Posted on 11/28/2005 10:25:37 AM PST by cogitator
Off for Thanksgiving week, back with an Earth Observatory three-fer. Click each picture for the article about it.
On the nature side, I saw an owl on Saturday as twilight approached. Probably only the third live wild owl sighting of my lifetime.
Number one: the Algodones dune field in California, which has starred in many Hollywood movies (not just Star Wars). I'm sure that the dune-walking sequence in "Kung Fu" was shot here, and many, many westerns.
Number two: the Sand Hills of Nebraska.
Sand Hills from the ground (I couldn't find a high-quality Sand Hills picture, but nature photographers do cover it. 
Number three: MISR mystery image. You can enter the contest (on the linked page) until December 6. MISR stands for "Multiple Image SpectroRadiometer". I guessed one of these right eons ago, but I was beaten (in time) by several other entrants. It must have been an easy one. If anyone figures this out, I want to know the name of the lake.
** ping ** ping ** ping **
The mystery picture looks like the coast of Chile inland to the Andes and the Atacama desert...
That's a good place to start.
Ah, I see it now. Crater Lake.
Not Oregon's Crater Lake. That island is strange-looking. The Andes make the most sense, but I think the forest at the bottom is the eastern slopes of the Andes. The western slopes (Chile) don't have much forest.
I think that's Wizard Island. And there is a lake just south of Crater Lake, and there is one in that photo. And there is also a large rain shadow east of the Cascades.
The western slopes (Chile) don't have much forest.
Whereas the west slopes of the Cascades are heavily forested.
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