The Supercars Championship is a touring car racing category in Australia and run as an International Series under Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile regulations. All Supercars events take place in all Australian states and the Northern Territory, with the Australian Capital Territory holding the Canberra 400. An international round is held in New Zealand, while events have been held in China, the United Arab Emirates, the United States. A Melbourne 400 championship event is held in support of the Australian Grand Prix. Race formats vary between each event, with sprint races between 100 and 200 km in length, street races between 125 and 250 km in length, two-driver endurance races held at Sandown and the Gold Coast; the series is broadcast in 137 countries and has an average event attendance of over 100,000, with over 250,000 people attending major events such as the Adelaide 500. The vehicles used in the series are loosely based on road-going cars. Cars are custom made using a control chassis, with only certain body panels being common between the road cars and race cars.

To ensure parity between each make of car, many control components are used. All cars use a 5.0-litre aspirated V8 engine, but since 2017 have had the option of using 4 and 6 cylinder engines, as well as turbochargers. Only for Ford Falcons and Holden Commodores, the New Generation V8 Supercar regulations, introduced in 2013, opened up the series to more manufacturers. Nissan were the first new manufacturer to commit to the series with four Nissan Altima L33s followed by Erebus Motorsport with Mercedes-Benz E63 AMGs and Garry Rogers Motorsport with Volvo S60s; the concept of a formula centred around V8-engined Fords and Holdens for the Australian Touring Car Championship had been established as early as mid-1991. With the new regulations set to come into effect in 1993, Ford and Holden were both keen to know the details of the new formula by the end of 1991, putting pressure on the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport to provide clarity on the matter. However, CAMS was waiting to see what the FIA did with its proposed international formula for 2.5- and 2.0-litre touring cars.

The new rules for the ATCC were announced in November 1991 and indicated that the V8 cars would be faster than the smaller engined cars. During 1992, CAMS looked at closing the performance gap between the classes, only to have protests from Ford and Holden, which did not want to see their cars beaten by the smaller cars. In June 1992, the class structure was confirmed: Class A: Australian-produced 5.0-litre V8-engined Fords and Holdens Class B: 2.0-litre cars complying with FIA Class II Touring Car regulations Class C: aspirated two-wheel drive cars complying with 1992 CAMS Group 3A Touring Car regulations: This class would only be eligible in 1993. Both the Ford EB Falcon and Holden VP Commodore ran American-based engines, which were restricted to 7,500 rpm and a compression ratio of 10:1; the Holden teams had the option of using the Group A-developed 5.0-litre Holden V8 engine, although this was restricted to the second-tier privateer teams from 1994 onwards, forcing the major Holden runners to use the more expensive Chevrolet engine.

The V8s were first eligible to compete in the endurance races of 1992. The distinctive aerodynamics package, consisting of large front and rear spoilers, was designed with this in mind, to give the new cars a better chance of beating the Nissan Skyline GT-Rs in those races; the new rules meant that cars such as the turbocharged Nissan Skyline GT-R and Ford Sierra RS500 Cosworth were not eligible to compete in 1993, while cars such as the BMW M3 were. However, the M3 received few of the liberal concessions given to the new V8s and had an extra 100 kilograms added to its minimum weight, so with the Class C cars eligible for 1993 only, the German manufacturer's attention switched to the 2.0-litre class for 1994. Cars from all three classes would contest the 1993 Australian Touring Car Championship, as well as non-championship Australian touring car events such as the Bathurst 1000. However, for the purposes of race classification and points allocation, cars competed in two classes: Over 2,000 cc Under 2,000 ccOriginally, the 2.0-litre class cars competed in a separate race to the V8s.

This was changed for the second round of 1993 after only nine entrants were in the 2.0-litre class for the first round at Amaroo Park. With the new regulations intended to be a parity formula, protests by the Holden teams indicated that the Fords had an aerodynamic advantage after they won the opening three rounds, beating the Commodore comprehensively. After round five at Winton, Holden was granted a new front and rear wing package; the BMWs were allowed a new splitter and a full DTM-specification rear wing. Disparity between the Fords and Holdens continued to be a talking point during the next few years, with various concessions given to each manufacturer to try to equalise the two cars. From 1995, the 2.0-litre cars, now contesting their own series as Super Touring cars, became ineligible for the Australian Touring Car Championship. They did not contest the endurance races at Sandown and Bathurst, leaving these open to the 5.0-litre Ford and Holden models. The Australian Vee Eight Super Car Company – a joint venture between the Touring Car Entrants Group of Australia, sports promoters IMG and the Australian Motor Sports Commission – was formed in November 1996 to run the series.

This set the foundation for the large expansion of the series during the following years. The category adopted the name'V8 Supercars' at this time, though the cars themselves were much unchanged. A new television deal with Network Ten and Fox Sports was organised, although thi

Night or nighttime is the period of ambient darkness from sunset to sunrise in each twenty-four hours, when the Sun is below the horizon. The exact time when night begins and ends varies throughout the year; when night is considered as a period that which follows evening, it is considered to start around 9 pm and to last to about 5 am. Night ends with coming of morning at sunrise; the word can be used in a different sense as the time between morning. In common communication the word'night' is used as a farewell and sometimes shortened to'night' when someone is going to sleep or leaving. For example: It was nice to see you. Good night! Unlike'good morning,"good afternoon,' and'good evening,"good night' is not used as a greeting. Complete darkness or astronomical night is the period between astronomical dusk and astronomical dawn when the Sun is between 18 and 90 degrees below the horizon and does not illuminate the sky; as seen from latitudes between 48.5° and 65.7° north or south of the Equator, complete darkness does not occur around the summer solstice because although the Sun sets, it is never more than 18° below the horizon at lower culmination.

