Brian and Nancy Morganti timed their trip to the California desert around the new moon in early March, in order to experience the dark night skies here.  They live close to the light pollution of Reading and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  I teamed up with them on several days during this week in March, and each night we were treated to an excellent look at the heavens.  It was also, coincidentally, the time of the year when the Zodiacal Light was  most easily observed after dusk.  (As I explain in my write-up for March 8th) the ZL is due to sunlight on dust particles along the solar plane between the planets.  It is generally only visible under the darkest of conditions, with negligible-to-zero light interference from cities or the moon.  Brian noted the ZL on our first night out in the southern part of Death Valley, and we put our cameras to work! It should be noted that these images were taken with a Canon 5D Mark II camera with a 16-35mm zoom lens set at an aperture of F2.8. ISO settings of about 1600 to 4000 worked best, and exposure times varied from about 15 to 30 seconds in length. In many cases, the exposure was jacked up a stop or two in the image software.

This entry will contain images of the Zodiacal Light on four nights.  The first set is from March 8, and these were taken from a spot along Highway 178 in southern Death Valley, between Jubilee Pass and Ashford Mill (and probably closer to Ashford Mill).  The elevation was about 300 feet above sea level.   The nearest town was dinky Shoshone, about 25 miles to the east, and our cameras could pick up the glow from Las Vegas, some 90 miles to the east (image 1679).  In addition to the large lenticular clouds above Death Valley, you should be able to spot the Andromeda Galaxy, the Pleiades, Orion, and Sirius in one or more of the images. We even observed a few lightning flashes to the very distant north, but these do not show in the photos!

On March 12 the three of us were treated to a great display of lenticular clouds shortly after sunset near the Sierra Nevada and Owens Valley.  We were not too far north of Darwin, along 190, on a plateau between the Panamint Valley and Owens Valley.  With Zodiacal Light photography in mind, we zeroed in on the Owens Lake area, just 15 minutes to our west.  A good view to the west was desirable, so we headed to Keeler and then motored up the dirt road to Cerro Gordo a couple of miles.  We must have set up at an elevation near 5000 feet, or about 1000 feet above Keeler and the dry/almost-dry lake.  It was indeed extremely dark!  It was nearly impossible to see where we were stepping, and the ZL was very obvious to the naked eye!  Some ACSL (altocumulus standing lenticular) clouds remained, but enough ZL was visible to make photography more than worthwhile.

The following day, March 13, we found ourselves climbing out of the south end of Saline Valley at dusk. This had the potential to be a fabulous ZL viewing night, as skies were clear, we would soon be in that Joshua Tree forest at an elevation over 5000 feet, and this was a region with very dark skies! We found a nice open flat area along Saline Valley Road near Lees Flat, and set up the cameras and tripods. It was later in the evening compared to the previous couple of nights when we observed the ZL, and I suspect that it was a little past the prime viewing time for it. Nonetheless, the Zodiacal Light was still quite visible low in the western sky, and the skies were about as black and star-filled as I had ever seen! There was one issue, however — it was cold and windy! I think the temperature was in the low 30s, and wind was 10-20 mph. Brian and I spent about 30 minutes outside and then wrapped things up and headed back to Lone Pine.

For the images below, besides bringing the brightness up in Photoshop, I somewhat liberally adjusted the tint and “temperature” in order to produce what may or may not be considered a more appealing picture. In real life, the ZL is a fairly faint whitish glow with little or no color to it. These 30-second exposures and the image software reveal quite a bit of color to the night sky!

March 14th was our final night together to shoot the night sky and the Zodiacal Light. We were in the Eureka Valley at the dunes at sunset. There are zero settlements in this desert basin, and only a couple of very tiny towns are within about 60 miles. The night sky would be extremely dark here, but there were some very thin cirrus clouds around. We drove back from the dunes to Death Valley Road, and then went east (upslope) a few miles towards the Last Chance Mountains. There was a nice flat area by the road here with a great view to the west.

