No, not what you might be thinking.
Hitting a golf ball. Or, in the lab frame, a golf ball hitting a surface. At 150 mph (about 250 kph).
Ah, those sweet curvaceous normal modes.
For me the first few frames are wonky, so for completeness here’s a gif of the same footage
Please excuse the funkiness of the first couple of seconds. I don’t know what caused that.
I don’t know what species this is, but it’s pretty much the perfect slo-mo subject: flapping furiously but the center-of-mass is not moving very much, and didn’t fly away at my approach. I missed an even better shot while I was unslinging my camera; two of these butterflies were doing some sort of aerial ballet — either a mating ritual or fighting (or maybe both), but separated just as I got set to shoot.
Taken at Conway Robinson Memorial State Forest in Virginia.
Getting punched in the face, in slow motion
Cheeky wave propagation. Wait for it …
