Located centrally in New Hampshire lies the renowned town of Rumney, a rock-climbing spot famous throughout the country.  Known as one of the finest spots for climbing on the east coast, Rumney is home to a multitude of faces, arêtes and chimneys.  As part of the White Mountains, it is in a range that covers much of New Hampshire in a combination of schist and granite rock.  Shaping between 125 and 100 million years ago, the range took form through a combination of magma intrusions and glaciation. 

At the very beginning of the region, lava poured out in layers, shortly after followed by the edge of a sea, bringing with it sand and limestone.  However, as the sedimentary rock was being washed in, small chimneys of lava pushed through layers of forming schist to cover the area in igneous rock as North American plate slid over the New England hot spot.  As years went on, the sea receded and the magma intrusions became less frequent, the area was left to years of erosion from lakes, river, rain and ice wore the area away until a short frozen period began.  A glacier formed that would dam rivers and scatter boulders across the area.  Great lakes formed from this, eroding away pockets and valleys of the mountains, while the glaciers themselves helped in the creation of numerous mountain passes. 

Although the White Mountains may not seem like much in comparison to the mountains found in states farther west, they are in fact part of the Appalachian Mountain Range.  Covering much of New England, the Appalachians most rugged area is found in the White Mountain area, including Rumney.  The region is just one example of a multitude of mountain ranges that stretch from Alabama all the way into Canada, although it is the most prevalent and well known on the east coast.  Rock climbers hold Rumney in high regard for its many different and variable faces, the region fluctuating in size from short bouldering problems, to routes going up almost 300 feet.

My hometown of Aurora, CO, does not hold many mystical geological features that illustrate the complexity of the world. However, the state of Colorado as a whole holds a wide variety of geological locations that formed over millions of years to become what they are today. One such example is the beautiful Garden of the Gods, found in Colorado Springs, CO, and is about a two-hour drive from Aurora. Home to countless species of vegetation and wildlife, the Garden of the Gods shows the best of the natural world. But in order to understand the true complexity of these rock formations, we must go back in time to see how they came to be.

Rock formations in the Garden of the Gods

Even though the shaping of the current Garden of the Gods only occurred mostly within the last .01 million years, the events that led to it’s eventual formation took over the course of hundreds of millions of years. The process began when the Pikes Peak granite was formed 1 billion years ago. Some of the formations that are located inside the park were made between 600 million years ago and 180 to 225 years ago. In the time from 135 to .02 million years ago, there were various mountain building, extinctions and periods of glaciation that had occurred. Then within the last .01 million years, erosional forces had shaped the modern day Garden of the Gods.

The Garden of the Gods is a great example of change that the Earth is constantly undergoing. It not only signifies the idea that nothing is set in stone (pun intended), but also illustrates that the world is constantly shifting in front of our eyes at an astronomically slow pace. The Earth has undergone billions of years of constant shifting, yet because our lifetimes are so short, we have never been able to truly grasp the complexity that is our world.

Map of the Garden of the Gods

Works cited:

http://www.uccs.edu/geomorph/garden-of-the-gods.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_the_Gods

http://www.springsgov.com/Page.aspx?NavID=2001

Image/video sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_the_Gods

http://www.springsgov.com/units/parksrec/maps/mgogs-s.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upKxpzhCtVI

California Mountain Ranges
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcommons.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFile%3ACalifornia_Coast_Ranges.png&h=0&w=0&sz=1&tbnid=hKI_7UxOk49ljM&tbnh=238&tbnw=212&zoom=1&docid=QDjdwkpsnbJLJM&ei=0pwyUpr4LNLtqQHEuoH4DA&ved=0CAEQsCU

I live in Mill Valley, California, a small suburb tucked away in the Coast Range fourteen miles north of San Francisco. Out of the valley and just behind downtown rises Mount Tamalpias. The wooded mountain shadows the quant municipality and soft wetlands below. It is the most prominent geographical feature in the northern Bay Area and on a clear day can be seen from miles away. Mount Tamalpias is one mountain in the 400 mile California Coast Range, that starts north of San Francisco in Humboldt County and runs south to Santa Barbara.

