Death Valley 03: Dune Edge 1

Image Commentary

The details of the dunes never cease to amaze us. Here we see an almost perfect knife edge, crenellated lightly by the interplay with a train of low-amplitude wind blown sand ripples that are almost totally symetrical. The dunes are composed prdominantly of small, well rounded grains of quartz (silicon dioxide - SiO2) but as the color variations on the successive faces of the ripples shown in this image would imply, there are variations in the grain composition. The darker grains are typically a variety of minerals that share a common source with the quartz.