It’s time for an update from the Mid-Atlantic Geo-Image Collection!

The rest of Team M.A.G.I.C. is finally catching up with Robin Rohrback-Schiavone, although in this case she’s got a handicap since our GIGAmacro rig has (once again) developed a bug. It’s a tricky bit of business keeping that thing happy – but it sure does make some purty pictures. We recently got it a new lighting system, which helps. In particular, I encourage you to explore the fossiliferous goodies you can find at deep zoom in the Keyser Limestone sample below. In addition, I was able to document a flood down the hill from my house, and Chris Johnson is off the bench and back in the game, turning in three structure-filled GigaPans of the Point of Rocks water gap area. After our talk at the USGS the week before last, Robin and Alan Pitts demonstrated the GigaPans for the ~25 or so members of the Eastern Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center who attended. This allowed images of some museum-quality specimens housed at the USGS, and therefore pretty inaccessible to most of the world. But now, through the magic of GigaPan, you can check them out for yourselves…

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I’d like to thank a few people for sharing their rocks with us: David & Leslie Nanney donated one specimen (Minerals and fossils in the same specimen? Wowza!), and our gratitude goes out to them. Thanks also to my colleague Michael Mengason for donating that magnificent slab of Devonian limestone. Jay Kaufman of the University of Maryland has loaned his entire Precambrian collection to us over the past year, and we’ve featured many of them previously, but there are three newly-produced images shown in this batch. Thanks Nanneys! Thanks Michael! Thanks Jay!

I’d also like to thank Alan and his USGS supervisor Dan Doctor for setting up the opportunity for our team to speak at USGS. That was an honor and a privilege.

Folks, we’re cranking out these images, and they’re all for you. M.A.G.I.C. images are freely available online for you to use as you see fit. Educators, let us know if you use M.A.G.I.C. images in your work. We’re officially collecting “usage anecdotes” for our soon-to-be-launched website.