More than a hundred years ago, my maternal great grandparents settled under  Mount Tamalpias and every generation since has made their home in the shadow of this mountain. But, where my personal history with Mount Tamalpias and the greater California Coast Range ends is certainly not where its physical history ends. Approximately 250 million years ago, the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate collided sending the thinner crust of the Pacific Plate sliding under the more sturdy North American Plate. Around 150-140 million years ago, as the crust of the Pacific Plate melted, it became molten rock and pushed the American Plate upwards, forming the first peaks of the Coast Range.

Serpentine
http://geology.com/minerals/serpentine.shtml

Unlike the convergent boundary formed by the Nazca and South American Plates, that have formed the great Andes Mountains, the collision of the Pacific Plate and the North American changed direction, forming a transformational boundary. Meaning they began to slide north and south along the San Andreas Fault. Today, all land west of the fault slowly moves north, while land east of the fault slowly moves south. This movement creates  one of the most seismically active areas in the world. Evidence suggests that a massive earthquake occurs along the San Andreas Fault approximately every one hundred years.

Under the banks of fog and deep forests of Redwood is the solid core of the Coast Range. This core is composed of granite and serpentine, a unique type of metamorphic rock. The serpentine formed when sedimentary and shale rocks, from the Pacific Plate,  melted in the collision with the North American Plate. This amalgam was then heated by seawater giving it its distinctive greenish gray hue and earning it the name serpentine.

Redwood forest.
http://wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/nature/webb-creek-and-redwoods-mount-tamalpais-state-park-california_21849.htm

These mountains and their geology produce the perfect wet coastal climate for a flora and fauna to thrive. Redwoods and manzanita are skirted by white tailed deer, bobcat and mountain lion. Canadian geese rest in the grassy meadows abutting these mountains during their migrations. The Coastal Miwok lived in harmony with this biodiversity for thousands of years. We can be grateful for he plate tectonics of the Pacific and North American plates that catalyzed the growth of such biodiversity along the California Coast. Only recently have Westerners realized the amazing place that is the northern Californian Coast and I hope we do not spoil the spectacular biodiversity that the geology here took so long too foster.

Personal photography from the summit of Mount Tamalpias facing south towards San Fransisco

References

Cannon, Marilyn. “Lilies of the Coast: The Coast Ranges.” N.p., 17 Nov. 2002. Web. 12 Sept. 2013. <http://www.sonoma.edu/users/c/canno/bio314chapter7coastranges.html>.

“Geology of North Coastal California.” Krisweb. N.p., 2011. Web. 12 Sept. 2013. <http://www.krisweb.com/hydrol/geology.htm>.

“California’s Coastal Mountains.” Http://ceres.ca.gov/ceres/calweb/coastal/mountains.html. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Sept. 2013.

One of the most interesting geological sites in New England is Greenfield Massachusetts. Tucked between the Connecticut River and the Berkshire Hills, this area contains geological marvels from glacial evidence to the occasional dinosaur footprint. Check the link below for a map of the Greenfield area.

https://maps.google.com/maps?client=firefox-a&channel=fflb&q=google+maps+greenfield+ma&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x89e125f2515de343:0x9dc7b0ab2145abc3,Greenfield,+MA&gl=us&ei=jH0yUr3rG46xqAHp_YCACA&sqi=2&ved=0CCwQ8gEwAA

Greenfield has a very diverse collection of rock, displaying all three major rock types: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. Of these rocks, perhaps the most interesting is the basalt deposits, which spilled out of the Eastern Border Fault, caused when the ancient continent Pangea split apart. This lava is extremely interesting because it contains radioactive material. Radioactive minerals, due to their half life, can be used to measure the age of the rock. This rock dates back to approximately 194 million years ago, placing it in the Late Triassic to early Jurassic era.

This, however is far from the most ancient information we have about the Greenfield area. In fact, we know that approximately 600 million years ago the entire Greenfield area was deep under the old Atlantic ocean, which is often called the Iapetus Ocean. It was not until 400 million years ago that Greenfield rose above the surface of the ocean, when the ancient continent Godwana, which is now part of Africa, collided with what is now known as North America. This collision of tectonic plates pushed Greenfield and much of the area around it up out of the ocean, transforming it into a huge mountain range the size of the Himalayas. Over time the area was eventually eroded into the flat plain it is today.