My camera was piggybacked onto my Celestron 8-inch scope, and I shot several images of Orion and vicinity.  It should be easy to make out Orion and Canis Major in the first shot below, taken with a lot of lingering dusk light.  The camera is aimed at Cassiopeia next (2228), and the next two (2231, 2233) and the last one (2249) are back to Orion.  With the camera piggybacked, I was able to track the sky and take exposures of several minutes.  The long exposures, coupled with the very dark skies, allowed some of the very faint nebulosity around Orion to be picked up.  There is an “arc” of nebulosity called “Barnard’s Loop”, which is quite difficult to photograph, at least conventionally.  Barnard’s Loop is faintly apparent on these three images as a purplish curve around the left side of Orion’s belt and sword.

There are three images here of the Zodiacal Light. The black and white image is pretty close to what the ZL looks like to the human eye, in person. The second-to-last image is centered close to Mars, with the Beehive star cluster (M44) in Cancer nearby.

lenticular clouds from Jubilee Pass

My friends Brian and Nancy drove from their home in Pennsylvania to California — to vacation in the desert!  I had been pestering Brian for a while to explore Death Valley and vicinity, as, like me, he loves to poke around ghost towns, explore new territory, and to photograph old stuff and stark landscapes.  Brian and Nancy would be touring Death Valley this week, and I would be joining them for a few days next weekend to show them some of the surrounding desert basins and mountains.  I took this Monday off to meet them in Baker, and we had a fun day of photography as we descended from 940 feet at Baker at noon, to below sea level at Mormon Point in Death Valley at sunset.

Baker calls itself the “Gateway To Death Valley”.  In summer, midday temperatures can be well over 110F, but this early spring day was partly cloudy and very mild, in the mid-60s.  Skies were slightly hazy due to onshore flow ahead of a strong trough that was digging into the state.  This would cause some strong winds and mountain wave clouds  over Death Valley later in the day.

We spent much of the afternoon at Saratoga Springs and at the Ibex Sand Dunes (above), and then continued northwest on the dirt road into the southern end of Death Valley. Near sunset we were perusing the salt flats near Mormon Point, and soon strong winds were kicking up sand and dust. Some neat standing lenticular altocumulus clouds were developing overhead, and I was eager to shoot these with the 5D as the sky darkened. Brian and Nancy had motel reservations in Shoshone, so we headed that way towards Jubilee Pass on 178. We stopped about halfway between Ashford Mill and Jubilee Pass for one last photo stop, and the wave cloud just to the north was quite nice. As the last light of dusk faded, Brian observed an obvious but faint glow in the western sky — it was the Zodiacal Light! This is a phenomenon that I was not very familiar with, and something that I may have seen before, but was not aware of what it was. The Zodiacal Light is due to sunlight illuminating small dust particles in our solar system along and near the ecliptic/solar plane/zodiac. It is always “there”, but it is most easily observed in early spring in the west after sunset (or in autumn in the eastern sky before sunrise), and, in very dark conditions, well away from any light pollution, and with no moonlight. We observed the ZL on this night and on several nights the following weekend. I included one image of the ZL on this page, and an entire page devoted to my ZL images from this week in March will be forthcoming soon.

I left the dunes a bit after sunset and headed out of the Eureka Valley and up into the Inyos.  The temp was in the 40s in the Eureka Valley (elevation about 3000 feet), but it fell to near freezing fairly quickly as I entered snow-covered terrain above 6000 feet.  I decided to stop along a straight and flat stretch of Death Valley Road.  I later learned that this was near 7000 feet elevation, not too far east of the road into Saline Valley.  Several inches of snow covered the road shoulders.  I didn’t want to be walking in snow and freezing my feet faster than necessary, so I parked halfway in the road.  I had seen only two other vehicles since early afternoon.  As it turned out, no one passed by while I was at this location.  The dark and star-filled sky above was fairly spectacular, but there did appear to be some high cirrus around.  Oh well, the high clouds weren’t too bad, so I tripodded the 5D and started taking some wide-angle shots of one to two-minutes in length.  With wide angle lenses such as 16 mm, you can get away with exposures of about a minute.  Exposures of 90 seconds or more start to show the annoying star trails.  During the exposures, I set up the C8 telescope and plugged it in to the X-terra’s DC outlet.  I was going to try some piggy-back photography while the scope (and its motorized equatorial mount) tracked the sky.

