The Online Geography Game
At the top of a 650m high hill about 40 km west of the city of Hims lies what probably is the best preserved medieval castle in the world: the Krak des Chevaliers. Erected in 1033 by the Emir of Aleppo, the castle was conquered by Raymond IV of Toulouse during the first crusade in 1099.
The castle is listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the Citadel of Salah Ed-Din.
Those who regained the holy land:
A reminder: you can click on the image for a larger version.
At the mouth of the River Rance, near Saint-Malo in France lies the ‘Barrage de la Rance‘, the first tidal power station in the world.
Driven by the force of the tidal flow the 24 turbines of this contraption can generate as much as 600 GWh annually, all generated by the tidal difference which is an average 8 metres (26 ft).
Those who caused some sparks from the water:
Believe it or not, but you are looking here at the core of the largest radio telescope in the world, the LOFAR telescope in the North Eastern part of the Netherlands.
The LOw Frequency ARray is a multi purpose set of sensors, suitable for astronomical observations, but also for geophysical and agricultural applications. The antennas are located in a wide area in Northern Europe and ‘talking’ to each other by means of a fast glass fibres connection network.
When LOFAR is fully completed there will be an array of 7000 antennas in clusters with a diameter of 100 km and spread out over an area of 1500 km across Europe.
LOFAR will be officially opened on june 12th by HM Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands.
Kudos to Milosh, Serbia and David Kozina for finding this location.
This is the large tar sand mining operation in Alberta, Canada, run by the Syncrude company.
Basically what is happening here is that crude oil is reclaimed from the bituminous sand that is at lying the surface of the earth. This location is supposed to be the largest tar sand reservoir in the world with an estimated 170 billion barrels of crude oil.
These operations are heavily criticised because of the environmental impact as of toxic waste and CO2 emissions.
Right answers this week from:
Here is a real challenge for the diehards amongst you
When searching for locations suitable for my last ‘theme’, I came across this location. But of course I rejected it as being too hard. But it might be fun to see if someone manages to find it. The clue is already given.
We end this series (and the theme) were it all begun: The observatory of Tycho Brahe on the island of Hven in Denmark. Uranienborg was the first academic research centre for astronomics and constructed in 1576.
A few years later he built an underground observatory at the same location, (visible at the south-side of the road) called Stjerneborg.
Today the Stjerneborg observatory is restored and can be visited.
Those who witnessed the supernova:
Congratulations to hhgygy, who managed to score full marks this round.
It is hard to believe, is Milosh finally beaten?
