By Chris Parsons. It's a landscape picture so spectacularly beautiful many cynics will suspect it has come from computer photo-wizardry. But the photographer who captured this stunning vista of the orange sun splashed gloriously across a mountaintop claims the amazing view was all natural.
Harry Lichtman saw the awe-inspiring scene during a sunrise over Grinnell Peak in Glacier National Park, Montana, at the exact moment the peak was bathed in orange sunlight. Sunrise spectacular: Harry Lichtman captured this picturesque scene in Montana when early morning sun bathed orange light over Grinnell Peak.
Mr Lichtman said a combination of the sun's warm glow, along with the reddish brown of Grinnell Peak's sedimentary rock, helped create the unique early morning landscape. The year-old also points out that evergreen trees in the left corner of the picture are also turning red at the sun-shade boundary.
And he insists that, although many may suspect otherwise, the incredible image did not receive any Photoshop treatment. Mr Lichtman, from Newmarket, New Hampshire, said: 'The morning started out pretty stormy and cloudy, which can be magical, as in this case, or a real dud. Waterton-Glacier has some of the oldest and best preserved sedimentary rocks found anywhere in North America.
Usually, over time and with heat and pressure, sedimentary rock becomes metamorphic rock. For example, limestone becomes marble. It is quite unusual that this old rock still retains its sedimentary characteristics. Some of the earliest forms of life on earth were oxygen producing bacteria known as cyanobacteria. Six species of cyanobacteria, often called blue-green algae, thrived in shallow parts of the Belt Sea and played a significant role in the formation of the carbonate rocks of the park.
The remains of these cyanobacteria are called Stromatolites. Found mostly in the Altyn and Helena Siyeh Formations, Stromatolites have shapes and internal structures very similar to blue-green algae that live in present-day seas less than feet 30 m deep. The closest modern day examples can be found off the coast of southwest Australia. Starting as a small clump of blue-green algae, stromatolites grow by catching sediments moving in the water around them. With each new layer of sediment grows a new layer of algae, repeatedly expanding the mat of algae until it resembles a column or cone.
Today their fossils can take on various shapes and sizes, but often resemble the cross-section of a jawbreaker or swirls of water. Today, we are living in a relatively warm interglacial period. All remnants of the Pleistocene ice have disappeared. There are no active glaciers in Waterton Lakes National Park; however, the last survey in Glacier NP resulted in about two dozen named alpine glaciers. They are of relatively recent origin, having likely formed in the last 6, to 8, years.
They probably grew rapidly during the Little Ice Age that started about years ago and ended about However, they work in the same way as larger glaciers of the past. A glacier forms when more snow falls each winter than melts the next summer. With alternating freezing and thawing, the snow becomes granular ice.
As these layers build up, the ice recrystallizes, becomes denser, and eventually forms a massive sheet. A glacier is a mass of ice so big that it flows under its own weight. A commonly used threshold for determining if a body of ice is big enough to flow under its own weight is an area of 0.
Below this size the ice is less likely to move and is not considered a glacier. This general definition works most of the time, but there are exceptions. Some glaciers may be smaller than 0.
Others may stop moving under their own weight and still remain larger than 0. Ice near the surface of the glacier is often hard and brittle. Due to the pressure of ice above, the ice near the bottom of the glacier becomes flexible.
This flexible layer allows the ice to move. Depending on the amount of ice, the angle of the mountainside, and the pull of gravity, the ice may start to move downhill. Once the ice begins to move, it is called a glacier. As the ice moves, it plucks rock from the sides and bottom of the valleys. Rocks falling on the glacier from above mix with the glacial ice as well. Over long periods of time the sandpaper-like quality of the moving ice and rock scours and reshapes the land into broad U-shaped valleys, sharp peaks, and lake-filled basins.
Tree-ring studies indicate that retreat of the recent glaciation began about When Glacier National Park was established in , there were around 80 glaciers within the national park compared to about two dozen now. Retreat rates appear to have been slow until about There was a period of rapid retreat during the mid- to late s.
This corresponds to a period of warmer summer temperatures and decreased precipitation in this region. Several of the larger glaciers separated into two smaller glaciers at this time. Explore This Park. Glacier National Park Montana. Info Alerts Maps Calendar Reserve. Alerts In Effect Dismiss. Dismiss View all alerts. The geologic processes happened in three stages: 1. Ripple formations in argillite.
NPS Ancient Sediments — 1. The ancient Belt Sea covered parts of present-day eastern Washington, northern Idaho, western Montana, and nearby areas in Canada. During the period of active deposition over 18, feet m of sediment eroded from nearby highlands and were carried into the sea.
Accumulation of sediment subsequently resulted in downwarping of the sea floor. Also, over time and as environmental conditions varied, a variety of different materials were eroded and washed into the Belt Sea. With time the sediments of the Belt Sea accumulated into vast layers, which allowed years of mounting heat and pressure to create layers of quartzite, siltite, argillite, limestone, and dolomite. The sedimentary nature of the rocks in Waterton-Glacier and their history as part of a vast inland sea can be seen in preserved mudcracks, ripples, and layers.
Strictly speaking the crystal structure of each sedementary formation has been slightly metamorphosed, creating what can accurately be called metasedimentary rock. The combined rock formations that occur in Waterton-Glacier are part of the Precambrian Belt Supergroup, and can be seen above treeline in one-third of the park.
From the pebbles in Lake McDonald to the faces of entire mountains, perhaps the most eye-catching feature of Glacier's geology is it's varying shades of red and green. Different layers of rock in Glacier can be dramatically different colors, and their color can tell us a great deal about their history. The process that created these striking colors centers around one element: Iron. The argillite in the park throughout its formation contained significant amounts of iron, which is a reactive metal.
The red colors in our rocks formed the same way! As the belt sea began to retreat, it exposed argillite and the iron within to oxygen, allowing for oxidation to occur.
Conversely, the green found in our rocks is a result of argillite forming without access to oxygen. Forming underwater in the belt sea, argillite starved of oxygen instead goes through a process known as reduction, with iron bonding to silica compounds. Under heat and pressure the iron-silicate minerals were converted to chlorite, a mineral which produced the green rocks found in the park today. Stromatolite Fossils found near Grinnell Glacier. NPS Stromatolites — a fossil algae colony dating from the Belt Sea Some of the earliest forms of life on earth were oxygen producing bacteria known as cyanobacteria.
As some of the earliest forms of photosynthetic life, stromatolites began to change the world around them.
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