The features page is still a work in progress while we figure out the best way to present past material. In the meantime I'll leave it on cruise and you can just browse down and see what's here. This is a small part of our body of work from the past 30 months and I'll trot out more content as time permits.
January 30th - Update: looks like the entire Middle East is experiencing Internet outages due to a cut in the main undersea Med cable carrying data traffic.
I am receiving beautiful images directly from the camera here at home, but the network in Cairo or the router/modem has stopped FTP for some reason. We will switch over to direct uploads as soon as possible. I've posted the latest live image above, but it make take some time to bring us back to 30 seconds an image.
January 27th -Stoker the former 'Cairo Cat' is doing some bird watching at her new home. We're going to help her by putting up a live cam outside on the bird feeders. Go here...
January 1st - Happy New Year to everybody. This has been a period of much needed rest and relaxation for me, but I will be more active on the site very soon. Go here to see how Stoker the Cat is adjusting to life in the US.
Thanksgiving Thursday, November 22 - It's clouding up and may rain today. Might be too dark for a good sunset view, but we'll see.
Tuesday, November 20th - We've had two very clear air days with lots of clouds and the viewing has been remarkable. It has finally broken 70F and my room temperature now is a pleasant 70.5F. Check out this super sunset image here.
Saturday, November 3rd - Diane sent us this spectacular image capture. See the full size image here.
Fake: This bogus image has been floating, as it were, around the net and thanks to Dawn for calling it to our attention. Our archive image for this date and time can be found here. Good fun, but some people have too much time on their hands apparently.
A Very Rare Atmospheric Event - Our close PyramidCam friend, Tom Hartlove, captured this image last December and ran across it again as he was going over his archives. It's really beautiful. This kind of picture is special and we are very fortunate that our camera was there to record it last Decmeber. Go here... You can see it also on Coast to Coast where it was posted yesterday.
Update on Blue Sunset - Tom's inquiry to a professional on the subject brought this: "a very rare phenomenon known as a "blue sun." These have been observed from time to time around the world. The most recent widely accepted documentation of a blue sun occurred in September 1950 in Edinburgh, Scotland. A discussion of that event appears in Craig Bohren's book, 'Clouds in a Glass of Beer,' on page 91" - Go here...
September 29th - Diane sent this one in tonight of a stationary white light over Menkaure. Go to the Photoblog to see the full size image.
September 19th - We are about to launch a new version of the PyramidCam website - nothing that new and radical, but some minor improvements have been made. So bear with me if your reception is a bit erratic over the next couple of days. Given all the network problems we've had lately, you probably won't notice it.
I'll be taking the homepage content down and transferring most of it to a new section called 'Features', but if there is anything on the page that you might particularly want to save, copy it now, as I might misplace something in the process. We seemed to have developed a massive amount of content over the past two years of operation - without trying, really. Now I have to find somewhere to put it all.
September 16th - It appears that ADSL service has been restored and we are back on line.
September 15th - After three futile trips to the hotel to check on the status of the ADSL line, I learned that what I suspected at the beginning was true - the day before the holidays began, someone at the local central simply turned off the hotel line and went home. It was on for one or two images today and then went off again. The "problem" is supposed to be solved tomorrow. Internet service here is effectively at a standstill anyway now, with one needing a proxy server to bypass Google for gmail, since Google died a couple of days ago and has only been seen occasionally since. StokerCam has remained up and running, however, and that's good news - if that went down, I'd really start getting email.
September 10th - Stoker is out It's cooler now and Stoker Cat is lounging around on the sofa.
Go here for a look at a new Sound and Light Show setup.
September 6th - Diane sends this one in from South Bend this morning (afternoon) and suggests that the bird is waving to us - sure looks that way. Click on the thumb to see the full size image.
September 4th - Last night we witnessed an incredible light show with search lights lighting up the sky in every direction. I'll have some captures of a few of those pics up shortly. It appears to me that the search lights will remain over the holy month of Ramadan, which starts on the 13th. There should be some great images - first ever of that kind - to capture.
