August 21, 2017
Being that Joshua Tree is a bit of a drive(almost 200 miles to the shooting locations), I decided to see if there was a location that was a bit closer to the cave that would provide enough darkness to photograph the Milky Way. So after consulting the DarkSkyFinder.com light pollution map, I settled on a location about 90 miles northwest(as the crow flies) of Downtown Los Angeles in Lockwood Valley at the foot of Mt. Pinos. I was somewhat familiar with the area since the Boy Scout Camp(Camp Three Falls) is in the valley and I ended up setting up my gear on the Boy Scout Camp Road. Also since my last trip to Joshua Tree, I’d purchased a “Red Intensifier” filter, which is said to reduce some of the yellow cast you see from light pollution. The first 5 pictures are from this shooting session. The last two pictures are from Joshua Tree since I noticed something in one of the picture that I thought was interesting and I acquired some new software to do panorama stitching that made some panorama shots that I’d take usable.
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Andromeda!
This is a zoomed in (1:1) detail of one of the source photos used for the panorama in the shot above. The Milky Way is in the upper left hand side of the shot. I’d like to thank valued commenter and perennial Presidential candidate (don’t call me Harold Stassen) Baud for inspiring me to take another look at my photos to see if I’d captured the Andromeda Galaxy.
