Saturday 15 January 2011

Water sprites

I don't know what the name is for this phenomenon as it seems "water sprites" is a description given to fairies living in water. Some might be a little surprised I don't believe in fairies, but I thought I should mention that fact so we're all on the same page. Still, I've not seen these before. If you click on the picture to get a larger version and look closely, especially from the centre of the picture to the top right quadrant, you see a lot of weird things jumping out of the water.

I took several pictures of this spot as I was really just experimenting with settings, and they are in none of the other pictures. They really look quite bizarre. I'm sure they're simply caused by small water droplets but they do appear to be launched into the air by nothing at all.

The picture was taken in Goleta, near Santa Barbara, CA. I've no idea what the name of the creek is, but it's at the end of some road that Pam knows. Just in case anyone wants to go and look for themselves.

4 comments:

Pete said...

Looks like just a probability distribution of mechanical energy from the water flowing over the obstruction. If you run a thin stream of water from a hose on to a flat water surface, every once in a while you will see a drop or two fly off in an odd direction. Reminds me of the occasional emission of particles out of a black hole as described by Stephen Hawking.

Anonymous said...

It is San Jose Creek at the end of Berkeley Road. It is a special place for me so thank you for taking a special photo of it. love pam

Anonymous said...

PS Something is not working right for me leaving comments here today. It keeps trying to post an old comment. Anyway, I used to think about fairies at this place. A long time ago. love pam

Tom said...

Pam - sorry about the commenting issue. Something was wrong earlier although it seems to be working now. I didn't get your last comment in email for instance.

Nothing I've done, it's blogger!

Tom