Wikipedia:Picture of the day/December 2012

Christmas tree display at the Galeries Lafayette, an upmarket French department store located on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. In 2009, Galeries Lafayette recorded earnings exceeding €1 billion. It is a part of the company Groupe Galeries Lafayette.

Photo: Benh Lieu Song

Two views of the

The fine scale structure of a

The

Photo: JJ Harrison

A smoked Atlantic mackerel (Scomber scombrus). The smoking of fish was originally performed as a method of food preservation that would keep fish edible for more than a year. Recently, the availability of refrigeration and freezing has changed the primary purpose of smoking to enhancing the flavour of the fish.

Photo: Luc Viatour

A self-portrait of

The warty crab (Eriphia verrucosa) is a species of crab found in the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and eastern Atlantic Ocean from Brittany to Mauritania and the Azores. It lives among stones and seaweeds in shallow water along rocky coastlines up to a depth of 15 metres (49 ft).

Photo: George Chernilevsky

One of the tour boats of the Maid of the Mist tour of Niagara Falls. The tour starts off at a calm part of the Niagara River (from both the American and Canadian sides) near the Rainbow Bridge, and takes its passengers past the American and Bridal Veil Falls, then into the dense mist of spray inside the curve of the Horseshoe Falls. The first Maid of the Mist was launched in 1846 as a ferry service between the Canadian and American sides, predating by two years the construction of the first Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge. However, with the opening of the bridge, the ferry service lost business, and by 1854, became a tourist attraction instead.

Photo:

A pair of

Photo: Daniel Schwen

The harvesting of

Front view of the entrance to Mission de

Photo: Ansel Adams; Restoration: Ryan Kaldari

The Biham–Middleton–Levine traffic model is a cellular automaton that describes cars driving on a grid. The blue dots are cars that only move downwards; the red dots are cars that only move rightwards. The two types of cars take turns to move. Despite its simplicity, the model eventually forms an interesting pattern from a random starting position. When there are few cars, the traffic will always end up flowing smoothly, whereas when there are many cars, the traffic will become jammed. In this animation, there are neither too many cars nor too few cars, so it displays a mixture of jams and free flows.

Animation:

The

The structure of a

A billet of enriched uranium, which is uranium where the percent composition of uranium-235 (²³⁵U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Enriched uranium is a critical component for both civil nuclear power generation and military nuclear weapons.

Photo: United States Department of Energy

An animated image showing projections of stratospheric ozone concentrations if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had not been banned. CFCs and other halogenated ozone-depleting substances are mainly responsible for man-made chemical ozone depletion. Since the ozone layer absorbs UVB ultraviolet light, its depletion is expected to increase surface UVB levels, which could lead to damage, including increase in skin cancer.

Image:

The

Photo: Toby Hudson

Two

Restoration: Michael Holley

The

Photo: JJ Harrison

Two samples of crystal bars of pure

A panoramic view of the north walls of

The