gigapan

Five new GigaPans from Thoroughfare Gap

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Yesterday, I took five new GigaPans at Thoroughfare Gap, a water gap where Broad Run cuts through Bull Run Mountain, the eastern limb of the Blue Ridge Anticlinorium at my latitude. The rocks here are the Cambrian-aged Chilhowee Group, with bedding tilted moderately to the east during Alleghanian mountain-building in the late Paleozoic. To the … Read more

Documenting doomed outcrops: Scientists’ Cliffs, Maryland

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The community of Scientists’ Cliffs in Maryland is a private community that happens to sit on some of the most amazing fossil exposures in the Coastal Plain. The strata in question are part of the Miocene-aged (~14 Ma) Calvert Formation. The Scientists’ Cliffs outcrops are better than the more famous outcrops at Calvert Cliffs State … Read more

Using M.A.G.I.C. to zoom in on trace fossils

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Yesterday, I worked on my sabbatical project, the Mid-Atlantic Geo-Image Collection (M.A.G.I.C.). Whether I go outside on a given day to shoot GigaPans of local geology depends on multiple factors: (a) How’s the weather? (b) Do I have to watch Baxter? (c) Can I bring Baxter with me? (d) How are the lighting conditions? Yesterday … Read more

Comparative GigaPan viewing for edification and amusement

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Our GIGAmacro photographic imaging system was built by Gene Cooper Four Chambers studio. They’ve also made a neat comparative GigaPan viewer available online. Here are 3 demonstration videos I just shot of how this sort of thing works: one macro sample of oolitic limestone, one of the flood/not-flood of Passage Creek, and one of a … Read more

Friday fold: LIDAR view of the Weverton Formation along the Blue Ridge front

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Dan Doctor of the US Geological Survey contributed this week’s Friday fold. It’s a lovely view of the asymmetric folds in the Cambrian-aged Weverton Formation (part of the Chilhowee Group, a Sauk-Sea passive margin transgressive sequence), exposed on the western flank of the western limb of the Blue Ridge Anticlinorium. It’s a LIDAR image, and … Read more

Do you believe in M.A.G.I.C.?

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It’s time for an update from the Mid-Atlantic Geo-Image Collection! The rest of Team M.A.G.I.C. is finally catching up with Robin Rohrback-Schiavone, although in this case she’s got a handicap since our GIGAmacro rig has (once again) developed a bug. It’s a tricky bit of business keeping that thing happy – but it sure does … Read more

More M.A.G.I.C.

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A new suite of GigaPans, all in this case by the prolific Robin Rohrback. link link link link link link Team MAGIC is presenting a talk and demonstration of our work next week at the U.S. Geological Survey, in Reston, Virginia. It’s going to be a great semester for making lots more cool images like … Read more

Friday fold: Up on Opequon Creek

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I got a call last month from Rebekah Wiedower, a landowner up in Frederick & Clarke counties (her family’s property includes pieces of both), inviting me to come up and look at some anticlines and synclines that Dan Doctor (USGS) had identified on the bank of Opequon Creek. I was glad to do it, though … Read more

Upturned Paleozoic strata on Highway 16, Bighorns, Wyoming

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Here’s a terrific outcrop to start off the new year at Mountain Beltway. We’re back in the Bighorns of Wyoming here, on highway 16, traversing the southern portion of the range en route from Buffalo to South Pass City. Click to enlarge Annotated, expanded, and Easter-egg-embedded: Click to enlarge From a different perspective (uphill a … Read more

Stromatolites of the Green River Formation

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The summer before last (2011), I spent some time in Wyoming on an energy resources field trip run by Sheridan College, and one stop we made was to look at “oil shale” (really kerogen-rich marlstone) of the Green River Formation, an Eocene lake deposit in southwestern Wyoming. The oil shale is exposed on the east … Read more

Digital images of the “Digital Geology Speed Dating” session at GSA

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Justin Samuel at GSA sent me these images from the annual meeting in Charlotte. They show me demonstrating GigaPan technology at the Pardee Symposium called “Digital Geology Speed Dating”. With my colleagues Ron Schott and Jen Piatek, I suggested that GigaPans are a cool medium with readily obvious geologic usage for research, outreach, and education. … Read more