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Aimpoint CompM2

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The CompM2 is a battery-powered, non-magnifying red dot type of reflex sight for firearms manufactured by Aimpoint AB . It was first introduced in the U.S. Armed Forces in 2000, designated as the M68 Close Combat Optic (M68 CCO; NSN : 1240-01-411-1265). It is also known as the M68 Aimpoint and is designed to meet United States military standards . The sight is designed for use with the M16 / M4 family of rifles, but can be mounted on any weapon fitted with an upper Picatinny rail . It is also NVG -compatible—the aiming dot is still visible through night vision scopes and goggles . The Army's M68 designation was also applied to a later version of the sight, the Aimpoint CompM4 .

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89-444: The M68 is parallax -free at around 45.7 m (50 yards), meaning that the red dot will not change position based on eye position at that range. At shorter ranges the point of aim will change position based on eye position with the maximum error being equal to the radius of the sight's optical window at short range. The sight is water-tight down to 25 meters and runs on one 3- volt lithium battery type 2L76 or DL1/3N. Aiming dot brightness

178-399: A r c s e c ) . {\displaystyle d(\mathrm {pc} )=1/p(\mathrm {arcsec} ).} For example, the distance to Proxima Centauri is 1/0.7687 = 1.3009 parsecs (4.243 ly). On Earth, a coincidence rangefinder or parallax rangefinder can be used to find distance to a target. In surveying , the problem of resection explores angular measurements from

267-440: A graticule , not in actual contact with the display on an oscilloscope , etc. When viewed through a stereo viewer, aerial picture pair offers a pronounced stereo effect of landscape and buildings. High buildings appear to "keel over" in the direction away from the center of the photograph. Measurements of this parallax are used to deduce the height of the buildings, provided that flying height and baseline distances are known. This

356-442: A boy". In a philosophic/geometric sense: an apparent change in the direction of an object, caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of sight. The apparent displacement, or difference of position, of an object, as seen from two different stations, or points of view. In contemporary writing, parallax can also be the same story, or a similar story from approximately the same timeline, from one book, told from

445-675: A different perspective in another book. The word and concept feature prominently in James Joyce 's 1922 novel, Ulysses . Orson Scott Card also used the term when referring to Ender's Shadow as compared to Ender's Game . The metaphor is invoked by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek in his 2006 book The Parallax View , borrowing the concept of "parallax view" from the Japanese philosopher and literary critic Kojin Karatani . Žižek notes The philosophical twist to be added (to parallax), of course,

534-467: A dove ( Matthew ), and subsequently the " peace dove " became a common Christian symbol of the Holy Spirit. In Islam , doves and the pigeon family in general are respected and favoured because they are believed to have assisted the final prophet of Islam, Muhammad , in distracting his enemies outside the cave of Thaw'r, in the great Hijra . A pair of pigeons had built a nest and laid eggs at once, and

623-419: A fine point, abruptly. In general, the aftershaft is absent; however, small ones on some tail and wing feathers may be present. Body feathers have very dense, fluffy bases, are attached loosely into the skin, and drop out easily. Possibly serving as a predator avoidance mechanism, large numbers of feathers fall out in the attacker's mouth if the bird is snatched, facilitating the bird's escape. The plumage of

712-503: A greater stellar distance, useful distances can be measured only for stars which are near enough to have a parallax larger than a few times the precision of the measurement. In the 1990s, for example, the Hipparcos mission obtained parallaxes for over a hundred thousand stars with a precision of about a milliarcsecond , providing useful distances for stars out to a few hundred parsecs. The Hubble Space Telescope 's Wide Field Camera 3 has

801-522: A known baseline for determining an unknown point's coordinates. The most important fundamental distance measurements in astronomy come from trigonometric parallax, as applied in the stellar parallax method . As the Earth orbits the Sun, the position of nearby stars will appear to shift slightly against the more distant background. These shifts are angles in an isosceles triangle , with 2 AU (the distance between

890-825: A leg and being shot in the chest, he managed to travel around 25 miles to deliver the message that saved 194 men of the Lost Battalion of the 77th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Argonne , in October 1918. When Cher Ami died, he was mounted and is part of the permanent exhibit at the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution . A grand ceremony was held in Buckingham Palace to commemorate

