Wikipedia:Picture of the day/October 2023

Polistes gallicus is a species of paper wasp found in a region from the Alps south into northwest Africa and east to Croatia and Corfu. It can live in a range of temperatures including warmer climates and cooler regions north of the Alps, with nests created in these various conditions. A social insect, the species uses an oral secretion to construct its nests, which consist of a combination of saliva and chewed plant fibers. This structural mixture physically protects the nest from various harsh elements and from weathering over time. Like other members of the subgenus Polistes, P. gallicus has recognizable bright yellow and black markings. It has a smaller body than many others from the genus that overlap in range. This P. gallicus individual was photographed in Bavaria, Germany.

Photograph credit: Reinhold Möller

The State Historical Museum is a museum of Russian history located between Red Square and Manege Square in Moscow. The museum's exhibitions range from relics of prehistoric tribes that lived in the territory of present-day Russia, to priceless artworks acquired by members of the Romanov dynasty. The total number of objects in the museum's collection is in the millions. This photograph of the museum's exterior at night was taken in 2016.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

The yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) is a medium-sized woodpecker which is found across Canada, eastern Alaska and the northeastern United States. These birds winter in the eastern United States, West Indies and Central America. They have also been found as a very rare vagrant in Ireland and Great Britain. The yellow-bellied sapsucker has a length of around 20 centimetres and an average weight of around 50 grams, with a wingspan that ranges from 34 to 40 centimetres. The forehead is coloured bright red in the male (and very occasionally yellow), and a lighter shade of red in the female. This male was photographed in Central Park, New York City, United States.

Photograph credit: Rhododendrites

Stargazer is a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar built in 1974 that was modified in 1994 for use by Orbital Sciences (now part of Northrop Grumman) as a mother-ship launch pad for the Pegasus launch vehicle. As of October 2022, 45 rockets (containing nearly 100 satellites) have been launched from it, using the Pegasus-H and Pegasus-XL configurations. As of 2023, Stargazer is the only L-1011 airframe still airworthy. This photograph shows the aircraft in Orbital ATK livery with the Pegasus-XL rocket with eight Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System spacecraft inside.

Photograph credit: Lori Losey

The yellow-throated miner (Manorina flavigula), also known as the white-rumped miner, is a species of colonial honeyeater endemic to Australia. It is a medium-sized, grey passerine bird with yellow throat markings, legs, and bare patches around the eye. The common name miner is an alternative spelling of the word myna, and is shared with other members of the genus Manorina. Though miners were originally named due to their resemblance to the common myna of India that shares similar yellow eye-patch and legs, common mynas are from the starling family and are not closely related to the honeyeaters. This yellow-throated miner was photographed in Sturt National Park in New South Wales, Australia.

Photograph credit: JJ Harrison

Moreton Bay is located on the eastern coast of Australia 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) from central Brisbane, in the Australian state of Queensland. It is one of Queensland's most important coastal resources. The waters of Moreton Bay are a popular destination for recreational anglers and are used by commercial operators who provide seafood to market.

Photograph credit: NASA Earth Observatory, Joshua Stevens

Agrius cingulata, commonly known as the pink-spotted hawkmoth or sweetpotato hornworm, is a moth in the family Sphingidae. The species was first described by Johan Christian Fabricius in 1775. It has a wide range throughout the Americas, with adults migrating north to Canada and south to Patagonia and the Falkland Islands. It can also be found in the Galápagos Islands and Hawaii, and has been found in western Europe and West Africa. A nocturnal insect, A. cingulata feeds on the nectar from deep-throated flowers including moonflower, morning glories and petunia. Its larva is a large, stout caterpillar with a horn, which feeds during the day and the night on sweet potato, Datura, and other plants. This male A. cingulata moth was photographed in the Mount Totumas cloud forest in Panama.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

Berchtesgaden National Park is a national park in the south of Germany, on its border with Austria, in the Bavarian municipalities of Ramsau bei Berchtesgaden and Schönau am Königssee. Established in 1978 to protect the landscapes of the Berchtesgaden Alps, the park was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1990. This autumn view of Berchtesgaden National Park shows the mountains of Schönfeldspitze, Watzmann and Hochkalter in the distance.

