Starship Asterisk*

ozalba wrote:It strikes me that we are not looking at a backlit cone-shaped 'floating mountain', but a backlit v-shaped 'arch'. There does appear to be a star at the apex of the arch, which would seem to be a candidate for the source of the light, but it could also be another star hidden from view, higher up. Further, the lower sections of the inverted V could be generated by a shadow effect, rather than being the physical edge of a cloud (think crepuscular rays).

RJN wrote:OK, the new APOD is up. I apologize to all of the mirror operators and to Otto Posterman, the Asterisk APOD robot updater. - RJN

http://www.kayakbc.ca/brag/2009/09/03/giant-barnacle/ wrote:
<<Found these giant barnacles on the beach yesterday . You can see part of the shrimp-like animal that lives inside; they stick out there feet , called cirri, to try and catch plankton and other tiny organisms and eat them. They are quite strange to observe, almost alien-like.>>

BMAONE23 wrote:Stereo pairs
http://pro.tok2.com/~aq6a-ink/ms/usa3db/05437.htm
a zoomable version
http://www.starrycritters.com/tag/iras-054372502/
From DSS2
http://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov/userimages ... 963_4.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2 wrote:

K2 from the east, photographed during the 1909 expedition

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<<K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth after Mount Everest. With a peak elevation of 8,611 metres, K2 is part of the Karakoram Range, and is located on the border between the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County of Xinjiang, China, and Gilgit, in Gilgit-Baltistan of Pakistan. K2 is known as the Savage Mountain due to the difficulty of ascent and the 2nd highest fatality rate among the 'eight thousanders' for those who climb it. For every four people who have reached the summit, one has died trying. Unlike Annapurna, the mountain with the highest fatality rate, K2 has never been climbed in winter.

Montgomerie's original sketch in which he applied the notation K2

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The name K2 is derived from the notation used by the Great Trigonometric Survey. Thomas Montgomerie made the first survey of the Karakoram from Mount Haramukh, some 210 km to the south, and sketched the two most prominent peaks, labelling them K1 and K2. The policy of the Great Trigonometric Survey was to use local names for mountains wherever possible and K1 was found to be known locally as Masherbrum. K2, however, appeared not to have acquired a local name, possibly due to its remoteness. The mountain is not visible from Askole, the last village to the south, or from the nearest habitation to the north, and is only fleetingly glimpsed from the end of the Baltoro Glacier, beyond which few local people would have ventured. The name Chogori, derived from two Balti words, chhogo ('big') and ri ('mountain') (شاہگوری) has been suggested as a local name, but evidence for its widespread use is scant. It may have been a compound name invented by Western explorers or simply a bemused reply to the question "What's that called?" It does, however, form the basis for the name Qogir by which Chinese authorities officially refer to the peak. Lacking a local name, the name Mount Godwin-Austen was suggested, in honour of Henry Godwin-Austen, an early explorer of the area, and while the name was rejected by the Royal Geographical Society.

The surveyor's mark, K2, therefore continues to be the name by which the mountain is commonly known. It is now also used in the Balti language, rendered as Kechu or Ketu. The Italian climber Fosco Maraini argued in his account of the ascent of Gasherbrum IV that while the name of K2 owes its origin to chance, its clipped, impersonal nature is highly appropriate for so remote and challenging a mountain. He concluded that it was...

"...just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man - or of the cindered planet after the last.">>