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Night Sky 256 images Created 27 Sep 2013

In this gallery are pictures of the milky way, northern lights, startrails, meteors, comets, and the moon. I usually try to take night sky pictures where the sky is dark as far away from light pollution as possible. In some of these places thousands more stars are visible compared to the city.
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  • This aurora corona was mesmerizing to watch. It was moving and changing so fast, even a 1 second exposure was too long.
    The First Corona
  • After a 35-minute ride on a chairlift in the dark, I arrived at the Aurora Sky Station, 1000 meters above sea level near the top of the mountain Nuolja. Below stretched out a panoramic view of the lake Torneträsk, the lights from Abisko village, and other peaks of the Scandinavian Mountains. The weather was ideal. Even though temperatures were at the lower limit in which the lift is allowed to operate, the skies were clear and the wind was calm. Unfortunately the aurora was calm as well. The northern lights danced a little on the ride up, then faded to a weak glow barely perceptible for the rest of the night. But I tried to make the most of my time up here by shooting this startrail image. I processed it in a way to fade the trails into the background while bringing out the colors of the faint green aurora band. Even though my camera was pointed due north, it was not possible to include the North Star in the shot, at least not without shooting vertically. In Arctic latitudes the North Celestial Pole is too high up in the sky.
    Nuolja Star Trails
  • After a rainy week, there were puddles left over at the Outlaw Cave Campground. I kept waiting for the wind to calm down, but eventually I had to settle for capturing a smeared reflection of Jupiter and the milky way.
    Planet in a Puddle
  • There have only been a few times that airglow has been bright enough for me to see with my eyes. This was one of those times. The camera captured a lot more color than I could see, but the bands of light were very obvious. The airglow seemed to be most intense looking to the west.
    Crazy Airglow
  • There's nothing quite like spending the night on top of a mountain. High above any haze and light pollution, the air up here is extra clear. Stars stretch from horizon to horizon. Their slow and steady movement is interrupted by the quick flashes of meteors and satellites. This time of year the milky way is up completely by the time it gets dark. Normally camping on a peak is not an option since it's too exposed to the wind and storms, plus the ground is too rocky and sloped to set up a tent. That's why I like to stay in fire lookout towers when possible. This particular one (Sheep Mountain in the Bighorns) is very popular and has to be reserved months in advance. The accommodations may be rustic but I prefer this to any hotel. You simply can't beat the views.
    Night on the Summit
  • On my last night in Alaska I went to Chena Lake for a couple hours. I'm sure the aurora would have kept getting better, but I had to leave early since I'd be waking up at 4AM to catch my flight.
    Chena Birches Aurora
  • Up until the lunar eclipse started, I still wasn't sure I would be able to see it. In between an overcast day and an incoming snowstorm, weather models were showing a brief clearing. The clouds parted not a moment too soon. Compared to the last recent eclipse, the moon was a lot higher in the sky at 50°, which made it more challenging to shoot with a foreground. I needed to find something tall, where I could set up my camera underneath and point it southeast. The Needle's Eye is a natural arch that stands at the entrance to Tongue River Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains. I knew I wouldn't be able to fit the moon inside the arch, but just above it. This is a wider shot to include more of the canyon walls.
    Red Moon and Arch
  • For the Geminid meteor shower I snowshoed to the top of the continental divide in Western Montana. From the Granite Butte lookout tower, the views were stunning in every direction. The weather changed by the second alternating between snow showers, gale force winds, freezing fog with zero visibility, clear skies, and brief moments of calm. The tough whitebark pine trees which grow up here are all permanently bent. They point eastward from the prevailing westerly winds which almost never stop. The low temperatures, strong winds, and fog combined to create hard rime ice, which covered every surface (including me and my camera) with a coating up to 2 inches thick. To say that shooting conditions were challenging would be an understatement. My tripod had to be carefully propped up to avoid it blowing over. And with all my batteries dying too soon, I didn't get to take as many pictures as I wanted to. This was one of the brighter meteors which shone through the fog. The lights on the right are from the city of Helena.