979-466: A painted fresco from Mari , Syria , shows a giant dove emerging from a palm tree in the temple of Ishtar, indicating that the goddess herself was sometimes believed to take the form of a dove. In the Epic of Gilgamesh , Utnapishtim releases a dove and a raven to find land; the dove merely circles and returns. Only then does Utnapishtim send forth the raven, which does not return, and Utnapishtim concludes

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1068-713: A platoon of pigeons that braved the battlefields of Normandy to deliver vital plans to Allied forces on the fringes of Germany. Three of the actual birds that received the medals are on show in the London Military Museum so that well-wishers can pay their respects. In Brussels , there is a monument commemorating pigeons that served in World War I, the Monument au Pigeon-Soldat  [ fr ] . The rock dove has been domesticated for hundreds of years. It has been bred into several varieties kept by hobbyists, of which

1157-408: A ruler marked on its top surface, the thickness of the ruler will separate its markings from the ticks. If viewed from a position not exactly perpendicular to the ruler, the apparent position will shift and the reading will be less accurate than the ruler is capable of. A similar error occurs when reading the position of a pointer against a scale in an instrument such as an analog multimeter . To help

1246-470: A similar magnitude range, a mean parallax can be derived from statistical analysis of the proper motions relative to their radial velocities. This statistical parallax method is useful for measuring the distances of bright stars beyond 50 parsecs and giant variable stars , including Cepheids and the RR Lyrae variables . The motion of the Sun through space provides a longer baseline that will increase

1335-559: A spider had woven cobwebs, which in the darkness of the night made the fugitives believe that Muhammad could not be in that cave. Several species of pigeons and doves are used as food; however, all types are edible. Domesticated or hunted pigeons have been used as a source of food since the times of the Ancient Middle East, Ancient Rome , and Medieval Europe . It is a familiar meat in Jewish , Arab , and French cuisines . According to

1424-507: A velocity relative to the Sun that causes proper motion (transverse across the sky) and radial velocity (motion toward or away from the Sun). The former is determined by plotting the changing position of the stars over many years, while the latter comes from measuring the Doppler shift of the star's spectrum caused by motion along the line of sight. For a group of stars with the same spectral class and

1513-399: Is a key component of the process of photogrammetry . Parallax error can be seen when taking photos with many types of cameras, such as twin-lens reflex cameras and those including viewfinders (such as rangefinder cameras ). In such cameras, the eye sees the subject through different optics (the viewfinder, or a second lens) than the one through which the photo is taken. As the viewfinder

1602-467: Is a special case of the principle of triangulation , which states that one can solve for all the sides and angles in a network of triangles if, in addition to all the angles in the network, the length of at least one side has been measured. Thus, the careful measurement of the length of one baseline can fix the scale of an entire triangulation network. In parallax, the triangle is extremely long and narrow, and by measuring both its shortest side (the motion of

1691-569: Is adjustable for better visibility or increased battery life. The CompM2 is used across branches of the U.S. Armed Forces , Sweden , and various NATO countries, among them Norway . A variant known as the ECOS-N (NSN: 1240-01-495-1385) is also issued as part of the U.S. SOPMOD kit. The sight is also available on the civilian market and is employed by various law enforcement organizations (especially for SWAT type situations that involve close quarters work) and by recreational shooters. By August 2011,

1780-465: Is also an issue in image stitching , such as for panoramas. Parallax affects sighting devices of ranged weapons in many ways. On sights fitted on small arms and bows , etc., the perpendicular distance between the sight and the weapon's launch axis (e.g. the bore axis of a gun)—generally referred to as " sight height "—can induce significant aiming errors when shooting at close range, particularly when shooting at small targets. This parallax error

1869-449: Is always already inscribed into the perceived object itself, in the guise of its "blind spot," that which is "in the object more than the object itself," the point from which the object itself returns the gaze. "Sure the picture is in my eye, but I am also in the picture"... Pigeon See text Columbidae ( / k ə ˈ l ʌ m b ɪ d iː / kə- LUM -bih-dee ) is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons . It

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1958-624: Is called a "dule", taken from the French word deuil ( ' mourning ' ). Columbiformes is one of the most diverse non- passerine clades of neoavians , and its origins are in the Cretaceous and the result of a rapid diversification at the end of the K-Pg boundary . Whole genome analyses have found the columbiformes form a sister clade of a group conformed by the sandgrouses ( Pterocliformes ) and mesites ( Mesitornithiformes ). The name 'Columbidae' for

