* Astronomy

A conversation about wanting the window seat over the aisle in an airplane reminded me of this photograph I took when flying into Austin. About 40 miles southeast of Austin a large (I mean very large) plot of land has been cleared so that the remaining trees spell out "LUECKE" - the landowner's name. Allegedly the project resulted from a dispute between the county government and the landowner. There are no good explanations for "why?" and "how?" but somehow the owner could keep as much of the land that he put to use.
Besides being a landmark for pilots and a location hunt for google earth users, NASA uses the letters to calculate "spatial resolution for lower contrast vegetation boundaries" in images taken from space.

LUECKE.kmz
Google Sky file (1kb, kmz)

Latitude: 30° 5'15.03"N, Longitude: 97° 8'28.07"W

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-- Edited by Blobrana at 15:36, 2008-01-12