    Through the Freezing Fog
  • My camera captured these 19 meteors in only 93 minutes starting around midnight on December 14th. I was a bit disappointed that my camera battery died after this because I wondered how many more I missed. Despite the moonlight many meteors had no problem shining through. I couldn't think of a better place to watch the Geminid meteor shower than this remote island in Everglades National Park. I paddled out the day before and spent the night on Picnic Key. A lack of sleep, sickness, and battling the tide the next morning made it an exhausting trip. But it was worth it to see the best meteor shower of the year.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: 12/14/2014
    Out of the Blue
  • Because this morning's lunar eclipse occurred with the moon close to the horizon instead of high overhead, it was particularly well suited for photography. I just needed something to frame the moon over, and I couldn't think of a better subject than Devils Tower. I did the math and figured out I would need to be just under 2 miles east of the tower to shoot it with the lens I had. The surrounding area has lots of hills, trees, and private land, but luckily there was a road in the right spot, which provided this view. What was supposed to be only flurries the evening before turned into 4 inches of fresh snow. The clouds didn't clear out until minutes before the eclipse began. As the moon became redder, the sky became bluer and the stars slowly faded away. Snow doesn't stay very long on the tower since the sun heats up the rock quickly and winds blow it off. But everything came together perfectly this morning to create a one of a kind view.
    Totality at the Tower
  • Saskatchewan is called "Land of the Living Skies." I found out why on this night. These red and green pillars moved across the northern skies over Grasslands National Park. The passing clouds only added to the scene. The moonlight came and went across the prairie.
    Land of the Living Skies
  • During the most intense part of the geomagnetic storm, I looked straight up and this is what I saw. It's known as a corona, and it looks like the aurora is radiating outward from a single point in the sky. This was the first time I've seen a corona and it didn't last long.
    Aurora Corona
  • With both clear skies and a geomagnetic storm in the forecast, I headed north of the border to Saskatchewan. Grasslands National Park is a long ways from anywhere. During the day the landscape seems stark and desolate, especially after a very dry summer. But the real beauty of this park comes after sunset. It is one of the darkest places on the continent. With no sources of light pollution at all, the stars appear the same as they did to the Plains Indians hundreds of years ago. The aurora was already bright and colorful earlier in the evening. But at midnight after the moon set, the northern lights went insane. I've never seen such rapid motion before. If you could imagine a campfire with the flames rising upward and flickering on and off, that's what it looked like. Except instead of orange, it was green, and instead of it being confined to a fire ring, it filled the entire sky. I don't think any camera could fully capture it, it just has to be experienced.
    Two Tipis
  • It was nearly 11pm in southern Saskatchewan. I had just watched a bright auroral substorm send colorful arcs high into the northern sky, but it was starting to fade. Then I turned around, looking south, and this is what I saw. A bright pinkish strip of light stretched from east to west, while the crescent moon hung low on the horizon. It's one of the most unusual things I've ever seen in the night sky. This strange type of aurora is called Steve. The name started as a joke, but it stuck.  Steve was first captured last year by a group of aurora photographers in Alberta. After ESA flew a satellite through it earlier this year, it was discovered that it's comprised of very hot (10,800°F) ionized gases moving along at 4 miles per second. This ribbon of light is 16 miles wide and thousands of miles long. I watched as Steve started overhead nearly paralleling the US-Canada border, before slowly moving south. It turned into a green "picket fence" pattern before fading away. It was awesome to see such a mysterious phenomena which is still being studied by scientists.
    An Aurora Named Steve
  • Hunting for the aurora from the mid-latitudes can be a frustrating endeavor. For every night that I've clearly seen the northern lights, there are 2 more where I've gone out only to see the aurora quickly fade or clouds overtake the sky. But perfect nights like this one make it all worth it. After NOAA issued a geomagnetic storm warning, I headed for the Bighorn Mountains. The aurora was obvious as soon as I stepped out of my car. But it was just a green glow without any structure or movement. At 12:30AM, the lights began to grow brighter. Pillars topped with purple and red suddenly rose up and moved rapidly back and forth. This is called a substorm. Charged particles in the solar wind causes pressure to build up against Earth's magnetic field. The magnetic field will suddenly 'snap' and the release of energy makes the aurora intensify. Substorms are unpredictable and often last only minutes. In this frame I caught a Lyrid meteor burning up above Steamboat Point.
    Dawn of the North
  • The aurora borealis caused red and green pillars to fill the northern sky above the Bighorn Mountains.