The three images below were tripodded (not tracking).  The first one (0919/25mm, 47 sec, f2.8, ISO 800) is looking ENE, towards Auriga and Taurus.  The brightest star near the center is Capella.  The middle frame (0922/16mm, 76 sec, f3.5, ISO 1000) is looking WNW to NW, towards the “Summer Triangle” stars of Deneb, Altair, and Vega.  The Milky Way is nice and bright through Cygnus.  Distant high clouds and sky are illuminated, perhaps, by Big Pine and Bishop, and maybe even Mammoth Lakes.  The third image (0924/16mm, 68 sec, f3.2, ISO 1000) is looking down the road to the southwest, right at Jupiter.  I’m not sure if the light near the horizon on this image (and the previous one) is due to town lights or the last light of dusk.  Time of day was about 7:10 p.m. PST.

The seven images below were taken with the camera “piggybacked” on the telescope, so that the night sky would be tracked during the long exposures.  I did a really quick and dirty polar alignment, so the tracking is far from perfect, but generally adequate for these wide images.  Here are the stats:

0926/16mm, 107 sec, f3.2, ISO 1000

0927/33mm, 101 sec, f2.8, ISO 1000

0930/33mm, 208 sec, f2.8, ISO 800

0931/33mm, 211 sec, f2.8, ISO 800

0932/70mm, 58 sec, f2.8, ISO 800

0933/70mm, 92 sec, f2.8, ISO 1250

0929/33mm, 95 sec, f3.2, ISO 800

0926 is rotated about 45 degrees from level, since the camera is mounted on the scope. This wide angle shot shows much of the telescope tube, since the camera mount is near the back of the tube. In this very wide-angle shot to the east, Orion is about halfway up on the horizon, and the Pleiades star cluster is near the center.

0927 is looking towards Cygnus and its bright star Deneb. Faint nebulosity is visible in the Milky Way, even the North American Nebula, near Deneb and the middle of the image.

0930 is centered near the Pleiades. The purplish California Nebula is visible in the image above the Pleiades. Capella is the bright star in the upper left.

0931 is another view of Orion and vicinity to the east.

0932 is a somewhat tighter view compared to the previous shots, towards the Andromeda/Perseus/Cassiopeia region. This was nearly overhead at the time. The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is prominent at the bottom.

0933 is a cropped look at part of Orion. The red giant Betelguese shines bright!

0929 is looking nearly overhead again, and you should be able to recognize the “W” outline in Cassiopeia (just above and to the left of center). On the left side of the image is the Double Cluster in Perseus, and M31 appears again near the bottom.

After about 90 minutes of focusing, changing lenses, pushing buttons, wrenching my neck and picture-taking with numb fingers, my extremities had had enough. I packed up the gear and headed back home via Big Pine and the Owens Valley. The thermometer read 22F as I left my lonely location with the heater on high blast. It will be fun to revisit this dark region with the same equipment on a warmer night, without cirrus! I am very impressed with the capabilities of the Canon 5D Mark II beneath starry skies. Of course, Photoshop helped a lot with these images. Exposures were jacked up in each case to bring out more stars.  Here are two other versions of image 0933, courtesy of Morganti Magic, Inc.:

Of the eight images below, numbers one, three, and eight take a look at the Inyo Mountains.  This range rises on the east side of Owens Valley.  (Actually, Owens Valley is not a valley, but is a “basin”, as its waters drain ultimately into Owens Lake, a sink which is actually not a lake but a “playa” or a “dry lake,” because Owens River waters are diverted from their course towards Owens Lake and into the Los Angeles Aqueduct, except that recently more Owens River water is permitted to flow into Owens Lake in order to reduce the dust that blows off of the lake, leaving the youngsters of Los Angeles without drinking water.  Got it?)  Other images show some cool standing lenticular clouds in the wake of the Sierra Nevada.   These clouds are fairly common in winter, as fast westerly winds aloft ride up and over the range (forming a “mountain wave”).  Pics 6 and 7 are telephotos of an ACSL (altocumulus standing lenticular) well to the north.  On the left side are the Sierra Nevada and the Alabama Hills, near Lone Pine.