2047-615: Is compensated for (when needed) via calculations that also take in other variables such as bullet drop , windage , and the distance at which the target is expected to be. Sight height can be used to advantage when "sighting in" rifles for field use. A typical hunting rifle (.222 with telescopic sights) sighted in at 75m will still be useful from 50 to 200 m (55 to 219 yd) without needing further adjustment. In some reticled optical instruments such as telescopes , microscopes or in telescopic sights ("scopes") used on small arms and theodolites , parallax can create problems when

2136-449: Is exploited also in wiggle stereoscopy , computer graphics that provide depth cues through viewpoint-shifting animation rather than through binocular vision. Parallax arises due to a change in viewpoint occurring due to the motion of the observer, of the observed, or both. What is essential is relative motion. By observing parallax, measuring angles , and using geometry , one can determine distance . Distance measurement by parallax

2225-405: Is known as stereopsis . In computer vision the effect is used for computer stereo vision , and there is a device called a parallax rangefinder that uses it to find the range, and in some variations also altitude to a target. A simple everyday example of parallax can be seen in the dashboards of motor vehicles that use a needle-style mechanical speedometer . When viewed from directly in front,

2314-578: Is nowadays tentatively separated in Arenicolumba , but its distinction from Columbina /Scardafella and related genera needs to be more firmly established (e.g. by cladistic analysis). Apart from that, all other fossils belong to extant genera. Fossil species of uncertain placement: Pigeons and doves exhibit considerable variation in size, ranging in length from 15 to 75 centimetres (5.9 to 29.5 in), and in weight from 30 g (0.066 lb) to above 2,000 g (4.4 lb). The largest species

2403-408: Is often found above the lens of the camera, photos with parallax error are often slightly lower than intended, the classic example being the image of a person with their head cropped off. This problem is addressed in single-lens reflex cameras , in which the viewfinder sees through the same lens through which the photo is taken (with the aid of a movable mirror), thus avoiding parallax error. Parallax

2492-478: Is that the observed distance is not simply "subjective", since the same object that exists "out there" is seen from two different stances or points of view. It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and object are inherently "mediated" so that an " epistemological " shift in the subject's point of view always reflects an " ontological " shift in the object itself. Or—to put it in Lacanese —the subject's gaze

2581-474: Is the crowned pigeon of New Guinea , which is nearly turkey -sized, at a weight of 2–4 kg (4.4–8.8 lb). The smallest is the common ground dove ( Columbina passerina ) of the genus Columbina , which is the same size as a house sparrow , weighing as little as 22 g (0.049 lb). The dwarf fruit dove , which may measure as little as 13 cm (5.1 in), has a marginally smaller total length than any other species from this family. One of

2670-424: Is the only family in the order Columbiformes . These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres . They primarily feed on plants, and can be taxonomically divided amongst granivores , that feed mostly on the ground on seeds, and frugivores , that feed mostly on fruits, from branches. The family occurs worldwide, often in close proximity with humans, but

2759-736: The Caroline Islands , and the Grenada dove , which is only found on the island of Grenada in the Caribbean . Some continental species also have tiny distributions, such as the black-banded fruit dove , which is restricted to a small area of the Arnhem Land of Australia, the Somali pigeon , found only in a tiny area of northern Somalia, and Moreno's ground dove , endemic to the area around Salta and Tucuman in northern Argentina. Seeds and fruit form

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2848-555: The Polynesian ground dove is classified as critically endangered , as whether it survives or not on remote islands in the far west of the Pacific Ocean is unknown. Various conservation techniques are employed to prevent these extinctions, including laws and regulations to control hunting pressure, the establishment of protected areas to prevent further habitat loss, the establishment of captive populations for reintroduction back into

2937-622: The family was introduced by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in a guide to the contents of the British Museum published in 1819. Columbidae is the only living family in the order Columbiformes . The sandgrouse (Pteroclidae) were formerly placed here, but were moved to a separate order, Pterocliformes , based on anatomical differences (such as the inability to drink by "sucking" or "pumping"). The Columbidae are usually divided into five subfamilies, probably inaccurately. For example,