    Christmas Colored Sky
  • Pillars of Red
  • In early August the aurora made an appearance and I was able to see it for the first time this year. The sun follows an 11 year cycle where the solar activity that causes the aurora (sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejections) increases and decreases. As we head toward solar minimum predicted in 2019, the aurora will become increasingly rare in the mid-latitudes, but will continue to occur around the arctic. Last year I was able to witness the aurora 10 times, mostly from Illinois, but this year has been a lot different. This picture was taken from the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains above Dayton, Wyoming. It was a spot I scouted out in advance and knew it had a good view north. While I was taking pictures, a sharp gust of wind came up over the ridge. I held on to my tripod, but the wind blew my camping chair down the side of the mountain.
    Dayton Aurora
  • I wasn't really expecting the northern lights to be this active. It was a beautiful night for stargazing, and I was only planning to shoot the milky way, but I never got to that. A slight breeze disturbed the surface of the lake most of the night. But at 3AM it became perfectly calm and the surface of Lake DeSmet looked like glass. A long exposure from a camera always picks up more colors in the aurora than the human eye can see. Oftentimes only the color green is visible. But the purple pillar on the right was very noticeable and it hardly moved at all.
    Purple Pillar
  • If you have never seen the aurora, you should definitely make it a goal. This was a once in a lifetime show for me as I have never seen a better geomagnetic storm. I was only in Wisconsin but it felt like I was in Alaska. The aurora was pulsating, moving rapidly and it covered much of the sky. Most of my pictures were taken with a 10mm lens which tells you just how much of the sky was filled with color. This was taken from the top of Blue Mound, which is the highest point in southern Wisconsin.
    Full Spectrum
  • After waiting hours for thick clouds to clear over Grundarfjörður, I gave up and headed back to my campsite. But to my surprise the clouds parted briefly as I got close to Olafsvik. I stopped at this perfectly calm lagoon, which was lit up by the moonlight. The aurora wasn't as active as before, but it was still visible.
    Shallow Lagoon
  • After seeing only about 1 hour of clear skies over 5 nights, I was determined to catch a good aurora display on my last night in Iceland. The southern coast was showing the best weather forecast. So that is where I went, camping in the shadow of the glacier-capped Eyjafjallajökull volcano which was lit up by the moonlight. This is the same volcano that erupted 7 years ago with the giant ash cloud causing the biggest disruption to air travel since WWII. As soon as it got dark the northern lights came out and stayed the entire night. Compared to lower latitudes, the aurora up here is brighter and moves and changes so much faster. It will often appear anywhere in the sky, not just limited to the north. The aurora transformed into all kinds of interesting shapes, to me this shot looked like a surfing brontosaurus.
    Surfing Brontosaurus
  • Thousands of stars forming the milky way galaxy are seen above a deep canyon in Utah. The Colorado River flows 2000 feet below the rim of Dead Horse Point into Canyonlands National Park. The bright light on the horizon is the planet Venus. There is no other object in the night sky brighter than Venus except for the moon. The clear weather, dry air, and dark skies make this area one of the best in the country for stargazing.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: 11/5/2013
    Dark Chasm
  • The two brightest objects in the night sky appear side by side in front of the milky way in a rare alignment. Venus is the blue object, and the yellow object is the moon. Even though the moon was only an 8% crescent, it was brighter than Venus. The band of yellow along the horizon is from the last colors of twilight before it was completely dark. This incredible sky is framed over the Colorado River in Utah. The 2000 foot deep canyon is part of Canyonlands National Park. But this view was actually shot from the edge of a cliff at Dead Horse Point State Park.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: 11/5/2013
    Canyon Alignment
  • At the end of July I had the chance to shoot the most detailed milky way nightscape photo I've ever taken. Ever since making a similar photo in Utah, I've wanted to repeat it, but finding the right location, the right weather, at the right time isn't easy. After a stunning sunset over Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, the clouds cleared out and the conditions began to come together. This image is a combination of 3 separate pictures, totaling nearly 1 hour of exposure time. First I placed my tripod on the edge of the canyon, then aligned my star tracking mount on Polaris (the north star), and then shot two 18-minute exposures of the milky way. Then I turned the tracking mount off, and shot a similar exposure of just the canyon, and later stitched the 3 shots together. Without a tracking mount, I'm normally limited to 30-second exposures before the stars start to blur. In addition to the milky way, the planets Saturn and Mars, and traces of green airglow are also visible. The light pollution along the horizon is from the towns of Lovell and Powell. While I was shooting this, bats kept fluttering around my head, eating all the gnats gathered around the puddles after a recent rain.
