The Milky Way is extra bright in summer and fall because we can see the galactic core, the center of our universe, easily. One evening, my friend Jenny and I headed to Ward Charcoal Ovens near Ely, NV. We had it all to ourselves on a calm, cloud-free night. Yay! We put a tea candle in each of the charcoal ovens and then tried a variety of photos with various light painting options to light up the ovens.
Can you see Jenny in the door of the oven?
Another evening I decided to check out the night life of tractors. I was a little surprised to hear some squeaking from one trailer. I guess they aren't always quiet, lol.
I was also surprised by all the green airglow. Apparently you can see it in the darkest night skies. It may also be more evident when there is more aurora activity, which is caused by more solar activity. Our sun is the most active it's been since 2002.
Then I headed down to some sunflowers. It's such a good sunflower year!
Just seeing the Milky Way gets me excited. I've been wanting to learn more about astronomy, so I've gone to five astronomy programs at Great Basin National Park this summer. They're held on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights. On one off night, a couple of the astronomers offered to help Desert Boy get his telescope working properly. He had been given one but couldn't figure it out. Fortunately, with the expert help, he was soon seeing really cool objects like binary stars, globular clusters, nebula, and more.
I was having fun taking photos at the same time.
Desert Boy was even able to show some other people things through his telescope. He can't wait to use it again--but now we're in a cloudy pattern, so he'll have to wait a few nights. It won't be long until he can explore more of our marvelous night sky.
1 comment:
The stars are beautiful. You are lucky to live out where you can see them so clearly.
To my own eye, the pictures are best would be with the foreground items visible, but dim, so that the stars still are the main thing.
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