Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts:  

Today's image is a scene deep in the north branch of the valley just beyond Scepter Valley of the Mandelbrot set.  Since the image lies at the extreme limit of the range of conventional math, it will be slightly improved if rendered with arbitrary precision math.  However, doing this will increase the calculation time to over an hour.

I named the image "The Second Scepter" because the scene lies in what I consider to be the second Scepter Valley. 

For artistic effect I set the logmap to an artificially high value, but even so, it's hard to get something new out of an overused idea.  As a result, I could rate the art value no higher than a 6.  The math value remains a miserable 3.  After all, the first thing every fractal tyro learns is the formula Z^2+C.

Be prepared to wait 2-1/4 minutes for the image to finish on a SOTA machine, and longer on an older unit.  In such situations the web sites can bring relief.

Today brought a mix of sun and clouds plus frequent flurries of snow to Fractal Central.  The temperature of 25F -4C was too chilly for the fractal cats, who spent the afternoon sleeping.  The fractal humans, who could not take time to sleep, passed the day doing other things, which to the rest of the world would be terribly uninteresting.

The next FOTD will be posted in the near future, most likely 24 hours.  Until the next time, take care, and how could an intelligent person like myself become so disillusioned with the same science that I found so fascinating in my younger years?

Jim Muth
jimmuth@earthlink.net


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