Photograph credit: Jörg Braukmann

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Granville Stuart (1834–1918) was a pioneer, gold prospector, businessman, civic leader, vigilante, author, cattleman and diplomat who played a prominent role in the early history of Montana Territory and the state of Montana. Widely known as "Mr. Montana", Granville's life spanned the formative years of Montana from territorial times through the first 30 years of statehood. His journals and writings have provided Montana and western historians unique insights into life in the Northern Rockies during the second half the 19th century.

Photograph credit: L. A. Huffman; restored by Adam Cuerden

AG Carinae is a luminous blue variable star in the constellation Carina. It is one of the most luminous stars in the Milky Way, although its great distance from Earth (20,000 light-years) and intervening interstellar dust mean that the star is not usually visible to the naked eye; its apparent brightness varies erratically between magnitude 5.7 and 9.0. Apparently in a transitional phase between a massive class-O blue supergiant and a Wolf–Rayet star, AG Carinae is highly unstable and suffers from erratic pulsations, occasional larger outbursts, and rare massive eruptions. The star is surrounded by a nebula of ejected material at a distance of 0.4 to 1.2 parsecs (1.3 to 3.9 light-years). The nebula contains around 15 solar masses of material, all lost from the star around 10,000 years ago. This photograph of AG Carinae and its surrounding nebula was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2021, as one of its anniversary images.

Photograph credit: NASA, ESA and the Space Telescope Science Institute

The bala shark (Balantiocheilos melanopterus) is a fish in the family Cyprinidae, and one of two species in the genus Balantiocheilos. It is found around the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo. It has a silver body with black margins on the dorsal, caudal, anal, and pelvic fins. It has big eyes which it uses to find and catch its prey. The bala shark has a maximum length of 35 cm (14 in). Bala sharks are found in midwater depths in large and medium-sized rivers and lakes. They feed on phytoplankton, but mostly on small crustaceans, rotifers, and insects and their larvae. The bala shark is listed as a vulnerable species by the IUCN Red List, having become rare or extinct in many river basins of its native range. However, large numbers of the species are bred in captivity and exported from Thailand for the aquarium trade. This bala shark was photographed at Karlsruhe Zoo in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Photograph credit: H. Zell

The Sea Girt Light is a lighthouse marking the inlet leading to the Wreck Pond in Sea Girt, New Jersey, United States. It is located on a stretch of the New Jersey shore between the Barnegat and Navesink lighthouses. Its site was chosen after a previous proposal for a lighthouse at Manasquan Inlet was found infeasible, and it was first lit in December 1896. Protections against sand erosion were added in 1900 and the 1920s, and in 1921, Sea Girt Light was equipped with a radio beacon for use in fog, the first such installation on a shore-based light in the US. At the outset of World War II, the light was deactivated and the lens removed; the house was remodeled to serve as a dormitory for a Coast Guard observation post. At the end of the war, an aerobeacon was mounted atop the tower, with the original lighthouse being decommissioned. In 1955, a new beacon was erected away from the building on a steel tower on the lawn. The building was sold to the borough of Sea Girt shortly after. It was used for the town library and for meeting space for many years, while the beacon itself remained operational until 1977. The building was taken over by the Sea Girt Lighthouse Citizens Committee in 1980 and was subsequently restored. It now serves as a museum, offering tours.

Photograph credit: King of Hearts

The Zaniskari, also known as Zanskari, is a breed of small mountain horse or pony from Ladakh, a region of Kashmir administered by India. It is named after Zanskar, a valley or region in Kargil district. It is similar to the Spiti breed of Himachal Pradesh, but is better adapted to work at high altitudes. Like the Spiti, it shows similarities to the breeds of neighbouring Tibet. The Zaniskari is of medium size, and is often grey in colour. The breed is considered endangered, as there are only a few hundred alive today, and a conservation programme has been started at Padum, in the Kargil district of Ladakh. This Zaniskari horse was photographed in central Ladakh.