    Celestial River
  • Normally I like to explore a location during the day before taking pictures there at night. But the Southern California traffic robbed me of the time to do that here. Arch Rock was a little bit hard to find in the dark, but it wasn't too bad. I just had to be careful to avoid rattlesnakes. The 30 foot long arch is located near the White Tank campground in Joshua Tree National Park. The eastern part of the park has very dark skies the farther you get from the desert cities. To illuminate the scene, I shined my headlamp on the rock wall opposite the arch. A soft, warm light was reflected backwards. I was grateful the skies cleared up long enough to see the milky way. A few minutes after this clouds started to cover the sky as monsoon thunderstorms moved past the area.<br />
<br />
Date Taken: August 19, 2014
    The Opening
  • Because this morning's lunar eclipse occurred with the moon close to the horizon instead of high overhead, it was particularly well suited for photography. I just needed something to frame the moon over, and I couldn't think of a better subject than Devils Tower. I did the math and figured out I would need to be just under 2 miles east of the tower to shoot it with the lens I had. The surrounding area has lots of hills, trees, and private land, but luckily there was a road in the right spot, which provided this view. What was supposed to be only flurries the evening before turned into 4 inches of fresh snow. The clouds didn't clear out until minutes before the eclipse began. As the moon became redder, the sky became bluer and the stars slowly faded away. Snow doesn't stay very long on the tower since the sun heats up the rock quickly and winds blow it off. But everything came together perfectly this morning to create a one of a kind view.
    Blood Moon Tower
  • For the Geminid meteor shower I snowshoed to the top of the continental divide in Western Montana. From the Granite Butte lookout tower, the views were stunning in every direction. The weather changed by the second alternating between snow showers, gale force winds, freezing fog with zero visibility, clear skies, and brief moments of calm. The tough whitebark pine trees which grow up here are all permanently bent. They point eastward from the prevailing westerly winds which almost never stop. The low temperatures, strong winds, and fog combined to create hard rime ice, which covered every surface (including me and my camera) with a coating up to 2 inches thick. To say that shooting conditions were challenging would be an understatement. My tripod had to be carefully propped up to avoid it blowing over. And with all my batteries dying too soon, I didn't get to take as many pictures as I wanted to. But this was one of the brighter meteors captured, flying in between Orion and Sirius.
    Catching a Gem
  • It was 1AM when my alarm went off. Between shooting the sunset, the stars, and the sunrise, I wouldn't be getting much sleep tonight. After slipping into my shoes that were still damp from trudging through the snow, I stepped out of my tent into the cold air. With the temperature near freezing and a strong breeze blowing, it certainly didn't feel like the first day of July. But the weather couldn't be more perfect for shooting the milky way galaxy. The moon was setting in the west, leaving me 2 hours of darkness to shoot a time lapse before morning twilight set in. This is a shot I've wanted to take since last year when I first heard about this spot. It's an alpine meadow called Highland Park set at the base of the 13,000' Blacktooth Mountain in the Cloud Peak Wilderness. I've tried shooting the milky way over these peaks before, but they were always too far away, I had to get closer. But the conditions needed to be perfect before I made the 18 mile trek. Between the snow levels, moon phase, position of the milky way, and weather conditions I knew I may only have a couple chances to get this shot. The atmosphere is a lot thinner at 10,000 feet and the stars seemed just a little bit closer on this night.
    Close to Heaven
  • With both clear skies and a geomagnetic storm in the forecast, I headed north of the border to Saskatchewan. Grasslands National Park is a long ways from anywhere. During the day the landscape seems stark and desolate, especially after a very dry summer. But the real beauty of this park comes after sunset. It is one of the darkest places on the continent. With no sources of light pollution at all, the stars appear the same as they did to the Plains Indians hundreds of years ago. The aurora was already bright and colorful earlier in the evening. But at midnight after the moon set, the northern lights went insane. I've never seen such rapid motion before. If you could imagine a campfire with the flames rising upward and flickering on and off, that's what it looked like. Except instead of orange, it was green, and instead of it being confined to a fire ring, it filled the entire sky. I don't think any camera could fully capture it, it just has to be experienced.
