Three Arches Above Utah
How many arches can you count in the above image?
If you count both spans of the
Double Arch in the
Arches National Park in
Utah,
USA, then two.
But since the
above image was taken during a clear dark night, it caught a photogenic third arch far in the distance -- that of the overreaching
Milky Way Galaxy.
Because we are situated in the midst of the
spiral Milky Way Galaxy, the band of the
central disk appears all around us.
The
sandstone arches of the
Double Arch were formed from the erosion of falling water.
The larger arch rises over 30 meters above the
surrounding salt bed and spans close to 50 meters across.
The dark silhouettes across the image bottom are sandstone monoliths left over from silt-filled crevices in an evaporated 300 million year old salty sea.
A dim flow created by light pollution from
Moab, Utah can also be seen in the distance.
