on April 24, 1990.

“30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighborhood and home to the most massive stars ever seen,” Hubble telescope officials wrote in an image description. “No known star-forming region in our galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

This image of the 30 Doradus Nebula, a rambunctious stellar nursery, and the enlarged inset photo show a heavyweight star that may have been kicked out of its home by a pair of heftier siblings. The image was taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The heavyweight star, called 30 Dor #016, is 90 times more massive than the Sun. In the wider view of 30 Doradus, taken with European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Wide Field Imager at the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope in Chile, the homeless star, located on the outskirts of the nebula, is centred within a white box. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, J. Walsh (ST-ECF), ESO

Hubble’s new view of the region inside the Tarantula nebula shows massive stars’ winds carving cavities into gas clouds, creating “a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges and valleys,” Hubble officials explained. The spectacular colors are created by glowing hot gas. Hydrogen appears as red while oxygen shows up in blue.

The image covers an area about 650 light-years across that includes so many stars that their mass would add up to millions of our own sun if combined, they added. (One light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles, or 10 trillion kilometers).

This annotated map identifies several prominent features in an image of the Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus), a prominent region of star formation located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) the nearest neighboring galaxy to the Milky Way. The image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released April 17, 2012. CREDIT: NASA/ESA/ESO

The Tarantula nebula is located 170,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the smaller satellite galaxies that hover around our own Milky Way. Inside the nebula is 30 Doradus, which, because of its local proximity to our galaxy, has long been a cosmic laboratory of sorts for astronomers studying how stars are born and evolve.

The most massive runaway star ever seen and one of the fastest rotating stars are just two of the region’s tenants, Hubble researchers said. Star clusters from 2 million to 25 million years old can also be found.

The furious pace of star birth inside 30 Doradus is partly fueled by the Large Magellanic Cloud’s neighbor, the Small Magellanic Cloud. In the Hubble view, various stages of the star life cycle are evident, ranging from embryonic stars a few thousand years old to stellar giants that live fast and die young in supernova explosions.

The bright, shining heart of 30 Doradus is a star cluster called NGC 2070 that astronomers suspect is relatively young,  just 2 million or 3 million years old. The cluster is filled with about 500,000 stars and has a dense core that includes some of the most massive stars in the universe. It’s these mega-stars, which can contain more than 100 times the mass of the sun, that carve the stunning shapes into the gas clouds of 30 Doradus, researchers said.

To generate Hubble’s new view of the Tarantula nebula, astronomers combined observations from the space telescope’s powerful Wide Field Camera 3 and its Advanced Camera for Surveys. A total of 30 scans of the region, 15 per camera, were recorded in October 2011 to create the image. Observations from a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile augment the already spectacular view.

 

 

 

 

Photos Of The Day

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April 18, 2012

Mushroom, Oregon

Photograph by Robin Loznak, Your Shot

This Month in Photo of the Day: Nature and Weather Photos

Light shines through the gills of a wild mushroom found growing in a damp, forested area near Elkton, Oregon, on Monday, December 19, 2011.

Salt Piles on Shoreline, Senegal

Photograph by Robert Haas

Salt piles line the shoreline of  Lake Retba, Senegal. The high salinity content of the lake provides a livelihood for salt collectors.

Sand Dunes, Rub al Khali

Photograph by George Steinmetz

The borders of four nations—Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates—blur beneath the shifting sands of the Rub al Khali, or Empty Quarter, desert.

Drying Fronds, Kenya

Photograph by Robert Haas

Fronds dry in neat lines around a tree in Kenya.

Cave Dwellings, Turkey

Photograph by Klaus Nigge

Cavelike dwellings built into soft rock dot the Cappadocia region of Turkey.

Fairy Circles, Namib Desert

Photograph by Michael Fay

Fairy circles, or grassless patches, spot the Namib Desert in Namibia, seen here from an airplane.

Bacteria, New Zealand

Photograph by Peter Essick

Photosynthesizing bacteria in a New Zealand thermal pool absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

Sunflower Florets

Photograph by Jozsef Szentpeteri

Beads of dew cling to the florets that spiral inside a sunflower head.

Lichens

Photograph by Stephen Sharnoff

Lichens grow on a granite gravestone in Lake Champlain, New York.

Banksia Flower

Photograph by Jonathan Blair

The characteristic spikes of a banksia flower are common across Australia. This one was photographed on a farm in Mount Barker.

Water Reflection, Utah

Photograph by Frans Lanting

Reflecting off water, light paints peacock-feather patterns onto a rock wall in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Utah.

Giant Clam Mantle

Photograph by Tim Laman

Iridescent spots surround the mantle of a giant clam in Palau, Micronesia. The mantle is a fleshy outer layer that secretes the clam’s shell.

Cactus, Manzanillo, Mexico

Photograph by Raul Touzon

Bursts of yellow punctuate a cactus in Manzanillo, Mexico

Curled Millipede

Photograph by George Grall

Exhibiting its main defense mechanism, a millipede curls into a tight spiral. In this fashion it protects its legs—on average between 100 and 300, not the thousand its name suggests—inside its body.

Salmon Scales

Photograph by Paul Nicklen

The scales of an Atlantic salmon, such as these on a fish in Quebec, Canada, can help biologists determine the fish’s age.

Diatoms

Photograph by Darlyne A. Murawski

Seen here 400 times their true size, diatoms are a type of algae found in oceans, fresh water, and soil.

Basket Sea Star, Cuba

Photograph by Brian J. Skerry

The complexly branched arms of the basket sea star, or starfish, catch plankton for the echinoderm.

Cenote, Mexico

Photograph by Stephen Alvarez

Sunlight radiates through the Xpacay cenote in the Mexican Yucatán. Cenotes are freshwater sinkholes usually found on the Yucatán peninsula

Snapping Turtle Shell

Photograph by Darlyne A. Murawski

The bony plates of a snapping turtle’s carapace protect it from predators. Snappers are freshwater turtles found in much of North America

Mammatus Clouds

Photograph by Carsten Peter

Mammatus clouds roil in the Nebraska sky, identifiable by their sagging, pouch-like shape. The name comes from the Latin word for “breast.”

The Virtuoso

Deep in the cloud forest of South America the tiny club-winged manakin sings with its wings. Scientists are only beginning to learn how this complex, strange, and highly entertaining behavior evolved.

Photograph by Tim Laman

A club-winged manakin lifts its wings to make music. Machaeropterus deliciosus

Photograph by Tim Laman

Crouching in the dense bush of the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in Ecuador, Cornell University ornithologist Kim Bostwick listens, watches, and waits for a striped manakin.

Photograph by Tim Laman

A male club-winged manakin in the Milpe Bird Sanctuary, with his characteristic red thatch, has just attracted a female with his sound and now hopes to seal the deal.

Machaeropterus deliciosus

Photograph by Tim Laman

The manakins featured in this and the following three photos, photographed in a tropical Ecuadorian forest, aren’t capable of their club-winged cousin’s musicality. These close relatives are being studied by ornithologist Kim Bostwick in the hope that they may reveal intermediate evolutionary steps that led to the club-winged’s virtuosity. Above, the wire-tailed manakin—note the spiky tail feathers—courts a female.

Pipra filicauda

Photograph by Tim Laman

The striped manakin has enlarged secondary feathers like the club-winged but makes only a simple buzzing sound with its wings.

Machaeropterus regulus

Photograph by Tim Laman

The blue-crowned manakin doesn’t produce any wing sounds.

Lepidothrix coronata

Photograph by Tim Laman

The golden-headed manakin moves its wings like the club-winged manakin but does so silently.

Pipra erythrocephala