Starship Asterisk*

Thanks folks....
I knew there had to be a reason for the specific angle mentioned.
A lot of learning occurred for me in those replies.
The dry/damp/wet sand example really made sense to me.
I am off to do some more reading on the subject now that I know where to look.

I agree with the previous poster about a scale reference.

In addition, can someone (probably a geologist type) explain why the downwind slope forms an ≈32º angle as explained in the Wikipedia link for barchan dunes?

Thanks

I was wondering the same thing, then I started poking around in the links below the photo. Here is the relevant link: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-116/html/s116e05983.html I always play this "where are they" game with any of these space shots, but this one made me...

No asbestos suit required here, my first thoughts about the "scar maker" photo on 11/22 mirrored yours exactly. What I found really interesting though is my next daily stop after APOD is the Earth Science Photo of the Day and it featured a photo of the Mercury transit. You can see today's ...

Looking at the horizontally compressed view I totally agree that the stuck wheel track looks like a road on the side of a hill. In addition to that the dark rocks on first glance looked like pine trees on the side of that hill. After looking a little closer I realized that we didn't discover plant l...