August 21, 2019

Another new moon and another trip to Joshua Tree. This time I stopped in Redlands along the way to take some IR pics of the University of Redlands. I got back on the freeway and headed east to Joshua Tree. I arrived before my colleague and got some good sunset shots. We decided to shoot at a place called Belle Campground which is about a mile north of Arch Rock. We didn't realize until we got to the campground entrance that they're closed in the summer months(it's really hot) so we walked in from the locked gate. There were a couple of rocks with a nice gap, so while we were waiting for it to get dark enough for Milky Way shots, I shot the twilight between the rocks. Once it got dark enough, I shot star trails above the rocks with the gap and started taking Milky Way pictures with a large rock as a foreground. Unfortunately I didn't reset my lens to a wider aperture from when I was shooting the twilight pictures so my Milky Way pictures didn't turn out(it's a manual lens that has no feedback to the camera indicating f-stop). I switched to my telephoto lens to get some shots of the Lagoon Nebula and M31. I was having trouble sighting Polaris until I saw a airplane passing by it and then could ID Polaris on the sighting scope for my star tracker. Even with the messed up Milky Way shot it was a productive trip.

Thanks to Alain for providing this thread to post some of my pictures and thank you for your kind comments. Farewell.