Posted on 05/23/2011 9:23:11 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
[Credit & Copyright: Brad Goldpaint (Goldpaint Photography)] Explanation: How many arches can you count in the above image? If you count both spans of the Double Arch in the Arches National Park in Utah, USA, then two. But since the above image was taken during a clear dark night, it caught a photogenic third arch far in the distance -- that of the overreaching Milky Way Galaxy. Because we are situated in the midst of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, the band of the central disk appears all around us. The sandstone arches of the Double Arch were formed from the erosion of falling water. The larger arch rises over 30 meters above the surrounding salt bed and spans close to 50 meters across. The dark silhouettes across the image bottom are sandstone monoliths left over from silt-filled crevices in an evaporated 300 million year old salty sea. A dim flow created by light pollution from Moab, Utah can also be seen in the distance.
(Excerpt) Read more at apod.nasa.gov ...
It's not about McDonalds.
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nice
the smaller one has a kind of 3-D quality, so I thought a larger size would be nice on the drive.
check it out, doesn’t that “rock” foreground look fake?
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1105/doublearch_goldpaint_3899.jpg
I clicked and I clicked and that image is
HHHHUUUUGGGEEEE!!!!!
Styrofoam set from the original Star Trek?? /s
Probably a short time exposure for the stars, and then a flash exposure of the arch, with the same camera setting.
I remember camping out in the canyonlands and just being awed by the stars. It was incredible Same with the Mojave desert. If I could get rid of my house without losing a small fortune, I’d sell everything and move out there without hesitation. Utah was just incredible. I’m sure I’ll end up living there some day.
And to think, that 300 million years ago, when that was the bottom of a sea, the stars were actually where we see them today.
The "red" star is Antares in Scorpio. The red lines in the star chart are hour lines and latitude lines. The hour lines are 30 minutes apart here, so you can see the exposure was maybe a minute or tow long to produce the trails that we see. ( I can get a better estimate by blowing up the scale. )
Gorgeous!
Two arches above California.
Yeah, aren’t we out in some backwater spiral arm?
Orion Arm
Thanks!
Welcome....Pretty interesting how many differnt “arms” are in our galaxy.
*Groan* Now I have to go look that up and learn all about it.
As if I have nothing else to do.
Sigh...
;-p
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