Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts:

Sometimes the parent fractal of an image is as interesting as the image itself.  The parent of today's image is one of these.  It vaguely resembles a Mandelbrot set, but one unlike any Mandelbrot set I have ever seen.  To begin, it is rotated 180 degrees, so that its west side faces east.  The main bay is there, as well as the surrounding buds and the large X-axis bud, but don't bother searching for a main spike or an East Valley.

The large bud has a nearly flat outer edge, with not even a hint of a spike, and instead of an East Valley we have an entirely new series of mostly chaotic bays and valleys.  Several large filament complexes extend outward from this East Valley chaos, with today's scene sitting very near the extremity of the northwestern complex.

The image itself features a spiral with a complex.  Instead of the expected relatively smooth converging arms, we have a zigzagging mass of converging filaments.  I named the image "Confused Spiral" because of these filaments, which can't quite decide which way to go.

The rating of an 8 indicates that the image is well worth the 45 seconds required to calculate it.  And even this brief calculation may be avoided by viewing the image on one of the web sites.

Summer heat returned to Fractal Central today, with hot sun and a temperature of 91F 33C.  Thankfully, the humidity was relatively low.  The fractal cats passed a good part of the day in their cat cubes, which are a big hit.  The humans simply passed the day.  The next FOTD will be posted in a moderate amount of time.  Until then, take care, and a fractal a day keeps the bill collector away.  Fractals are free!

Jim Muth
jimmuth@earthlink.net


START PARAMETER FILE=======================================

Confused_Spiral    { ; time=0:00:45.00 SF5 at 2000MHZ
  reset=2004 type=formula formulafile=basicer.frm
  formulaname=MandAutoCritInZ function=ident float=y
  center-mag=-5.00690559260935/+2.461020945129751/\
  7901621/1/8.75/0 params=1/0.75/-1/1.25/0/0/0/0
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  zBzz5zzjzzVzzFzzIzznzzlzz }

frm:MandAutoCritInZ {; Jim Muth
a=real(p1), b=imag(p1), d=real(p2), f=imag(p2),
g=1/f, h=1/d, j=1/(f-b), z=(((-a*b*g*h)^j)+(p4)),
k=real(p3)+1, l=imag(p3)+100, c=fn1(pixel):
z=k*((a*(z^b))+(d*(z^f)))+c,
|z| < l }

END PARAMETER FILE=========================================