Mapping New Nations - South Sudan

While it happens more often than you think, new nations are not "born" every day.  South Sudan has joined the ranks of the world's newest nation, obtaining independence on 9 July 2011. Below are some images and links to the latest references and population of South Sudan.  It should come as no surprise, forming a nation is just the beginning (and no guarantee of permanence).  While I wish the South Sudanese well in their independence, here is a list of former sovereign states (Wikipedia - List of former states)...
CIA Factbook - Listing by Nation:


 
CIA Factobook by Country

Continent/Country Listing - CAI Factbook

CIA Factbook of South Sudan:


CIA Factbook page for South Sudan

South Sudan country page - CIA Factbook



Specific to population cartograms, here is a quick "cut and paste" of a interesting population analysis of the now subdivided region:



"The following gridded population cartogram shows the population distribution within and between these two nations, giving every person living in the region the same amount of space. For the much smaller population in the south it will be hard work ahead in building a new nation.... (Guardian news article - "South Sudan: a nation in the making" )

Sudan Population Cartogram  South Sudan - Views of the World

Full credits to Views of the World for brining this top my attentions. In particular special map creation credit to: The map was created by Benjamin D. Hennig and is property of the Sasi Research Group (University of Sheffield). PhD research project of Benjamin David Hennig, University of Sheffield supervised by Professor Danny Dorling, Dr Mark Ramsden, Dr Dimitris Ballas.



Mapping the night sky - a stunning time lapse series

These are some absolutely stunning night sky compilations put together by Randy Halverson at DakotaLapse.com After watching every video on his site in "near awe", I just had to post these videos and links.



Milky Way preview from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.


These really are so visually stunning, they lead me to rethink the nature of the night sky & why we should always "look up to the heavens" for a different, perhaps more humbling, point of view.


Sub Zero - winter night time-lapse from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.


From his site feed:


" ... During the month of May, I shot Milky Way time-lapse in central South Dakota when I had the time, and the weather cooperated. The biggest challenge was cloudy nights and the wind. There were very few nights, when I could shoot, that were perfectly clear, and often the wind was blowing 25mph +. That made it hard to get the shots I wanted. I kept most of the shots low to the ground, so the wind wouldn’t catch the setup and cause camera shake, or blow it over. I used a Stage Zero Dolly on the dolly shots and a “Milapse” mount on the panning ones.

This was all shot at night. If you see stars and it looks like daylight, it is actually moon light. 20+ second exposures make it look like daylight..."

More at the page link to Plains Milk Way