August 2011

[greenknight]

For the dog days of summer, cooled down my desktop with a shot of the highest part of the Goat Rocks Wilderness, one of my favorite places. Though I haven't actually climbed up to where this photo was taken, probably from the Pacific Crest Trail. Lower down are old growth forests and lakes and stuff...more my style...view those rocks from a distance.

Anyway, I got this picture off Wikipedia:

Description: Gilbert Peak (8184', left) is the highest in Goat Rocks Wilderness. At the center is Goat Citadel (8000') and to its right are the horns, the highest being Big Horn (7850').

There might be mountain goats in this picture, but who could tell? Just be a white spot... I didn't do much to this photo, just resized it and cropped a little off the sides. Plus, it had a couple streaks across it, which I smudged and airbrushed out as best I could. As long as you don't look too close...

Photo ©2005 Walter Siegmund - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license. Which means you can do whatever you want with it as long as you attribute it and explain the license terms, generally by providing a link to the license page: Creative Commons — Attribution 2.5 Generic . Actually, they give you a choice between that or the newer version of the license...I don't know why, the terms haven't really changed. Only a lawyer could understand...

[James_A]

For the dog days of summer ...

Well, that phrase led me all round the interwebs...

Named after the dog star (Sirius) and the period when it rises with the sun (heliacal rising).

The conjunction of Sirius with the Sun was believed by the Romans and Greeks to cause extra heat in the summer period of July/August (dates vary according to who you believe).

Nowadays, this cause is recognised as complete rubbish, because it's all due to the tilting of the earth's axis w.r.t the Sun. And Sirius apparently isn't a single star -- it's a binary (Sirius A & Sirius B).

Amazing how much you can learn from Wikipedia

Nice pic, too!

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