- Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star of spectral type M1-2 and one of the largest visible to the naked eye. It is usually the tenth-brightest star in the night sky and, after Rigel, the second-brightest in the constellation of Orion. It is a distinctly reddish, semiregular variable star whose apparent magnitude, varying between +0.0 and +1.6, has the widest range displayed by any first-magnitude star. At near-infrared wavelengths, Betelgeuse is the brightest star in the night sky. Its Bayer designation is α Orionis, Latinised to Alpha Orionis and abbreviated Alpha Ori or α Ori.
- Blowers Bluff, Whidbey Island (nwgeology.wordpress.com)
This is the second installment in the series of field trips to glacial and interglacial stratigraphy on Whidbey Island. The thick stack of geologic strata at Blowers Bluff are spectacular! Here is colorful and intricately stratified sediment from Whidbey interglacial times right above the beach, overlain sequentially by the Possession glacial till and glaciomarine drift, thin Olympia interglacial deposits, Vashon advance outwash (Esperance ‘sand’), Vashon till and, at the cliff top, the Everson glaciomarine drift. However, the sequence is in places deeply eroded, with Vashon sediments sitting directly on Whidbey, or even right at beach level. Refer back to the table listing Pleistocene glacial and interglacial units on Whidbey Island.