The main body of the Mandelbrot set consists of a large cardioid
(heart-shaped) piece and a somewhat smaller more-or-less circular piece to
its left. Where these touch (and they do touch, as the M-set is
connected - see my
topology
page for more on this), there are two clefts - one "northern" and the other
"southern".
The northern cleft is extremely well documented. One of its most striking
features is the presence of zillions of "seahorses" which can be found along
the right-hand ("eastern") wall of the cleft. The graphic above is of one of
these. (I don't have the precise details to hand of which one, so I
can't give you the coordinates. If I ever get around to digging out the
details, I'll post them here.)
A bit of imagination is required. From what I've read, I gather that the
thin curly bit is the seahorse's tail, while the large end represents the
head, with a big eye at the centre. So the seahorse is actually upside-down,
and facing toward the wall.
When I was producing the images which eventually found their way into my
Fractals #1...
page, featuring M-set graphics generated on my PC, just to be different I
concentrated on the great southern cleft which contains a
mirror-image collection of seahorses along its eastern wall - so that
these are the right way up! To see a picture of part of this region, click
here.
My home page
Preliminaries (Copyright, Safety)
Humpty Dumpty Book: M-set Picture #9
A "seahorse" from the great northern cleft
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