Feature - Volvic, "The Water that Floated Around the World"
.....and somehow ended up at PyramidCam. These two sealed bottles of Volvic Eau Minerale Naturelle went around the world on the first manned circumnavigation of the globe by balloon in 1999 with the Breitling Orbiter. Go here for more images.
Our 1999 Recovery Story here. We feature the Volvic bottles here. We'll have a poll - shall I drink this unique 8 year old vintage water, or let it mature? After such stratospheric exposure it could have special properties...
The camera we use, a StarDot Netcam 3MP XL, is about to be deployed at the North Pole by NOAA. Read more about it here at NOAA's Arctic Theme Page. For the past 5 years StarDot cams have operated at the Pole, sending back images by satellite and operating on solar power in -40F temperatures. Plus 40F at the Pyramids, minus 40F at the North Pole and they just keep running.
Do we need a little more quality control at Google Adsense?
It was called to my attention that "Egypt" was misspelled on the website. So, being one who gets upset over bad spelling (my own only), I went into a panic and searched the site for the offending word. It could not be found, so I looked at the email again and discovered that Adsense had let an ad through for Tours of Egypt and Egypt was rendered Egpyt. Pretty funny, but being at times slightly dyslexic myself, I had to forgive them for it. It remains, however, a real classic.
Thursday, August 31st - Rodger sends us his photo enhancement of an unidentified object in the view from March 30th. See the others in our PhotoBlog.
Our Weather Station - If you check the NW corner of our live image you will notice that the temperature, humidity and barometric pressure are displayed in real time. That's our new StartDot Weather Station at work. It's probably the only place on the web where you will find that information for Cairo in real time. The station is attached directly to the camera and gives a new reading every 30 seconds. Commercial airline pilots flying in to Cairo will get the best up-to-the-minute weather info right here, both visually and numerically, by tuning in to PyramidCam before taking off.
July 9th - Diane stayed up late to capture this early morning shot of the rising sun being reflected off a cloud above the Pyramids while they are still bathed is a fine mist.
Plateau Cleaned Up - Yesterday's winds have left our view of the plateau almost entirely clear of dust and sand. Almost looks like it had snowed out there. Click on the thumb to view the full size image, a very clear high quality capture by our NetCam XL.
Dust Devil before Khafre - Yesterday the wind came up and scoured the plateau of a lot of dust and sand. Our dust devil here must be at least 100 feet high. Click on the photo for a better look.
Surreal Scene at Night - Here the setting moon hangs over the Pyramids at night above three small pyramid shaped lights on the Plateau left on after the evening Sound and Light Show. Go here...
Bird Swoop - here is one of our crows caught in mid-flight and smudged across the image We get this with birds and insects located in the camera's near field, especially in the early evening.
We have probably captured and archived over a million images of the Pyramids - if it's out there, we'll see it - eventually. If you are new to PyramidCam, a good place to start after you've viewed the live image and checked the temperature on our weather station, is to go to the following areas on the site:
Hourly Image Archive
Best Images - One | Two | Three
PhotoBlog
Forums
The moon setting over the Pyramids - Diane sent this one in today and it gives the impression of the Pyramids being illuminated by the moon. Click on the photo to view.
Please take a look at a special night image from the Sound and Light. Go here...
Image Albums - Cairo American College Spring Flowers:
Great Image - Diane, from South Bend, has put together her best captures in a slide show, which I've commented. There are some very unique and beautiful images here. Click here.
Pyramids Sunset Movie to Music - 'Izzie' has put one of our best sunsets to music on YouTube and it's quite moing. You'll find it here...
Saturday, March 3rd - Total Lunar Eclipse from Cairo. We have installed the NetcamXL on a rotor and will follow the total lunar eclipse tonight from start to finish.... It's about total at 12:57am on the 4th here in Cairo. We had to turn off Stokercam, but it will be back on after the eclipse.... It's now 2:40am and the moon has just gone behind the edge of the roof here. I also watched it through a good telescope from the top of our building - it was quite a spectacular site (don't you mean sight?) - well it was quite late.
