Callan and his colleague Jay Kaufman (University of Maryland) go to extraordinary lengths to document an intriguing block of rock in northern Virginia’s Blue Ridge province. Great images and a lot of fun result – but what do these rocks tell us?
I took a trip down to Charlottesville this week for a couple of meetings, and I made time along the way to capture two new GigaPans of the lovely exposures of Catoctin Formation greenstone at Rockfish Gap, where Interstate 64 traverses the Blue Ridge. This is very close to the southernmost tip of Shenandoah National … Read more
Are you into structure? Sedimentology? Stratigraphy? Well, I’ve got some good news for you – I’ve imaged several key outcrops on the newly-discovered (to me) roadcut on South Page Valley Road, showcasing the middle Martinsburg Formation turbidites (and their Alleghanian structural overprint). [gigapan id=”126510″] link [gigapan id=”126514″] link [gigapan id=”126509″] link [gigapan id=”126483″] link [gigapan … Read more
Today, two GigaPans shot of the uppermost Martinsburg Formation, informally known as the “Cub Sandstone” since it crops out along Cub Run in the southern part of the Massanutten range. 10 or 15 meters upsection (west) of these two outcrops is the base of the Silurian-aged Massanutten Sandstone, the ridge-forming unit. Lower in the section: … Read more
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
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
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
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
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
A new suite of GigaPans, all in this case by the prolific Robin Rohrback. [gigapan id=”121349″] link [gigapan id=”120437″] link [gigapan id=”121594″] link [gigapan id=”120267″] link [gigapan id=”121592″] link [gigapan id=”120266″] 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 … Read more