[AZ-Observing] Re: Namibia Photos

Very nice Tom!  The landscape and nightime shots are georgeous.  I envy your 
few weeks in such a dark site, even having to live with a brain-fried scope.  
If I have a chance to do the same thing I will have to think about adding spare 
boards to the equipment list or at least good charts.

The 'fairy circles' are far from unexplained.  The grass simply grows outwards 
in stages from a central plant, each sucessive growth stage slightly further 
out.  There are a couple grass species in Northern Arizona and Southern Utah 
that do the same thing.  Our common creosote bush also does this, usually seen 
from the air.  By figuring the size of the ring and the average growth rate 
there are some creosote rings that are arguably some of the oldest plants 
living.  Type 'creosote ring' into Google.

Andrew


> 
> From: Tom Polakis <tpolakis@xxxxxxx>
> Date: 2004/09/24 Fri PM 12:50:52 EDT
> To: <AZ-Observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [AZ-Observing] Namibia Photos
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I returned from six-plus weeks in Namibia this past Sunday.  Lots of clear 
> nights at a dark site with a 12" brain-dead GO-TO that I operated in "Dob 
> mode."  When the moon was big, I took some sky photos with a digital SLR 
> camera, and have uploaded the hastily processed photos to my pBase site.
> 
> The astrophotos are at:
> 
> http://www.pbase.com/polakis/namibia2004astro
> 
> ...and the rest of the photos are at:
> 
> http://www.pbase.com/polakis/nambia2004land
> http://www.pbase.com/polakis/nambia2004fauna
> http://www.pbase.com/polakis/namibia2004people
> http://www.pbase.com/polakis/namibia2004misc
> 
> Tom
> 
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> 
> 

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