Photograph credit: Eatcha

Ignace-Gaston Pardies (1636–1673) was a French Catholic priest and scientist. His celestial atlas, entitled Globi coelestis in tabulas planas redacti descriptio, comprised six charts of the night sky and was first published in 1674. The atlas uses a gnomonic projection so that the plates make up a cube of the celestial sphere. The constellation figures are drawn from Uranometria, but were carefully reworked and adapted to a broader view of the sky. This is the second plate from a 1693 edition of Pardies's atlas, featuring constellations including Pegasus and Andromeda, visible in the northern sky.

Map credit: Ignace-Gaston Pardies

Spiders are air-breathing arthropods of the order Araneae, which have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all orders of organisms, with more than 50,000 species recorded in 132 families. Anatomically, spiders (as with all arachnids) differ from other arthropods in that the usual body segments are fused into two tagmata, the cephalothorax or prosoma, and the opisthosoma, or abdomen, and joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel. Unlike insects, spiders do not have antennae. Spiders are found on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every land habitat type. This adult male jumping spider (Plexippus paykulli) was photographed in the US state of Florida.

Photograph credit: Spidereyes2020

The Holmdel Horn Antenna is a large microwave horn antenna that was used as a satellite communication antenna and radio telescope during the 1960s at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1988 because of its association with the research work of two radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, who used it to discover the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) that permeates the universe. This helped change the science of cosmology, the study of the history of the universe, from a field for unlimited theoretical speculation into a discipline of direct observation. In 1978, Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.

Photograph credit: NASA; restored by Bammesk

Fausta Labia (1870–1935) was an Italian operatic soprano who was active mainly from 1892 to 1908. She made her debut in Naples in April 1892 as Valentine in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. After engagements at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm (1893–95) and Lisbon (1896), she returned to Italy where she performed first in Turin, Rome and Bologna. Thereafter notable performances included the title role in Mascagni's Iris at La Fenice in Venice (1900) and Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre at Milan's La Scala (1901). This 1893 photograph depicts Labia while she was engaged at the Royal Swedish Opera.

Photograph credit: unknown; restored by Adam Cuerden

The mistletoebird (Dicaeum hirundinaceum), also known as the mistletoe flowerpecker, is a species of flowerpecker native to most of Australia (though absent from Tasmania and the driest desert areas) and also to the eastern Maluku Islands of Indonesia in the Arafura Sea between Australia and New Guinea. The mistletoebird eats mainly the berries of the parasitic mistletoe and is a vector for the spread of the mistletoe's seeds through its digestive system. The mistletoebird is small, being 9–10 centimetres long and 7.5–11 grams in weight. The male is glossy blue-black above, with a red chest and a slight red under-tail, and a black centre stripe running down its white belly. The female is dark grey above, with a white throat, light grey underparts, and just a touch of pinkish-red under the tail. The eyes, bill, and legs are black; the bill is just over a centimetre long, slender, slightly down-curved and sharply pointed. Immature birds are similar to the female, but have an orange-pink bill instead of black. This male mistletoebird was photographed in the Round Hill Nature Reserve in New South Wales, Australia.

Photograph credit: JJ Harrison

Fred Sullivan (1837–1877) was an English actor and singer. Born into a musical family, he trained as an architectural draftsman but abandoned the profession for a stage career. In 1871, he first performed the role of Mr. Cox in a revival of his brother Arthur Sullivan's comic opera Cox and Box, and later that year created the role of Apollo in the first Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Thespis. In 1875, he created his most famous role, the Learned Judge in Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, also playing in the accompanying Offenbach piece, La Périchole. He earned enthusiastic reviews, and his portrayal of the Judge set the pattern for the subsequent Gilbert and Sullivan comic "patter" roles. He then toured in Trial and French operettas, returning for the London revival of Trial. Fred Sullivan died at the age of 39, leaving a pregnant widow and seven young children, his brother composing the song "The Lost Chord" at his bedside. This sepia photograph of Sullivan was taken by the Canadian photographer Olivier Sarony, probably in the 1870s.

