Friday, August 14, 2020

ALIEN THRONES

I am a sucker for NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site. Lately if I can't come up with something? Well I go looking there. NASA has been posting a picture every day since the mid nineties.


Now believe it or not this is a real landscape in the wilderness of Ah-Shi-Sie-Pah badlands of New Mexico. It's a composite shot of foreground and background exposures taken in late May. The photographer is Martin Zajac. The rock formation is called the Alien Throne. That's the Milky Way shining ovver the rocks. The bright "star" to the left is Jupiter with Saturn below and furthere left. And darn the Milky Way doesn't look like that up here in Oregon. You have to go further south. And yeah, it doesn't look like that without multiple exposures and some enhancing but it sure is spectacular.

As spectacular as this shot is, it's too bad it's a night shot. Becuase you can't see the spectacular colors of the rock formations. The common name is a Hoodoo. It's a tall, thin, or other formation that can be found in a dry lands drainage basin or badlands. The stripes are usually sedementary rocks or volcanic ash topped by a harder rock that resists erosion. The colors can be spectacular.


This shot is from Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. The spectacular rock fomations can be found  further south in Arizona and New Mexico. Finally ending up at the Grand Canyon. Anywhere you see something green the soil has trapped just enough water to allow a little bit of green.

In what is now the central section of the US there was once a shallow sea. Between the sediments, vulcanism, time, and erosion these spires are some of the results.

As usual I started in one plae and ended up somewhere else. LOL

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