Buckley Air Force Base is home to the 460th Space Wing Staff and features loads of these giant radar golf balls, which I guess are used for communicating with their “Defense Support Program” satellites.

The base also hosts the Colorado Air National Guard, who we can see here performing a rescue training exercise. It would appear that a rescueman is being lowered from a Blackhawk helicopter to the lake below, where the helicopter’s downwinds are creating circular waves.

Thanks: Mark Eaker

Milan’s Central Station is covered with giant steel canopies, 341 metres long and covering an area of 66,500 square metres, which look amazing from above.

Milan’s tallest building, the shiny Pirelli Tower is just in front of the station. In 2002, a light aircraft crashed into the tower but it has since been restored and apparently looks better than new.

Thanks: Jonathan Rawle

Now this is truly “Large Type” – Perscombinatie printing works in Amsterdam print a lot of newspapers, so when they were decorating the car park they opted for a neat newspaper-like 6 column layout. Brilliant! Submitter “Koos van den Hout” helpfully provided us with a translation for the headlines:

• “Entree” = “Entrance”
• “Afhalen kranten” = “Pick-up newspapers”
• “Parkeren vrachtwagens tot 5m” = “Parking trucks up to 5 metres”
• “Papier” = “Paper”
• “Aanvoer goederen” = “Supply Goods”
• “Uitgang” = “Exit”

Thanks: Koos van den Hout

A year ago today we posted about a Giant Alien Dolphin in the Pacific Ocean. It turned out that this was actually a group of islands known as French Frigate Shoals, which has since received a small image update on Google Maps. Although there’s still not very high-res imagery, you can now more clearly see the islands, and they no longer look like a giant alien dolphin.

Now they look like an embryonic earth-dwelling dolphin

The islands consist of a 20-mile long crescent-shaped reef with twelve sandbars, and other than the numerous plant, bird and marine life, they’re currently inhabited by a total of 2 biologists.

More on French Frigate Shoals at Wikipedia.

P.S. You can always see what we posted a year ago by using the “one year ago today…” feature in the sidebar.

Floating above the Parc André-Citroën in Paris, France, we find a gigantic tethered hot-air-balloon. If you look closely at the shadow you can see that the “basket” has no bottom! Have the occupants plummeted to their untimely deaths?

No, rather un-dramatically this balloon’s gondola has been designed as a circular platform with a huge hole in the middle. Here’s a good gallery with some on board shots (from which I also realised that all the little rectangles of white in the park are actually people’s picnic rugs).

Thanks to Craig Simpson.