Photograph credit: Olivier Sarony; restored by Adam Cuerden

A Boy with a Flying Squirrel is a 1765 painting by the American-born painter John Singleton Copley. It depicts Copley's half-brother Henry Pelham with a pet flying squirrel, a creature commonly found in colonial American portraits as a symbol of the sitter's refinement. Painted while Copley was a Boston-based portraitist aspiring to be recognized by his European contemporaries, the work was taken to London for a 1766 exhibition, where it was met with overall praise from artists like Joshua Reynolds, who nonetheless criticized Copley's minuteness. Later historians and critics assessed the painting as a pivotal work in both Copley's career and the history of American art. It has previously been exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and is now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Painting credit: John Singleton Copley

Heliconius charithonia, commonly known as the zebra longwing or zebra heliconian, is a species of butterfly belonging to the family Nymphalidae. It is distributed across South and Central America and the U.S. states of Texas and Florida, with some migrations further north in the warmer months. Adult butterflies are monomorphic of medium size with long wings. On the dorsal side, the wings are black with narrow white and yellow stripes, with a similar pattern on the ventral side, but paler and with red spots. The wingspan ranges from 72 to 100 mm (2.8 to 3.9 in). The caterpillars are white with black spots and have numerous black spikes along their body. Adults roost in groups of up to 60 individuals on a nightly basis, returning to the same roost every night. These roosts provide protection to adults, the large groups deterring predators and retaining warmth. This H. charithonia butterfly was photographed in Hendry County, Florida.

Photograph credit: Nosferattus

Blue Horse I is an oil-on-canvas by Franz Marc executed in 1911. The first draft, produced earlier that year, was a pencil drawing which Marc drew in his sketchbook; this was about the size of a postcard and entitled Young Horse in Mountain Landscape, which already shows the composition of the later painting. The painting was part of several exhibitions that Marc and Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky presented to the public under the name Der Blaue Reiter from late 1911 until 1914. Blue Horse I is regarded as one of the painter's most famous paintings and is now part of the collection of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, Germany.

Painting credit: Franz Marc

Arothron stellatus, also known as the stellate pufferfish, starry puffer or starry toadfish, is a demersal marine fish belonging to the family Tetraodontidae, the puffer fishes. It is found in shallow water in the Indo-Pacific region. It is a large fish, growing up to 120 centimetres (47 in) in length. Its body is spherical and relatively elongated, with skin that is not covered with scales but is prickly. The fish has no pelvic fin and no lateral line. The dorsal fin and the anal fin are small, symmetric, and located at the rear end of the body. The head is large with a short snout that has two pairs of nostrils, and the mouth is terminal with four strong teeth. This A. stellatus individual was photographed in the Red Sea near Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

Photograph credit: Diego Delso

The Neue Nationalgalerie is a museum for modern art in Berlin, Germany, with its main focus on the 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its sculpture gardens were designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and opened in 1968, with a modernist design and constructed largely from steel and glass. Neue Nationalgalerie serves as a repository for a notable collection of 20th-century European art. Its holdings include masterpieces by prominent figures such as Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Joan Miró. The gallery closed in 2015 for renovation works, and reopened in August 2021 with an exhibition of works by American sculptor Alexander Calder. This photograph is a view of the western and southern façades of the building, with Calder's sculpture Têtes et Queue in the foreground.

