Starship Asterisk*

Actually, there's a simple initial test: Do all the hills in the same area have steps at about the same heights (allowing, if necessary, for some possible distortion by uneven uplift)? Or, if they're uneven, is the bias minor and consistently in a particular direction? Either would tend to confirm t...

I tend to agree that what I'd suspect if I saw this on earth -- ignoring human activity -- is sedimentary layers being eroded away by slowly receding water, perhaps with harder and softer layers alternating (which tends to result in undercutting and collapse, thus leaving relatively sharp-edged plat...

It looks like a Klingon Battlecruiser... ... or perhaps an old-fashoned bottle-with-fins rocket. If so, the vapor trail would mark the path of its retrorocket exhaust (which it would have been falling into, after all) and the bright spot at the tip of the "fin" is actually light from an a...

The hoax or alchemy proposals seem equally plausible to me. Expensive hoax, in time invested... but given the price it might have commanded, perhaps worth the effort. I don't entirely buy the assertion that the text is too statistically consistent to be fake; I can produce glossolalia which sounds p...

The insert graphic makes it appear that the new ring is orbiting on a significantly different plane than the others. True, or just a presentation artifact?

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091013.html

Re not being in a straight line: Float glass is not optically flat to begin with, and large panes are a lot less rigid than folks may be assuming. We don't normally notice any distortion, but I can more easily believe there's enough to account for a bit of misalignment than that there's an atmospher...

I'm still leaning toward reflection due to one detail: the slight flare seen at the bottom of the middle solar disk echos that seen at the bottom of the brightest image, which appears to be a horizon/mirage effect, even though it appears slightly higher in the sky. I may be missing something obvious...

Re naming: "Devil's" does sound disrespectful to some (how would you feel if one of your holy sites was colloquially called Devil's Whatever?), so I'd have liked to at least see the alternate name mentioned. Not a big deal for me, but it seemed worth pointing out.

I've been told that the local tribes object to that name for the hill, and would prefer that it be referred to as Bear Lodge. Since hearing that, I have tried to comply -- they _were_ here first, after all. I know, I know, fewer people would recognize it by that name... but I think a bit of a cultur...

At the risk of slashdotting their server ... this is just too good an image not to share. Satellite view of the inauguration crowd. My, that's a lot of surprisingly-well-behaved people! http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/gallery/detail.aspx?iid=220&gid=1 (OK, it isn't astronomy or earth science. But...

pmanson: I agree, that simulation does look a lot like what we're seeing in the photo.

I'm trying to think through the optics of this image... and I have more questions than answers. The lights aren't pointed upward, so the "columns" presumably aren't actually columns per se, but are instead a lensing effect of the ice crystals between the light and viewer -- like lens flare...

Try either Mars' or Mars's.

(Although I do know someone named Mar, commenting about the amount of sunlight reaching an individual's northern hemisphere is generally considered impolite...)