The thing that attracts most non-geologists to this are though, is the discovery of dinosaur footprints in the red sandstone that makes up the bank of the Connecticut River. These footprints are interesting because, although they clearly prove that dinosaurs were at one time present in the area, its hard to definitively prove the species of dinosaur. This is because, while footprints are common, there have been no findings of bones to accompany the prints. It seems likely, based solely on these prints, that the most common dinosaur was the Dilophosaurus. This 20 foot long, 6 foot tall dinosaur is known for leaving 12 to 18 inch prints. This species much resembles a miniature version of the infamous Tyrannosuarus. For more information on the Dilophosaurus, check out the link below.
http://www.myjurassicpark.com/dilophosaurus.html

Pueblo, Co. A flat land. A social life as one dimensional as the landscape. The farthest thing from an ‘international hub.’ Unless, of course, you are a geologist…

The very features that make this location a drab to its inhabitants are what make Pueblo a geological rockstar. Specifically, the Lake Pueblo State Park:

Photograph by John Wark

You may have wondered why the middle of America is so dang flat. Well, this is beacause there used to exist a shallow ocean, right then and there. We know it as the Western Interior Seaway, but it is also called the Cretaceous Seaway because it existed during the Cretaceous Period (145 -66 million years ago), following the Jurassic Period (1).

via Wikipedia

As seen in the image above, Colorado was once engulfed by this ocean. There was a mountain range to the west of the seaway, which constantly dumped sediment into the large body of water. All the sediment deposit eventually turned to shale, sandstone and the like under the pressure of the sea, which preserved a lot of the fossils of the time. Then, the Rocky Mountains began to emerge and lifted the planes, thier dranage shaping the Arkansas River. As the river eroded the land around it, it carved out the cliffs we can see, today, which expose all those sedimentary layers(2).  The photo, below, demonstrates those layers:

via http://www.kayakfishingmagazine.net/gallery/scenic-photos/pueblo-reservoir-011-614.html

Jumping off these cliffs is actually a popular recreational activity. However, its popularity is declining as it is illigal and many have been swept under by the currents in the lake. Here is a video of somebody cliff diving and another example of the sedimentary cliffs that can be found all around the reservoir and even further into town:

Because of the layering of these cliffs, they are very useful as a reference to age other geological sites and fossils are no rare occurance as you wander through the park. In fact, Lake Pueblo has been distinguished as a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point. It is one of four in North America and one of 43 in the world (3). [Make sure to follow the link in the bibliography to learn more about GBSS!]

Want another brief, yet more detailed, history of the Western Interior Seaway and its relation to Pueblo? Check out this article in USA Today:

http://traveltips.usatoday.com/landforms-pueblo-colorado-58579.html

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous

(2) http://www.parks.state.co.us/Parks/LakePueblo/Nature/Pages/Geology.aspx

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSSP

Sourced from http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/antennaedata/
Edited on Fitts Liberator and Photoshop

What you see before you is a photoshop rendering of the Antennae Galaxie collision. Photoshop? You may be wondering… Do not worry,though. This is not a photoshoped landing on the moon kind of situation. In fact, all Hubble Telescop images are photoshoped. Now you may be a bit dissapointed at this news. Though if you were wandering through space, you unfortunatley would not be surrounded by the many colors published by NASA. ‘So it’s all a sham!’ you procclaim. Well, not necessarily.

Because our limited optic abilities, we would interperet most of the heavenly bodies out there to be just white light, or red or blue light. So then where do the pretty colors come from?

Each objects that emmits light, emmits different frequencies of light based on its composition. So, stars emmiting mostly visible light are similar to our Sun. Stars emmiting mostly blue light have higher frequency light and are therefore hotter. Contrarily, stars that appear red in color emmit more infared light, at a lower frequency, making thier temperatures relatively cooler. The diagram below demonstrates the relationship between light frequency and color:

Sourced from http://physics.tutorvista.com/waves/wavelength-spectrum.html via Google Images

The illustration demonstrates how the higher the frequency (i.e higher energy), the bluer the light.

So, what does all this have to do with the photoshopping of images we all knew and loved to be “real?”