The opposite of night is day. The start and end points of time for a night vary, based on factors such as latitude. Twilight is the period of night after sunset or before sunrise when the Sun still illuminates the sky when it is below the horizon. At any given time, one side of Earth is bathed in sunlight while the other side is in the shadow caused by Earth blocking the sunlight; the central part of the shadow is called the umbra. Natural illumination at night is still provided by a combination of moonlight, planetary light, zodiacal light and airglow. In some circumstances, aurorae and bioluminescence can provide some illumination; the glow provided by artificial lighting is sometimes referred to as light pollution because it can interfere with observational astronomy and ecosystems. On Earth, an average night lasts shorter than daytime due to two factors. Firstly, the Sun's apparent disk has an angular diameter of about 32 arcminutes. Secondly, the atmosphere refracts sunlight so that some of it reaches the ground when the Sun is below the horizon by about 34'.

The combination of these two factors means that light reaches the ground when the center of the solar disk is below the horizon by about 50'. Without these effects and night would be the same length on both equinoxes, the moments when the Sun appears to contact the celestial equator. On the equinoxes, daytime lasts 14 minutes longer than night does at the Equator, longer towards the poles; the summer and winter solstices mark the longest nights, respectively. The closer a location is to either the North Pole or the South Pole, the wider the range of variation in the night's duration. Although daytime and night nearly equalize in length on the equinoxes, the ratio of night to day changes more at high latitudes than at low latitudes before and after an equinox. In the Northern Hemisphere, Denmark experiences shorter nights in June than India. In the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctica sees longer nights in June than Chile. Both hemispheres experience the same patterns of night length at the same latitudes, but the cycles are 6 months apart so that one hemisphere experiences long nights while the other is experiencing short nights.

In the region within either polar circle, the variation in daylight hours is so extreme that part of summer sees a period without night intervening between consecutive days, while part of winter sees a period without daytime intervening between consecutive nights. The phenomenon of day and night is due to the rotation of a celestial body about its axis, creating an illusion of the sun rising and setting. Different bodies spin at different rates, however; some may spin much faster than Earth, while others spin slowly, leading to long days and nights. The planet Venus rotates once every 224.7 days – by far the slowest rotation period of any of the major planets. In contrast, the gas giant Jupiter's sidereal day is 56 minutes. However, it is not just the sidereal rotation period which determines the length of a planet's day-night cycle but the length of its orbital period as well - Venus has a rotation period of 224.7 days, but a day-night cycle just 116.75 days long due to its retrograde rotation and orbital motion around the Sun.

Mercury has the longest day-night cycle as a result of its 3:2 resonance between its orbital period and rotation period - this resonance gives it a day-night cycle, 176 days long. A planet may experience large temperature variations between day and night, such as Mercury, the planet closest to the sun; this is one consideration in terms of planetary habitability or the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The disappearance of sunlight, the primary energy source for life on Earth, has dramatic effects on the morphology and behavior of every organism; some animals sleep during the night, whilst other nocturnal animals including moths and crickets are active during this time. The effects of day and night are not seen in the animal kingdom alone. For example, crassulacean acid metabolism is a unique type of carbon fixation which allows photosynthetic plants to store carbon dioxide in their tissues as organic acids during the night, which can be used during the day to synthesize carbohydrates. Thi

Edward Cronshaw is an English sculptor. Cronshaw works in natural materials—wood, fruit, bone—and casts them in bronze, his work is representative, but attempts to maintain the innate characteristics of the original material. Cronshaw was born near Blackburn, but brought up in the rural Pendle district, near a hill named Cronshaw's Seat; the farm was sold in 1997. At present he lives in the Calderdale metropolitan district, his career as a sculptor began. Blackburn was Cronshaw's childhood home. From there he went on to the Leeds School of Art and finished his BA at Saint Martin's School of Art in 1984. In the years 1985 to 1986, Cronshaw studied for an MA in fine art at the Royal College of Art. Cronshaw's work has been displayed at galleries and exhibitions including the Rebecca Hossack gallery, the Caz gallery, the Henry Moore Gallery, the Royal Academy Summer Show, the Los Angeles International Contemporary Art Fair, the Liverpool Garden Festival and the Third World and Beyond International Art Fair in Sicily.

Cronshaw was commissioned to create sculptures for Liverpool City Council and for the Boots PLC head office in Nottingham. The latter was a 20 feet statue of the earth goddess Gaia, Gaia's body clothed in 3,000 succulent plants intended to suggest the transitory nature of life; the statue was cast by means of the lost wax method at Cronshaw's studio/foundry at the Dean Clough complex in Halifax, Calderdale. The sculpture created for Liverpool City Council was named'The Great Escape' by Cronshaw, it is a bronze horse, 15 feet high and 4 tons in weight, formed from rope in a spaghetti fashion. At the tail a piece of rope extends to the ground where a life-size sculpture of a man steps on it, forcing the horse to rear and unravel itself. Cronshaw is continuing to work on his popular Midas Project of bronze succulent plants, as well as initiating a campaign to improve the environment of his adopted home of Todmorden by placing sculptures in and around the town centre; the Rebecca Hossack Gallery The New Statesman The Halifax Evening Courier The Dean Clough Arts Site