3026-587: The fossil record , with no truly primitive forms having been found to date. The genus Gerandia has been described from Early Miocene deposits in France, but while it was long believed to be a pigeon, it is now considered a sandgrouse . Fragmentary remains of a probably " ptilinopine " Early Miocene pigeon were found in the Bannockburn Formation of New Zealand and described as Rupephaps ; "Columbina" prattae from roughly contemporary deposits of Florida

3115-502: The four humours explained the allegedly sweet disposition of doves. In fact, however, they do have bile (as Aristotle had earlier realized), which is secreted directly into the gut . The wings are large, and have eleven primary feathers ; pigeons have strong wing muscles (wing muscles comprise 31–44% of their body weight ) and are among the strongest fliers of all birds. In a series of experiments in 1975 by Dr.   Mark B. Friedman, using doves, their characteristic head bobbing

3204-425: The zurito , bred for its speed, may be used in live pigeon shooting . In ancient Mesopotamia , doves were prominent animal symbols of Inanna-Ishtar , the goddess of love, sexuality, and war. Doves are shown on cultic objects associated with Inanna as early as the beginning of the third millennium BC. Lead dove figurines were discovered in the temple of Ishtar at Aššur, dating to the thirteenth century BC, and

3293-562: The 32 pigeons who were awarded the Dickin Medal for "brave service" to their country, in World War II. Pigeon is a French word that derives from the Latin pīpiō , for a ' peeping ' chick, while dove is an ultimately Germanic word, possibly referring to the bird's diving flight. The English dialectal word culver appears to derive from Latin columba . A group of doves

3382-502: The American ground and quail doves ( Geotrygon ), which are usually placed in the Columbinae , seem to be two distinct subfamilies. The order presented here follows Baptista et   al. (1997), with some updates. The arrangement of genera and naming of subfamilies is in some cases provisional because analyses of different DNA sequences yield results that differ, often radically, in

3471-668: The Army purchased 565,783 Aimpoint CompM4 sights (a later version of the CompM2), as part of the M68 CCO program. Parallax Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and is measured by the angle or half-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to foreshortening , nearby objects show a larger parallax than farther objects, so parallax can be used to determine distances. To measure large distances, such as

3560-605: The East Coast of the U.S. includes two pigeon genetic megacities, in New York and Boston, and observes that the birds do not mix together. Other species of Columbidae have tiny, restricted distributions, usually seen on small islands, such as the whistling dove , which is endemic to the tiny Kadavu Island in Fiji, the Caroline ground dove , restricted to two islands, Truk and Pohnpei in

3649-520: The Middle East. The largest range of any species is that of the rock dove , also known as the common pigeon. This species had a large natural distribution from Britain and Ireland to northern Africa, across Europe, Arabia , Central Asia , India, the Himalayas and up into China and Mongolia. The range of the species increased dramatically upon domestication, as the species went feral in cities around

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3738-543: The Roman goddesses Venus and Fortuna , causing them to become associated with doves as well. In the Hebrew Bible , doves or young pigeons are acceptable burnt offerings for those who cannot afford a more expensive animal. In Genesis, Noah sends a dove out of the ark, but it came back to him because the floodwaters had not receded. Seven days later, he sent it again and it came back with an olive branch in her mouth, indicating

3827-472: The U.S. Army had bought 1,000,000 M68 Close Combat Optics. Some 85 percent of Army M4s are issued with the CCO, though optics can vary depending on unit. The sight allows soldiers to engage targets out to 300 meters while keeping both eyes open for situational awareness. Post combat surveys show an 85 percent acceptance rate of the CCO as an effective optic and for its value for close quarters fighting. In July 2009,

3916-519: The accuracy of parallax measurements, known as secular parallax . For stars in the Milky Way disk, this corresponds to a mean baseline of 4 AU per year, while for halo stars the baseline is 40 AU per year. After several decades, the baseline can be orders of magnitude greater than the Earth–Sun baseline used for traditional parallax. However, secular parallax introduces a higher level of uncertainty because

4005-474: The barren sands and gravels of atolls . Some species have large natural ranges. The eared dove ranges across the entirety of South America from Colombia to Tierra del Fuego , the Eurasian collared dove has a massive (if discontinuous) distribution from Britain across Europe, the Middle East, India, Pakistan and China, and the laughing dove across most of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as India, Pakistan, and

