Below are a bunch of images to give you a good sense of what I observed between about 5:15 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.   Sunrise was at about 6:50 a.m.   Most of the moon images are with the 70-200mm lens, with the Canon 5D.  A few are with the Canon 40D, which has the 1.6X conversion factor and makes the 200mm setting the equivalent of a 320mm setting.  Still, even at full zoom, quite a bit of cropping was necessary in editing to “blow up” the moon image to a decent size.  Check out the medium-bright star very close to the moon, at about 8 o’clock position.

The darkest skies within a reasonable distance from Los Angeles are probably those in the Death Valley region, in which you can find yourself 50 to 100 miles from a town of any size, and 100 to 200 miles from the gaudy lights of L.A., the Antelope Valley, Vegas, and Fresno.  That requires a 4 to 5-hour drive from my house, and more than 100 bucks in gas—boo hiss.  Plan Two—go to mom’s place, a little over 2 hours away!  On this Monday I was visiting my mom at her home in Palm Desert.  The Milky Way is dimly visible just outside her back door on most nights, but my 30-second exposure of the sky from here showed more light pollution than Milky Way.  I needed to get farther away from the L.A. megalopolis and the towns in the Coachella Valley.

At 7 p.m. I headed east on Interstate 10.  There is basically nothing along I-10 between Indio and Blythe, except for tiny Desert Center.  I wasn’t too concerned with the local light pollution at Desert Center, so that was my Milky Way target site!  About 50 miles from Palm Desert and Indio I came into Desert Center, and the Milky Way was blazing across the sky—YES!  I stopped in town to snap a couple of shots, and then headed north on Route 177.  The lights of Desert Center were a tad annoying, so it seemed prudent to set up a little farther north, on the east side of Joshua Tree National Park.  I went about 15 miles NNE on 177, a few miles past the jog where 177 goes from northeast to more to the north.  I pulled off to the west side of 177 into the tiny flat parking area for a communications tower.  I set up where the very tall tower was to my east, and not in the way of my precious Milky Way.  A light was illuminated on the little building next to the tower — what was up with that?!  A couple of minutes later it was off—I think it went on when a sensor detected my vehicle motion.

The night sky here was very, very nice and quite dark, though not quite as dark as the Death Valley area, as I expected.  The L.A. region and Coachella Valley are still a little too close for Death Valley-like skies, and there was a dim glow to the west and southwest.  I was happy, nonetheless!  I even saw a couple of bright meteors diving towards the southwest in my first minute or two here.

I plopped the 5D onto the tripod and shot mostly 25 to 30-second exposures at f2.8 with my 16-35 and 28-70mm lenses.  The star trails aren’t too obnoxious at 30 seconds at 16mm.  I had the ISO set from about 1600 to 2400.  Any higher than that, and the grain issues increase to unacceptable levels.  (Obviously, if I had had my Celestron telescope set up here, I could have taken longer exposures at lower ISOs by piggy-backing the camera to the scope and tracking the stars.)  I shot the sky to the southwest, where the Milky Way was nose-diving into the horizon.  I took a handful of the Milky Way in the “summer triangle” area that was nearly overhead (Vega/Deneb/Altair), plus a couple of the Big Dipper, on the horizon to the north, and the Andromeda Galaxy and vicinity up in the northeast.

By the way, the weather here was quite pleasant, with light winds and a temperature in the mid-80s.  There were some annoying small bugs around, though, that were intent on landing on my arms and legs.  I didn’t wind up with any mosquito bites, so apparently they were harmless!  I spent about 90 minutes here, and then went back to nearby 177 and shot a few “down-the-road” shots towards Desert Center and the I-10 corridor.  I flashed my high beams for a half second to light up the foreground.

By the way, the “comments” on Stormbruiser have been closed up until recently.  I have opened up the comments section —- so feel free to chime in if you have something to say.  Let me know, too, if you have any trouble posting a comment (my e-mail is bill@stormbruiser.com).

Above—two images in Desert Center, and three towards the southwest horizon, where Sagittarius is setting.

Above—the summer triangle region, Sagittarius, a meteor through the Milky Way, and a wide view to the southwest with the Milky Way above the urban glow of the Coachella Valley and L.A.

Above—the Andromeda Galaxy and vicinity, the Big Dipper, Lyra, and the Milky Way in the summer triangle region (including the constellations Cygnus, Lyra, and Aquila)

Above—a view to the southwest along 177 towards Desert Center

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.