- While the lower of the two falls on Lacamas Creek - given the colorful name of Lower Falls - isn’t nearly as pronounced as its upstream sibling, the falls are rather unique in that they have a rather massive face. Here Lacamas Creek slides over a long, domed outcrop, cascading a total of about 45 vertical feet in a run of about 225 feet. In low water, the creek splits into several braids as it slides down the face, but in higher water periods the falls take on a whole new character. What photographs fail to illustrate is how long the falls actually are - there is a significant foreshortening factor at play here, cutting off the top 20 vertical feet of the falls. Unfortunately there really isn’t any way to photograph the entire fall from above.
northwest waterfall survey of
- Ursa Major moving group (Wikipedia)
The Ursa Major Moving Group, also known as Collinder 285 and the Ursa Major association, is the closest stellar moving group – a set of stars with common velocities in space and thought to have a common origin in space and time. In the case of the Ursa Major group, all the stars formed about 300 million years ago. Its core is located roughly 80 light years away and part of the Local Bubble. It is rich in bright stars including most of the stars of the Big Dipper.