December 1, 2021
Lights in the Sky
My quests to shoot fall color in the eastern Sierra has not diminished my mission to shoot the stars. My second and third trip up to the eastern Sierra included an early morning stop at the Alabama Hills to capture astro-landscapes. The first thing I wanted to capture was the Zodiacal Light(this has nothing to do with Ted Cruz). The Zodiacal Light is a band of light that shoots up from the horizon just before sunrise(it's also called 'false dawn') in the Fall and just after Sunset in the Spring around the time of the equinox. It's caused by interplanetary dust that gets lit by the Sun and can be seen when the Earth is at the right angle based on the season. The other celestial objects I wanted to capture on my journey's to the Alabama Hills(not named after the state, but the CSS Alabama), was an astro-landscape shot of Orion and Andromeda(M31). I first attempted shooting Orion on my third and final Fall Color Extravaganza, but the battery on my star tracker died and I had to defer both the Orion shot and possible Andromeda shot. I did get one, one minute exposure of Orion out of this trip. I headed back up to the Alabama Hills for another attempt in mid-November with half the night moonlit to get some foreground shots by the light of the Moon and shots of the sky once the Moon had set.
Read MoreMy quests to shoot fall color in the eastern Sierra has not diminished my mission to shoot the stars. My second and third trip up to the eastern Sierra included an early morning stop at the Alabama Hills to capture astro-landscapes. The first thing I wanted to capture was the Zodiacal Light(this has nothing to do with Ted Cruz). The Zodiacal Light is a band of light that shoots up from the horizon just before sunrise(it's also called 'false dawn') in the Fall and just after Sunset in the Spring around the time of the equinox. It's caused by interplanetary dust that gets lit by the Sun and can be seen when the Earth is at the right angle based on the season. The other celestial objects I wanted to capture on my journey's to the Alabama Hills(not named after the state, but the CSS Alabama), was an astro-landscape shot of Orion and Andromeda(M31). I first attempted shooting Orion on my third and final Fall Color Extravaganza, but the battery on my star tracker died and I had to defer both the Orion shot and possible Andromeda shot. I did get one, one minute exposure of Orion out of this trip. I headed back up to the Alabama Hills for another attempt in mid-November with half the night moonlit to get some foreground shots by the light of the Moon and shots of the sky once the Moon had set.
