APOD: 2021 May 11 - Lightning and Orion Beyond Uluru

Good morning, Rallypoint. Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) is titled "Lightning and Orion Beyond Uluru." The Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) is a large sandstone formation in the Northern Territory of Australia. Here we see the Uluru framed by a thunderstorm to the left and the constellation Orion overhead. Geologists call Uluru an inselberg, a prominent isolated residual knob or hill that rises abruptly from and is surrounded by extensive and relatively flat erosion lowlands in a hot, dry region. Uluru is composed of coarse-grained arkose (a sedimentary rock composed mostly of feldspar). Quartz and general rock fragments are abundant.

I enjoyed the sense of mystery surrounding the ancestral legend of Uluru from the Australian Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts web site:

"The world was once a featureless place. None of the places we know existed until creator beings, in the forms of people, plants and animals, traveled widely across the land. Then, in a process of creation and destruction, they formed the landscape as we know it today. Aṉangu land is still inhabited by the spirits of dozens of these ancestral creator beings which are referred to as Tjukuritja or Waparitja."