4094-624: The best known is the homing pigeon or racing homer . Other popular breeds are tumbling pigeons such as the Birmingham roller , and fancy varieties that are bred for certain physical characteristics such as large feathers on the feet or fan-shaped tails. Domesticated rock pigeons are also bred as carrier pigeons , used for thousands of years to carry brief written messages, and release doves used in ceremonies. White doves are also used for entertainment and amusement, as they are capable of solving puzzles and performing intricate tricks. A variant called

4183-462: The deviation of the object from sphericity. Binary stars which are both visual and spectroscopic binaries also can have their distance estimated by similar means, and do not suffer from the above geometric uncertainty. The common characteristic to these methods is that a measurement of angular motion is combined with a measurement of the absolute velocity (usually obtained via the Doppler effect ). The distance estimate comes from computing how far

4272-496: The distance obtained for the Hyades has historically been an important step in the distance ladder. Other individual objects can have fundamental distance estimates made for them under special circumstances. If the expansion of a gas cloud, like a supernova remnant or planetary nebula , can be observed over time, then an expansion parallax distance to that cloud can be estimated. Those measurements however suffer from uncertainties in

4361-414: The distance of a planet or a star from Earth , astronomers use the principle of parallax. Here, the term parallax is the semi-angle of inclination between two sight-lines to the star, as observed when Earth is on opposite sides of the Sun in its orbit. These distances form the lowest rung of what is called "the cosmic distance ladder ", the first in a succession of methods by which astronomers determine

4450-456: The distances to celestial objects, serving as a basis for other distance measurements in astronomy forming the higher rungs of the ladder. Parallax also affects optical instruments such as rifle scopes, binoculars , microscopes , and twin-lens reflex cameras that view objects from slightly different angles. Many animals, along with humans, have two eyes with overlapping visual fields that use parallax to gain depth perception ; this process

4539-460: The distinction is not consistent, and there is no scientific separation between them. Historically, the common names for these birds involve a great deal of variation. The bird most commonly referred to as "pigeon" is the domestic pigeon , or rock dove , which is common in many cities as the feral pigeon . Doves and pigeons build relatively flimsy nests, often using sticks and other debris, which may be placed on branches of trees, on ledges, or on

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4628-571: The extinct Rodrigues solitaire and the dodo . These species are in all likelihood part of the Indo-Australian radiation that produced the three small subfamilies mentioned above, with the fruit doves and pigeons (including the Nicobar pigeon ). Therefore, they are here included as a subfamily Raphinae , pending better material evidence of their exact relationships. These taxonomic issues are exacerbated by columbids not being well represented in

4717-539: The extreme positions of Earth's orbit around the Sun) making the base leg of the triangle and the distance to the star being the long equal-length legs. The amount of shift is quite small, even for the nearest stars, measuring 1 arcsecond for an object at 1 parsec's distance (3.26 light-years ), and thereafter decreasing in angular amount as the distance increases. Astronomers usually express distances in units of parsecs (parallax arcseconds); light-years are used in popular media. Because parallax becomes smaller for

4806-594: The family is variable. Granivorous species tend to have dull plumage, with a few exceptions, whereas the frugivorous species have brightly coloured plumage. The Ptilinopus (fruit doves) are some of the brightest coloured pigeons, with the three endemic species of Fiji and the Indian Ocean Alectroenas being the brightest. Pigeons and doves may be sexually monochromatic or dichromatic . In addition to bright colours, pigeons may sport crests or other ornamentation. Columbidae are excellent fliers due to

4895-621: The first Dickin medal for rescuing an air force crew during World War   II. Thirty-two pigeons have been decorated with the Dickin Medal, citing their "brave service" in war contributions, including Commando , G.I. Joe , Paddy , Royal Blue , and William of Orange . Cher Ami , a homing pigeon in World War I, was awarded the Croix de Guerre Medal, by France, with a palm Oak Leaf Cluster for his service in Verdun . Despite having almost lost

