I think I'll just make this astronomy week. The second picture I took last Friday was another crack at the Milky Way, but it didn't turn out even as good as my first try. There's a long and fascinating story behind this.
I had decided to try a different location in hopes of finding an interesting foreground for the Milky Way. My choice was a place called Arch Rock in Joshua Tree National Park, but things didn't work out.
First, every one of my maps failed. As I was driving through Twentynine Palms my Garmin GPS suddenly stopped working. It just turned off and nothing I could do made it come back on. My phone map only showed detail a little way into the park, and my tablet showed nothing because it relies on the phone for an internet connection and the phone was out of cell range.
As a result, I took the wrong turnoff and, long story short, I never made it to Arch Rock. Instead I settled on a place called Jumbo Rocks, which is exactly what it sounds like. I finally found a place to set up, but it turned out I had chosen the only spot within miles that had a group of night-owl campers with a ton of lights they kept on until 3 am. So I couldn't place my tripod where I wanted to, which would have had an interesting rock and a Joshua tree in the foreground.
It didn't matter anyway. I chose a different spot and hauled out my little portable equatorial mount, but after squinting for a while to find the North Star I realized it wasn't working. I had gotten it out a couple of weeks ago to reacquaint myself with its workings, but apparently I left it on the whole time. So the batteries were drained.
Then, as if that weren't enough, there was a massive glow of light to the southeast, which is where the Milky Way is. What was it? Indio, I guess, which I thought was too far away to interfere much. Wrong.
In the end, all I could do was take a few short exposures at a high ISO and with lots of light interference. Oh, and around 2 am my Garmin suddenly came back to life. Go figure.
I'll try again next month with fresh batteries and yet another location. I'm not sure where that will be, though. I need to do a little more sleuthing.
Still otherworldly.
It's a gorgeous shot.
Still… Pretty cool!!
So a round trip of approximately 300 miles or 89 kg of CO2.
With all the political turmoil going on, I'm hungry for a diversion. Astronomy Week is what I need.
Umm. Kevin, you're old enough to have used paper maps. They don't ever run out of power or lose signal.
Yeah, but now try finding one.
Not too shabby, all things considered…
Seems like you could use a mapping program that keeps the maps locally, like maps.me.
I take several screenshots of my route with my iPad prior to leaving so I'm not relying on persnickety GPS or cell phones.
Very nice picture, nonetheless.