Sunset Movie for February 13th (1.2K) - This is quite a show and goes through many changes. The sun is moving out of our view as the season advances, but we will begin to zoom out at sunset to follow it north as far as we can. I'm going to try and work up a script that will allow our auto-zoom lens to pull out just far enough to catch the sun at the right edge of the screen at local sunset time, which is getting slightly earlier each day. However, we need to zoom back to a nighttime view that will allow Ottmar Labonde's astronomical applets to work properly.
Weather - Go here to see what's coming our way.
Mystery Lights - We have not had a good unidentified sky object in a while. Here's a very short movie from January 26th that shows Venus setting during which three objects appear as white lights in sequence. The first two objects feature a white light at both the front and the back and quite obviously must be the same object exactly 30 seconds apart. The light configuration is not what you would expect for an airliner. Then two and a half minutes later a single bright light winks on almost exactly between Khafre and Khufu and directly below Venus. Go here...(57K)
A WebCam First - The planet Mercury appears on PyramidCam, setting just before Venus on Jan 31st.
Go here to view
Movie of the Sun, Mercury and Venus setting over the Pyramids on January 31st....(874K) You can follow Mercury setting from about seconds (44) to seconds (55) directly overhead Khufu.
Sensational Image - Thanks to Diane for capturing this great image from January 30th and bringing it to our attention.
Want to Visit the Desert - This is how Siag Travel has been doing it for years.
Desert Set 1..
Desert Set 2..
Niagara Falls LIVE!- Check out the spectacular Fallsview webcam. The Fallsview webacm has had over 40 million visitors since 1996 Go..
Jan 6th Sunset - Our Jan 6th sunset has to be one of the prettiest I've ever seen. Notice the perfect star. Yesterdaywas Coptic Christmas, so it's rather appropriate. Go here
Here is the movie (playable in QuickTime) of the Jan 6th sunset. I've made it somewhat slower than usual for impact. How about someone out there setting it to music? It's quite dramatic and the blackness toward the end almost physically closes in on one. This is the first time I've seen clouds stream in directly at the camera over the Pyramids. It's about a 2 Mbyte download.
Solar Boat - Many of you have asked what is the white object to the left of Khufu in our image frame? Well, here it is. Go
More UFOs and Meteors - Diane and Joel (fearless and seemingly infatigable PyramidCam spotters) have reported more items of interest over that past few days. Go
Sunset Movie December 26th - A spectacular sunset with the 'Evening Star" setting (1.3M). Go
Movie for Christmas Sunset - This is a short (310K) movie, but contains a lot of information. There are two celestial objects setting (Can anybody identify them), lots of birds and a gorgeous sunset - all in the space of a very short time.
The Evening Star setting over the Pyramids at sunset on December 18th. There's a beautiful sunset image here as well.
This object appeared in the image of 20:06:38 during the Sound and Light last night. Go here to see the full image.
December 5th
A glorious sunset
before the rain
Sunset "Best"
November 21st 2006
Leonids Shower - It is highly likely that this redish rocket-like object captured over the Pyramids on November 18th in the evening is a meteor from the yearly Leonids Meteor Shower. See the full size image and an explanation here.. Thanks to Diane and Cindy for reporting this to us.
UFO Review Page
Click to view
Meteor over the Pyramids
On November 11th, Joanna, one of our regular viewers, alerted us to an image she saw over the Pyramids on our site at about 9pm on the 10th. We looked it up in the archives and did indeed find something that normally should not have been there. No planes are allowed in the area. Could it be a meteorite? Watch the movie
White Bouncing Blob
Movie Revisited
An oldie from April still unexplained (434K)
Moon Setting at Sound
and Light Show
The Image
The Movie (539K)
Meteors from November 22nd and 23rd
Click to view
Khufu at Night
Click to view
Feature Image
This has to be our favorite image of the Pyramids so far. The NetcanXL really shows its advanced capabilities here.
Go view our October 31st sunset - it's quite incredible and most certainly ranks in our top five or so. A Halloween surprise, I'd say.