4984-1116: The focus of the target image at varying distances into the same optical plane of the reticle (or vice versa). Many low-tier telescopic sights may have no parallax compensation because in practice they can still perform very acceptably without eliminating parallax shift. In this case, the scope is often set fixed at a designated parallax-free distance that best suits their intended usage. Typical standard factory parallax-free distances for hunting scopes are 100  yd (or 90 m) to make them suited for hunting shots that rarely exceed 300  yd/m. Some competition and military-style scopes without parallax compensation may be adjusted to be parallax free at ranges up to 300  yd/m to make them better suited for aiming at longer ranges. Scopes for guns with shorter practical ranges, such as airguns , rimfire rifles , shotguns , and muzzleloaders , will have parallax settings for shorter distances, commonly 50 m (55 yd) for rimfire scopes and 100 m (110 yd) for shotguns and muzzleloaders. Airgun scopes are very often found with adjustable parallax, usually in

5073-407: The form of an adjustable objective (or "AO" for short) design, and may adjust down to as near as 3 metres (3.3 yd). Non-magnifying reflector or "reflex" sights can be theoretically "parallax free". But since these sights use parallel collimated light this is only true when the target is at infinity. At finite distances, eye movement perpendicular to the device will cause parallax movement in

5162-487: The greatest variety is in the Indomalayan and Australasian realms . Columbidae contains 344 species divided into 50 genera . Fifty-nine species are listed as threatened, and thirteen are extinct , including the dodo , an island bird, and the passenger pigeon , whose flocks were once counted in the billions. In colloquial English, the smaller species tend to be called "doves", and the larger ones "pigeons", although

5251-817: The ground doves and quail-doves, eat a large number of prey items such as insects and worms. One species, the atoll fruit dove , is specialised in taking insect and reptile prey. Snails, moths, and other insects are taken by white-crowned pigeons , orange fruit doves , and ruddy ground doves . Urban feral pigeons, descendants of domestic rock doves ( Columbia Livia ), reside in urban environments, disturbing their natural feeding habits. They depend on human activities and interactions to obtain food, causing them to forage for spilled food or food provided by humans. While many species of pigeons and doves have benefited from human activities and have increased their ranges, many other species have declined in numbers and some have become threatened or even succumbed to extinction. Among

5340-512: The ground, depending on species. They lay one or (usually) two white eggs at a time, and both parents care for the young. Unlike most birds, both sexes of doves and pigeons produce " crop milk " to feed to their young, secreted by a sloughing of fluid-filled cells from the lining of the crop . Unfledged baby doves and pigeons are called squabs and are generally able to fly by 5 weeks of age. These fledglings , with their immature squeaking voices, are called squeakers once they are weaned , and leave

5429-834: The high Arctic . They have colonized most of the world's oceanic islands, reaching eastern Polynesia and the Chatham Islands in the Pacific , Mauritius, the Seychelles and Réunion in the Indian Ocean, and the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean. The family has adapted to most of the habitats available on the planet. These species may be arboreal, terrestrial , or semi-terrestrial. Various species also inhabit savanna , grassland , desert , temperate woodland and forest, mangrove forest , and even

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5518-507: The largest arboreal species, the Marquesan imperial pigeon , currently battles extinction. Overall, the anatomy of Columbidae is characterized by short legs, short bills with a fleshy cere , and small heads on large, compact bodies. Like some other birds, the Columbidae have no gall bladders . Some medieval naturalists concluded they have no bile (gall), which in the medieval theory of

5607-491: The lift provided by their large wings, which results in low wing loading ; They are highly maneuverable in flight and have a low aspect ratio due to the width of their wings, allowing for quick flight launches and ability to escape from predators, but at a high energy cost. Pigeons and doves are distributed everywhere on Earth, except for the driest areas of the Sahara Desert , Antarctica and its surrounding islands, and

5696-446: The major component of the diets of pigeons and doves, and the family can be divided between the seed-eating, or granivorous , species (subfamily Columbinae) and the fruit-and-mast-eating, or frugivorous , species, which make up the other four subfamilies. The granivorous species typically feed on seed found on the ground, whereas the frugivorous species tend to feed in trees. The morphological adaptations used to distinguish between

5785-422: The nest after 25–32 days. Since ancient times, many Columbidae species have developed intricate cultural and practical relations with humans. Doves were important symbols of the goddesses Innana , Asherah , and Aphrodite , and revered by the early Christian , Islamic and Jewish religions. Domestication of pigeons led to significant use of homing pigeons for communication, including war pigeons , such as

