SCOUT-O3 Photo Gallery

All photos on this page were taken by MJ Mahoney and should not be used without permission . The intent of this gallery is to convey a sense of the environment for the SCOUT-O3 deployment in Darwin, Australia. Although scientists often get to travel to interesting and sometimes exotic locations, field work is extremely demanding, involving long hours with little time off to explore the surroundings.Most of the photos in these galleries were taken after hours on a month long deployment. Hopefully, they will bring back fond memories of this deployment for those who were on it, and help instill interest in atmospheric research for those who were not. For more information on SCOUT-O3, go to the SCOUT-O3 Home Page . Click each image to see a 800x600 enlargement. Higher quality images (8 Megapixel) are available on request .

The SCOUT-O3 Team (minus photographer) Width: 1024 | 2980

Aircraft Ops

Geophysica Launch

Geophysica Right-wing Payload

Geophysica Left-wing Payload

Geophysica on Ramp at RAAF

Falcon Launch

Falcon in Hangar 161 at RAAF

Geophysica with Hector Behind

Falcon on Ramp

Oleg after Recovery on 2005.11.23

Victor Cooling the Brakes!

Ready to Taxi

Fire Truck on Recovery

Nighttime Launch on 2005.12.05

Recovery with Nascent Hector

Ground-based Formation Flying

MTP Ready for Trip Home

Critters

Cattle Egrett

Red-tailed Black Cockatoos

Ibis

Pied Heron

"I think that I see some bread."

"Let's take a bit, and place it nearby as fish bait."

"That was too easy, and I get to eat the bread anyway!"

"Yummy"

The Mangrove Heron - This is a remarkable bird, which I discovered at Alexander Lake on East Point. From left to right, the heron sees a piece of bread in the water, bites off a bit, and places it in the water nearby. The heron squatted down as low as it could and waited. No longer was the bit of bread out of its beak, when a small fish bit at it and the heron bit at IT! A close look at the third image will reveal the soggy bread hanging from the fishes mouth. I saw the heron do this twice before it had had a meal. A bloke told me that if you placed the bread some distance from the water, the heron would nip off a bit, and proceed to the water with it. Obviously, in a survival sense, the fish is better for the heron than a bit of dry or soggy bread. And both are even better! Darwin would be proud.