Surreal Photos Of Fireflies From Japan’s 2016 Summer

Surreal Photos Of Fireflies From Japan’s 2016 Summer

2016 animals fireflies from Photography photos surreal

We often give you great reasons to visit Japan. The scenery. The lights. The weirdness. But for those of you who still aren’t convinced, here’s yet another brilliant excuse to visit the Land of the Rising Sun. Fireflies!

Every summer, for very short periods, these magical bugs turn forests in Japan into beautiful stages for their ephemeral light shows while trying to attract a mate. And every summer, in the early evening, photographers set out to snap these shows in beautifully evocative photographs. Fireflies are often difficult to find because they don’t like other forms of light (the divas), so you need to be good at hide and seek as well as a skillful photographer if you want to capture their amazing displays for yourself. Because the flash from fireflies is brief and intermittent, photographers often use long exposure shots taken from a tripod in order to capture the sorts of mesmerizing pictures that you can see below.

Image credits: Yu Hashimoto

photofun4ucom Pada July 07, 2016 Komentar

The Mystery of Synchronous Fireflies

The Mystery of Synchronous Fireflies

animals fireflies mystery Nature synchronous

In the first few weeks of June, visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, United States, are treated to a rare natural spectacle — thousands of fireflies blinking in unison like strings of Christmas lights hanging in the night air. The species responsible for the performance is Photinus carolinus, one of the few in the world that is known to synchronize their flash patterns, within a tenth of a second of each other.

Fireflies are actually winged beetles that use bioluminescence during twilight to attract mates. The light is produced in their lower abdomen where the insects combine the chemical luciferin with the enzyme luciferase in the presence of magnesium ions and oxygen to produce light. Fireflies are extremely efficient at what they do. Nearly hundred percent of the energy produced in the chemical reaction is converted to light. For comparison, an incandescent light bulb converts only 10% of the energy into light with the rest 90% given off as heat. Because of the absence of heat, the light produced by fireflies are called “cold light”.

photofun4ucom Pada June 15, 2016 Komentar