Photograph credit: Alexander Savin

The northern pintail (Anas acuta) is a duck with a wide geographic distribution that breeds in the northern areas of Europe, Asia and North America. It is migratory and winters south of its breeding range to the equator. Unusual for a bird with such a large range, it has no geographical subspecies if the possibly conspecific Eaton's pintail is considered to be a separate species. It is a fairly large duck, with a long pointed tail that gives rise to the species's English and scientific names. The northern pintail's common name describes the male's two long black tail feathers, which in flight look like a single pin or twig. Hens make a coarse quack and the drakes a flute-like whistle. It is a bird of open wetlands, nesting on the ground and often at some distance from water. It feeds by dabbling for plant food and adds small invertebrates to its diet during the nesting season. When not breeding, it is highly gregarious, forming large mixed flocks with other species of duck. This male northern pintail was photographed at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge Complex in northern California.

Photograph credit: Frank Schulenburg

Charon is the largest of the five known natural satellites of the dwarf planet Pluto. It has a mean radius of 606 kilometres (377 mi), making it the sixth-largest known trans-Neptunian object after Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, and Gonggong. With half the radius and one-eighth the mass of Pluto, Charon is a very large moon in comparison to its parent body. Its gravitational influence is such that the barycenter of the Plutonian system lies outside Pluto, and the two bodies are tidally locked to each other. Charon was discovered in 1978 by James W. Christy at the United States Naval Observatory (USNO), using photographic plates taken at USNO Flagstaff Station in Arizona. This photograph of Charon in true color was taken by the NASA spacecraft New Horizons, which flew by the Plutonian system in 2015.

Photograph credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Southwest Research Institute and Alex Parker

The red-tailed squirrel (Sciurus granatensis) is a species of tree squirrel. It is found in Central and South America – including Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela – and the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago and Margarita. It has also been introduced and is invasive in Cuba, but this is a small population found around some parts of the margin of Rio Almendares in Havana that escaped from the Havana Zoo. This is a common squirrel with a stable population and a vast range consisting of different habitats, including human-influenced environments, thus it is not thought to be under threat. This male red-tailed squirrel was photographed in the Caldas Department in Colombia.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

Louis Blanc (29 October 1811 – 6 December 1882) was a French politician and historian. He advocated for socialist reforms without revolution first, and called for the creation of job guarantees for the urban poor. Blanc coined the phrase "right to work", and his political and social ideas greatly contributed to the development of socialism in France. This photograph of Blanc was taken in 1848 by the French photographer Étienne Carjat.

Photograph credit: Étienne Carjat; restored by JLPC

Fumarole minerals are minerals that are deposited by fumarole exhalations. They form when gases and compounds desublimate or precipitate out of condensates, forming mineral deposits. They are mostly associated with volcanoes (as volcanic sublimate or fumarolic sublimate), following deposition from volcanic gas during an eruption or discharge from a volcanic vent or fumarole, but have been encountered on burning coal deposits as well. They can be black or multicoloured and are often unstable upon exposure to the atmosphere. This fumarole formation, formed of acicular crystals of tazieffite (black), was photographed at Mutnovsky, a volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.

Photograph credit: Ppm61

Juniperus brevifolia, or the Azores juniper, is a species of juniper, endemic to the Azores (on the islands of Corvo, Faial, Flores, Pico, Santa Maria, São Jorge, São Miguel, and Terceira), where it occurs at altitudes of 240 to 800 m, and in rare cases up to 1,500 m. It is closely related to J. oxycedrus, the prickly juniper, and J. cedrus, the Canary Islands juniper. J. brevifolia is a shrub or small tree growing to a height of 6 m and a trunk diameter up to 50 cm. The leaves are evergreen, needle-like, in whorls of three, glaucous green, 4 to 10 mm long, with a double white stomatal band on the inner surface. It is dioecious, with separate male and female plants. The seed cones are berry-like, green ripening in 18 months to orange-red with a variable pink waxy coating. The plant is threatened due to habitat fragmentations of its preferred habitat (laurel forest), caused by island colonization and grazing pressures. These J. brevifolia trees were photographed in the Special Protection Area of Zona Central do Pico.

Photograph credit: Pablosievert