A Cosmic Night At White Tank Campground
After shooting the final embers from the afore mentioned sunset, it was time to look for some meteors and shoot the Milky Way. It was Ryan who spotted the Milky Way first. I insisted it was much too early for the Milky Way to be that high up (8:45 PM) and we couldn't really see anything by this point as most of the Southern Sky was behind a blanket of high clouds. But we suddenly realized that Ryan was correct and that if we wanted a shot of the Milky Way over Arch Rock, we had better get a move on.
Just an hour before, Ryan was getting pretty frustrated. He had made two other previous attempts to shoot the Milky Way only to be shut down by either Forest Fires or clouds. We weren't expecting clouds on this particular night, so when we arrived and found that there was a wall of clouds completely blocking the South and the East, we were pretty bummed. But somehow, within a 15 minute period, those clouds suddenly grew thinner and began to disappear.
By the time we reached Arch Rock, most of the Milky Way was now visible and we set about shooting it for an hour or so. I would love to take credit for the lighting of the arch in this shot, but I'm thinking this was probably the result of Tom trying to adjust his camera with the red beam on his head lamp. The fiery glow in the corner is from the ambient light most likely from Indio.
The irony here was that we had made the trip out here specifically to get some shots of the Perseid meteor shower, but this year turned out to be somewhat of a dud. Only one every five minutes or so, and most weren't much to write home about. We did have ONE that lit up the entire sky and left an incredible trail. But....that was kind of it. The REAL action, as it turns out, came from the thin high clouds that were now picking up the ambient light below the Milky Way. We all agreed that between the sunset and the Milky Way, it was definitely worth the drive down.
As for Tom and I ....yeah. We drove home that night. No snakes for us, thankyouverymuch. In reality, I had to get back to work the next morning as classes were beginning inside of two weeks. But that snake...Let's just say that I'm not in a big hurry to spend the night in the Mojave Desert any time soon.
A Cosmic Night At White Tank Campground
After shooting the final embers from the afore mentioned sunset, it was time to look for some meteors and shoot the Milky Way. It was Ryan who spotted the Milky Way first. I insisted it was much too early for the Milky Way to be that high up (8:45 PM) and we couldn't really see anything by this point as most of the Southern Sky was behind a blanket of high clouds. But we suddenly realized that Ryan was correct and that if we wanted a shot of the Milky Way over Arch Rock, we had better get a move on.
Just an hour before, Ryan was getting pretty frustrated. He had made two other previous attempts to shoot the Milky Way only to be shut down by either Forest Fires or clouds. We weren't expecting clouds on this particular night, so when we arrived and found that there was a wall of clouds completely blocking the South and the East, we were pretty bummed. But somehow, within a 15 minute period, those clouds suddenly grew thinner and began to disappear.
By the time we reached Arch Rock, most of the Milky Way was now visible and we set about shooting it for an hour or so. I would love to take credit for the lighting of the arch in this shot, but I'm thinking this was probably the result of Tom trying to adjust his camera with the red beam on his head lamp. The fiery glow in the corner is from the ambient light most likely from Indio.
The irony here was that we had made the trip out here specifically to get some shots of the Perseid meteor shower, but this year turned out to be somewhat of a dud. Only one every five minutes or so, and most weren't much to write home about. We did have ONE that lit up the entire sky and left an incredible trail. But....that was kind of it. The REAL action, as it turns out, came from the thin high clouds that were now picking up the ambient light below the Milky Way. We all agreed that between the sunset and the Milky Way, it was definitely worth the drive down.
As for Tom and I ....yeah. We drove home that night. No snakes for us, thankyouverymuch. In reality, I had to get back to work the next morning as classes were beginning inside of two weeks. But that snake...Let's just say that I'm not in a big hurry to spend the night in the Mojave Desert any time soon.