As skies darkened, I motored to the east side of Owens Lake and up Cerro Gordo Mine Road.  This is a lonely dirt road which ascends from near Keeler, at about 3600 feet elevation, to Cerro Gordo, at about 8000 feet.  I drove up about 2/3 of the way to Cerro Gordo, and stopped to shoot the stars and the view across Owens Valley to the Sierra.  Pic 1 below shows Keeler, along Owens Lake, looking west-southwest.  The seventh image shows an obnoxious bright area, courtesy of a flood light at a mining area in the Inyos east of Dolomite.  A meteor was kind enough to burn up within my frame and during the exposure for pic five below…or was it something else?  Richard Dickson informs me that the bright streak near the top of the image is an “Iridium Flare”. He checked my time and location and determined that I had stopped very close to the “center-line of brightness” of one of these brief reflections off of a satellite.  Mine had a magnitude of negative 8!  I was lucky to have the shutter open and the camera pointing in the right direction at the time!

I have plenty of images of Mount Whitney in the Bill Reid photo archives, but all of them are slides.  It was high time to get some digital pixels of California’s highest peak.  I set the alarm in my Lone Pine motel room to some horrible early hour, like 6 a.m., so I could catch the early warm light as it bathed the rugged granite escarpment west of town.  The alarm went off as scheduled, so I turned it off and got my money’s worth at the motel by sleeping in until 10 a.m.   These images were shot around noon, along Whitney Portal Road.  There is a series of closely-spaced and prominent “spires” in pics one and two below.  The Day Needle and the Keeler Needle are on the right, and Mount Whitney (to the right of these features) is obscured by terrain in the foreground.  Wotans Throne dominates the left side of the first image (0936).   The wide-angle shots (3 and 4) show the needles and Mount Whitney in the distance, looking up Lone Pine Canyon.  Mount Whitney is front and almost center in image 5 (0952).     Pics 10, 11 and 12 were taken from near Independence (north of Lone Pine), and the final two are the same image, one in black and white, on the way east through the Inyo Mountains from Big Pine on Death Valley Road.  This is looking west towards the Sierra, visible in the distance.

The final six images on this page were taken along Death Valley Road.  The road is paved as it winds through the Inyo Mountains, but is unpaved as it reaches the flat sections of the Eureka Valley.  Near “pass level” is Saline Valley Road, also known as Waucoba Road here, at an elevation of about 7300 feet.  This lonely road heads south into beautiful and desolate Saline Valley, which bottoms out at just over 1000 feet elevation.  The weather-battered sign reads:

Marble Canyon–8, Lower Warm Springs Road–35, Hunter Mountain Road–67, State Highway 190–84.

I have driven the full length of Saline Valley Road just once, and it takes you into one of the most remote areas of the country!  If you break down here, it’s going to be a while before help arrives.  If you are in a hurry, you can make the drive from this spot to Route 190 in about four hours.  And, like the sign says, there are no places in the Saline Valley to buy a soda or restrooms to hide in when nature calls.   There are no telephone poles or electricity service, either.  Anyway, the Saline Valley images and account will come later.  The other images show some lower elevation areas on the descent into Eureka Valley, including a pretty area with many Joshua Trees.

Amboy, California, is a tiny town buried in the middle of the eastern Mojave Desert.  It is on old U.S. 66, but when Interstate 40 was built in the 1970s, it missed the town by about 10 miles.  There is now little reason to pass through Amboy, except for nostalgia’s sake, or to enjoy the blistering heat of summer by yourself, or to photograph the world-famous “Roy’s” sign.

As I approached Amboy at dusk on this clear and crisp evening, I was thinking that I might be able to get some cool shots of the moonrise behind the Roy’s sign.  Moonrise was spectacular the day before, as the moon was full or just past full.  While waiting for moonrise, I spent time shooting some wide-angle shots of the sign and the adjacent motel and cafe/convenience store.  The sign did not have lights of its own, but was illuminated by a bright flood light near the gas pumps.  With the camera on the tripod, my 10, 20, and 30 second exposures were picking up more and more stars.  Soon, the Milky Way was in nearly full display!  I cranked up the ISO to 800 to 1600, opened the aperture to 2.8 to 3.5, and shot 20 to 30-second exposures until the glow of the moon behind the nearby mountains became a nuisance.  Those 20 or 30 minutes of very dark skies beneath the Roy’s sign were very cool!  My moonrise shots wound up to be a little anti-climactic.  That final image that looks like an annular eclipse of the moon is due to some fun and games in Photoshop.