5874-408: The object must be to make its observed absolute velocity appear with the observed angular motion. Measurements made by viewing the position of some marker relative to something to be measured are subject to parallax error if the marker is some distance away from the object of measurement and not viewed from the correct position. For example, if measuring the distance between two ticks on a line with

5963-433: The observer) and the small top angle (always less than 1  arcsecond , leaving the other two close to 90  degrees), the length of the long sides (in practice considered to be equal) can be determined. In astronomy, assuming the angle is small, the distance to a star (measured in parsecs ) is the reciprocal of the parallax (measured in arcseconds ): d ( p c ) = 1 / p (

6052-474: The placement of certain (mainly Indo-Australian) genera. This ambiguity, probably caused by long branch attraction , seems to confirm the first pigeons evolved in the Australasian region , and that the " Treronidae " and allied forms (crowned and pheasant pigeons , for example) represent the earliest radiation of the group. The family Columbidae previously also contained the family Raphidae , consisting of

6141-456: The potential to provide a precision of 20 to 40 micro arcseconds, enabling reliable distance measurements up to 5,000 parsecs (16,000 ly) for small numbers of stars. The Gaia space mission provided similarly accurate distances to most stars brighter than 15th magnitude. Distances can be measured within 10% as far as the Galactic Center , about 30,000 light years away. Stars have

6230-435: The process by which the brain exploits the parallax due to the different views from the eye to gain depth perception and estimate distances to objects. Animals also use motion parallax , in which the animals (or just the head) move to gain different viewpoints. For example, pigeons (whose eyes do not have overlapping fields of view and thus cannot use stereopsis) bob their heads up and down to see depth. The motion parallax

6319-669: The raven has found land. In the ancient Levant , doves were used as symbols for the Canaanite mother goddess Asherah . The ancient Greek word for "dove" was peristerá , which may be derived from the Semitic phrase peraḥ Ištar , meaning "bird of Ishtar". In classical antiquity, doves were sacred to the Greek goddess Aphrodite , who absorbed this association with doves from Inanna-Ishtar. Aphrodite frequently appears with doves in ancient Greek pottery . The temple of Aphrodite Pandemos on

6408-463: The relative velocity of observed stars is an additional unknown. When applied to samples of multiple stars, the uncertainty can be reduced; the uncertainty is inversely proportional to the square root of the sample size. Moving cluster parallax is a technique where the motions of individual stars in a nearby star cluster can be used to find the distance to the cluster. Only open clusters are near enough for this technique to be useful. In particular

6497-416: The resultant apparent "floating" movements of the reticle over the target image when the user moves his/her head/eye laterally (up/down or left/right) behind the sight, i.e. an error where the reticle does not stay aligned with the user's optical axis . Some firearm scopes are equipped with a parallax compensation mechanism, which consists of a movable optical element that enables the optical system to shift

6586-568: The reticle image in exact relationship to the eye position in the cylindrical column of light created by the collimating optics. Firearm sights, such as some red dot sights , try to correct for this via not focusing the reticle at infinity, but instead at some finite distance, a designed target range where the reticle will show very little movement due to parallax. Some manufacturers market reflector sight models they call "parallax free", but this refers to an optical system that compensates for off axis spherical aberration , an optical error induced by

6675-460: The reticle is not coincident with the focal plane of the target image. This is because when the reticle and the target are not at the same focus, the optically corresponded distances being projected through the eyepiece are also different, and the user's eye will register the difference in parallaxes between the reticle and the target (whenever eye position changes) as a relative displacement on top of each other. The term parallax shift refers to

6764-520: The southwest slope of the Athenian Acropolis was decorated with relief sculptures of doves with knotted fillets in their beaks and votive offerings of small, white, marble doves were discovered in the temple of Aphrodite at Daphni . During Aphrodite's main festival, the Aphrodisia , her altars would be purified with the blood of a sacrificed dove . Aphrodite's associations with doves influenced

6853-581: The species are threatened by introduced predators, habitat loss, hunting, or a combination of these factors. In some cases, they may be extinct in the wild , as is the Socorro dove of Socorro Island , Mexico, last seen in the wild in 1972, driven to extinction by habitat loss and introduced feral cats . In some areas, a lack of knowledge means the true status of a species is unknown; the Negros fruit dove has not been seen since 1953, and may or may not be extinct, and