The point is, just because we cannot see the whole spectrum of light that an object is emitting, does not mean that the object does not emmit that kind of light. If we see it to be blue, it just emitts more blue light than red (or any other color/frequency). So, what is done with the image from Hubble is this:

The spectrum for each object is determined and we can figure out the amount of blue, green, and red light present (primary colors detected by the rods in our eyes). Then, we can seperate the image into the blue light detected, the green light detected, and the red light detected. The images will vary in brightness and location of brightness, depending on which part of the object emmits which frequencies. We can then add the color we are trying to represent on programs such as photoshop, layer the images together, and create beautiful respresentations of the object’s color spectrum.

So, to put your worries at ease: No, the NASA images are not “fake.” They are simply looking at things from a perspective not available to the naked eye.

Want to learn how to make your own images? Just follow this link to the Hubble website: http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/stepbystep/

Now, back to the Antennae Galaxies. When we imagine galaxies colliding, we may imagine massive explosions, huge emmision of light, and atomic bom-esque scenarios. However, the reality is that these ‘collisions’ are far much more tame than our imaginations wish them to be. Although these are the youngest example of merging galaxies we have yet to observe, they have actually been merging for hundreds of millions of years, the Hubble website reports. Learn more about it here:  http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic0615/

So, the moral of the story is simple: everything is more than it appears. It is the same moral we have learned here on Earth but amplified by lightyears. It just goes to show that the cosmos are not some big and scary unknown, but are more a part of us than we know.

Red: 502 nm filter

Green: 656 nm filter

Blue: 673 nm filter

Above is an image that I created in Photoshop by layering and color-coding three different wavelength filters from a European Space Agency website. Each of the three images is filtered to show only a specific wavelength of electromagnetic emission. By layering these images and assigning each a representational color, one can create a single image that describes what general frequencies of light are being emitted. Looking at this information by filtering telescopic photos to specific wavelengths is extremely useful in astronomy. It allows us to understand what exactly we are looking at, what elements make it up, and how far away it is.

The images that I used are photographs of Messier 17, a star-forming nebula more commonly known as the Horseshoe Nebula or the Omega Nebula. It can be found here in the Milky Way near the Sagittarius constellation. The brightest part of the cloud appears roughly 15 light years long, but the actual length is closer to 40 light years. The distance from us is estimated at 5 to 6 thousand light years. The nebula can be seen by the naked eye from most places, though not easily.

Sources:

• Frommert, Hartmut, and Christine Kronberg. “Messier Object 17.” SEDS Messier Database. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Sept. 2013.<http://messier.seds.org/m/m017.html>.

Chances are you have seen at least one deep space image from the Hubble Telescope.  This pictures are amazing to be sure, but these amazing photos are actually made quite easily using Photoshop, a custom program called FITS Liberator, and three different grayscale images.  The official instructions from the Hubble website are available here, but I will briefly explain them to you.

The three grayscale images are all identical photos except that the wavelength of each photo varies.  Below are the three photos of the “Pillars of Creation”, part of the Eagle Nebula, that I used:

After converting the files using FITS Liberator, the photos are then imported into Photoshop and manually all inserted into the same file, each as a separate layer.  After sorting the files by wavelength, highest to lowest (top-down), each layer received a “color action”, with the first being red, the second green, and the third blue.  These can be applied manually, but I downloaded a pre-made one here.  After manually adjusting the default settings for each action, the combined (not merged) photo now looks like photos you have probably seen.

The Pillars of Creation photo I was able to create in Photoshop:

The Photo NASA created:

The Pillars of Creation are just a small segment of a giant stellar cloud, or nebula, called the Eagle Nebula.  The Nebula is located close to 7,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Serpens.  This is an actual star forming nebula, unlike the Crab Nebula, where the term nebula is actually misused.  The Eagle Nebula actually contains known active star-forming regions, including the Pillars of Creation.

Here is a photo of the Pillars of Creation overlayed on the whole nebula, with other notable landmarks overlayed as well.

I posted the link for this video at the end of my previous post titled “Optimized What Already Exists”. I figured it would be more accessible if I just posted it right to my blog. Ludwick Marishane perfectly exemplifies someone who optimized the technology he had and solved a serious worldwide problem. Take a look.