July 21, 2024
The constellations may be old, but the person celebrating beneath them is gloriously new by cosmic standards.
King of Wings Hoodoo under the Milky Way
Birthday · July 21, 2024
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APOD published July 21, 2024. Credit: Wayne Pinkston (LightCrafter Photography). A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
This rock structure is not only surreal -- it's real. Perhaps the reason it's not more famous is that it is smaller than one might guess: the capstone rock overhangs only a few meters. Even so, the King of Wings outcrop, located in New Mexico, USA, is a fascinating example of an unusual type of rock structure called a hoodoo. Hoodoos may form when a layer of hard rock overlays a layer of eroding softer rock. Figuring out the details of incorporating this hoodoo into a night-sky photoshoot took over a year. Besides waiting for a suitably picturesque night behind a sky with few clouds, the foreground had to be artificially lit just right relative to the natural glow of the background. After much planning and waiting, the final shot, featured here, was taken in May 2016. Mimicking the horizontal bar, the background sky features the band of our Milky Way Galaxy stretching overhead.
Image credit: Wayne Pinkston (LightCrafter Photography)