6942-469: The species was abrupt; in 1871, a breeding colony was estimated to contain over a hundred million birds, yet the last individual in the species was dead by 1914. Although habitat loss was a contributing factor, the species is thought to have been massively over-hunted, being used as food for slaves and, later, the poor, in the United States throughout the 19th   century. The dodo, and its extinction,

7031-406: The speed may show exactly 60, but when viewed from the passenger seat, the needle may appear to show a slightly different speed due to the angle of viewing combined with the displacement of the needle from the plane of the numerical dial. Because the eyes of humans and other animals are in different positions on the head, they present different views simultaneously. This is the basis of stereopsis ,

7120-458: The spherical mirror used in the sight that can cause the reticle position to diverge off the sight's optical axis with change in eye position. Because of the positioning of field or naval artillery , each gun has a slightly different perspective of the target relative to the location of the fire-control system . When aiming guns at the target, the fire control system must compensate for parallax to assure that fire from each gun converges on

7209-526: The target. Several of Mark Renn 's sculptural works play with parallax, appearing abstract until viewed from a specific angle. One such sculpture is The Darwin Gate (pictured) in Shrewsbury , England, which from a certain angle appears to form a dome, according to Historic England , in "the form of a Saxon helmet with a Norman window... inspired by features of St Mary's Church which was attended by Charles Darwin as

7298-597: The ten species to have become extinct since 1600 (the conventional date for estimating modern extinctions) are two of the most famous extinct species, the dodo and the passenger pigeon. The passenger pigeon was exceptional for a number of reasons. In modern times, it is the only pigeon species that was not an island species to have become extinct even though it was once the most numerous species of bird on Earth. Its former numbers are difficult to estimate, but one ornithologist , Alexander Wilson , estimated one flock he observed contained over two billion birds. The decline of

7387-467: The two groups include granivores tending to having thick walls in their gizzards, intestines , and esophagi , with the frugivores evolved with thin walls, and the fruit-eating species have short intestines, as opposed to the seed eaters having longer intestines. Frugivores are capable of clinging to branches and even hang upside down to reach fruit. In addition to fruit and seeds, a number of other food items are taken by many species. Some, particularly

7476-411: The user avoid this problem, the scale is sometimes printed above a narrow strip of mirror , and the user's eye is positioned so that the pointer obscures its reflection, guaranteeing that the user's line of sight is perpendicular to the mirror and therefore to the scale. The same effect alters the speed read on a car's speedometer by a driver in front of it and a passenger off to the side, values read from

7565-555: The waters had receded enough for an olive tree to grow. "Dove" is also a term of endearment in the Song of Songs and elsewhere. In Hebrew, Jonah (יוֹנָה) means dove. The "sign of Jonas" in Matthew 16 is related to the "sign of the dove". Jesus 's parents sacrificed doves on his behalf after his circumcision ( Luke 2 :24). Later, the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism like

7654-551: The wild ( ex situ conservation), and the translocation of individuals to suitable habitats to create additional populations. The pigeon was used in both World War I and World War II , notably by the Australian, French, German, American , and UK forces. They were also awarded for their service with various laurels throughout. On 2 December 1943, three pigeons – Winkie , Tyke , and White Vision, – serving with Britain's Royal Air Force , were awarded

7743-551: The world. The common pigeon is currently resident across most of North America, and has established itself in cities and urban areas in South America, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia , Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. As well as the rock dove, several other species of pigeon have become established outside of their natural range after escaping captivity, and other species have increased their natural ranges due to habitat changes caused by human activity. A 2020 study found that

7832-570: Was more typical of the extinctions of pigeons in the past. Like many species that colonise remote islands with few predators, it lost much of its predator avoidance behaviour , along with its ability to fly. The arrival of people, along with a suite of other introduced species such as rats, pigs, and cats, quickly spelled the end for this species and all the other island forms that have become extinct. Around 59 species of pigeons and doves are threatened with extinction today, about 19% of all species. Most of these are tropical and live on islands. All of

7921-400: Was shown to be due to their natural desire to keep their vision constant. It was shown yet again in a 1978 experiment by Dr.   Barrie J. Frost, in which pigeons were placed on treadmills ; it was observed that they did not bob their heads, as their surroundings were constant. Columbidae have unique body feathers , with the shaft being generally broad, strong, and flattened, tapering to

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