This was the view that some lucky campers woke up to this past weekend at Coachella, the music and art festival that continues next weekend in Indio, California. Over 100 teepees were hand-painted by local artists and rented as luxury accommodations starting at $2200. [Coachella]
These optical targets in the Arizona desert were built for calibrating the cameras of a spy satellite network called the Corona program. Similar to the huge bar codes found across the U.S. southwest, also used for testing high-altitude cameras, these targets are glyphs meant to be seen from the sky: fixed points of focus and orientation for classified machines soaring through space far above.
Living in the desert is no piece of cake. So to imagine a glittering city in the desert is to imagine something awesome and fantastical—and maybe a touch of crazy. Like architect Stephane Malka’s, "The Green Machine," a mobile city on caterpillar treads that farms the desert as it walks.
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The only color in the landscape for miles, Salvation Mountain looms like a mirage on the horizon. The three-story, three-decade work of artist Leonard Knight, who died yesterday at the age of 82, is a piece of brightly painted, hand-sculpted California desert, like an impossibly scaled cathedral made from Play-Doh.
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At first glance, it’s easy to mistake this clapboard box in the middle of Joshua Tree for a mirage or digital illusion. Artist Philip K. Smith III added mirrored panels to the shack’s exterior, making Lucid Stead seem to hover in the landscape like a processing glitch. At night, when the sun goes down, it then transforms again—lit from within by bright LEDs. Photographer Lou Mora captured the shack in the light of day and under the cover of darkness. [notcot]
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Photographer Romain Veillon recently traveled to the deserts of Namibia, where he photographed the abandoned village of Kolmanskop, an extraordinarily evocative collection of old wooden houses now filled with waves of sand.
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You’re looking at a satellite image of the Dasht-e Lut salt desert in southeast Iran. If you think it looks a bit weird, that’ because it is: it’s widely regarded as the hottest place on Earth.
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It’s undeniable that this satellite image of the Al Jawf oasis in southeastern Libya is incredibly striking, with large irrigated plots standing out in contrast to their barren surroundings. But, a little like staring at clouds, their lay-out is enough to get your imagination running wild.
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If you dress up like a Jedi on a day that’s not October 31st (even if it is October 31st, actually), you’re probably going to be branded a geek. Wear that proudly! But if you dress up like a Jedi and do parkour tricks in the freaking desert like bouncing off rocks and double backflips and triple spins all while looking like you’re in a chase sequence for the next Star Wars movie, well, you’re an AWESOME geek that everyone is proud of.
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You’d think with all the tumultuous weather and winds the Earth experiences, the planet would be covered in a fairly even mix of green space. But it’s not. Some parts are covered in fertile rain forests, while others are barren deserts. And it’s all because of a weather effect known as Hadley Cells. More »
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