Gorgeous Images of Ireland That Will Make You Wish You Were There
A Photo Tour of the Emerald Isle
It's not hard to find an Irish bar to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but you can't beat the real deal: the Emerald Isle itself. With lush countryside, gorgeous sea views and medieval castles, Ireland is a stunning country. Click through this slideshow, and you can see for yourself. Pictured: Ashford Castle. Built in the 13th century, the castle has since been transformed into a five-star luxury hotel.
Fair Head
Fair Head is a rocky headland about three miles east of Ballycastle, a small beach town in Northern Ireland. The cliffs reach almost 200 meters above the sea.
Castle Bernard
Castle Bernard, near Brandon in County Cork, was burned down by the Irish Republican Army in the 1920s.
Fin Lough
Fin Lough is the most popular of the Delphi lakes, marked by shallow water and high fish stocks.
Nephin
Nephin is the second highest peak in County Mayo in the West Region of Ireland.
nishbofin
Inishbofin is an island about eight kilometers off the coast of Connemara in County Galway.
Bunratty Castle
Bunratty Castle is located by the Ratty river in County Clare.
Clonony Castle
Clonony Castle is surrounded by a moat and gardens and open for tours.
Killough
A small seaside village in County Down, Killough is home to about 200 residents and was the filming location for the Academy Award-winning movie "The Shore."
Scrabo Tower
Scrabo Tower is a landmark west of Newtownards, a large town in County Down. The tower can be seen in the background, across the water.
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Mt. McKinley's New Height: Still Growing
Earlier this month, Alaska’s Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell announced that cartographers had a new height evaluation for Mount McKinley or Denali as the mountain is known locally in Alaska.
“The good news is: Denali is still the tallest peak in North America,” he added.
The bad news was it was shorter; the new report gave a height of 20,237 feet (6,168 m) or 83 feet shorter than the 1952 estimate of 20,320 feet (6,194 m).
Shortly after the announcement however, Kari Craun of the U.S. Geological Survey clarified the measurements to the Associated Press and National Geographic explaining that the results were an average for an area around the summit rather than a specific height record of the mountain’s peak.
To obtain the new height estimate, the USGS and its partners, including the State of Alaska, used a digital elevation model that took into account data collected in 2010 from an airborne, snow and ice penetrating, Interferometric Synthethic Aperture Radar (InSAR), which was added into the National Elevation Dataset this year. But models are only as good as the data being fed into them, and the InSAR data provided an average height for a 269-square-foot (25-square-meter) area around the summit, not a point reference to its tallest peak.
Today NASA’s Earth Observatory went one step further, with a reminder that the mountain is still, in fact, growing: “by about 1 millimeter (.04 inches) per year due to the ongoing collision of the Pacific and North American plates.”
So the 1952 survey may still mark the mountain’s highest peak – which today might even be a couple inches taller. Officially, the USGS takes no position in favor of either the 1952 elevation or the recent 83-feet shorter measurement. The point of the recent survey was to gain a better overall, bird’s-eye view of Alaska’s rugged terrain. Indeed the new data identified an entire ridgeline of Mt. Dickey in Denali National Park that was missing from previous maps.
Even at the shorter height however, McKinley is still 680 feet taller than its closest competitor, Canada’s Mount Logan. And as mountaineer Nick Parker told Anchorage Daily News: “It’s still high, it’s still hard, it’s still cold.”
NASA Earth Observatory image collected by the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8satellite on June 16, 2013