    Tipi Aurora
  • It was a beautiful night last night. A very active lightning storm receded into the distance underneath an otherwise clear and dark sky filled with stars. Mars was shining a brilliant red above the storm, and I was just barely able to fit the milky way in the frame.
    Flashing Galaxy
  • The Geminid Meteor Shower was very active in 2018. This view is looking south from Diamond Butte, Montana.
    Night of the Falling Stars
  • The Geminid Meteor Shower was very active in 2018. In this image I stacked a total of 90 meteors which my camera captured while pointed west. In about 5 hours and using 2 cameras, I captured a total of 350 shooting stars. It was a very active meteor shower this year. Near the top of the frame are the twin stars of Gemini, named Castor and Pollux. If you trace back the tails of the meteors this is where they appear to radiate from. The source of these streaks of light are small pieces of debris left behind by an asteroid, which burn up when they enter Earth's atmosphere at 22 miles per second. Thin clouds were making halos around the brighter stars. Overall the weather was perfect with the thicker clouds clearing out just as activity started to pick up after midnight.
    Early Morning Meteors
  • In December of 2018 Comet 46P/Wirtanen flew by the Pleiades in the constellation Taurus. Also known as the Seven Sisters, this star cluster is one of the closest to Earth at a distance of about 444 light years away. The extra hot and luminous stars cast their light on the nearby reflection nebula, which gives it the blue color. Comet 46P/Wirtanen was at it's closest approach just 7.2 million miles (11.5 million km) away from Earth. This makes it one of the top 10 closest comet encounters of the Space Age. While they look the same size in this image, the comet is quite a bit fainter, just barely detectable to the naked eye. The nucleus of the comet is less than 1 mile wide, but it's diffuse coma (cometary atmosphere) is larger than the planet Jupiter.
    The Flyby
  • I don't think I've ever seen the zodiacal light glow this prominently before. As soon as it became dark enough it jumped out at me right away. The ghostly glow is caused by the sun illuminating dust within our solar system. The glow extends diagonally along the path of the ecliptic, also known as the zodiac. Only under very dark skies like this spot near St Xavier, Montana, are views like this possible.
    Bighorn River Zodiacal Light
  • At 2AM Sirius was casting a long, shimmering reflection on the Bighorn River just before it set. With a magnitude of -1.5, Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. And at a distance of 8.6 light years away, it’s the 8th closest to Earth. Under certain atmospheric conditions when it's low on the horizon this star is known to twinkle wildly and flash a wide range of colors. This happens more often than other astronomical objects because of it’s brightness (planets do not twinkle). Sirius is found in the constellation of Canis Major and is also called the Dog Star. The ancient Greeks used to watch for the first appearance of Sirius in July, which marked the beginning of the “dog days of summer,” the hottest part of the year.
    Brightest Star Reflection
  • On this night I found myself in the Arctic wilderness of Abisko National Park in Swedish Lapland. After trekking for 9.5 miles I arrived in this stunning valley in the Scandinavian Mountains. The northern lights came out right away when night fell. But I had to wait for them to become more active and spread to the eastern sky over the 5,000' high peak named Kieron. That happened after 11:00, when bright auroral curtains shimmered across the sky, lighting up the snow and turning it green. The temperature hovered at -10°F and a stiff wind was blowing across the frozen Abiskojaure lake. But this captivating view was worth every step to get here and every moment of cold endured.
    Midnight Flare-Up
  • For the 2nd night in a row, there was an active display of the northern lights in Abisko, Sweden. Starting off as a dull glow in the north after sunset, it quickly exploded with bright green spiral swirls filling the entire sky. Here above the Arctic Circle the aurora is ever present, encircling the Earth's poles in a zone called the auroral oval. Even during solar minimum when solar activity is quiet, the northern lights are visible on almost any clear night. And Abisko sees more clear nights than surrounding areas because the mountains to the west create a rain shadow effect. Visible beyond the forest of short birch trees, is Torneträsk, Sweden's 6th largest, and 2nd deepest lake.
    Green Cyclone
  • While the aurora was still going strong I wandered down to Abisko Canyon to capture the lights here. There wasn't much space to set up my tripod next to the cliff's edge so I had to be careful. I shot a time lapse  as the aurora slowly faded away. Clouds would move in soon afterward, so I was glad the lights were so active early in the evening.
    Abisko Canyon Aurora
  • After an auroral substorm, a corona formed at the zenith. A corona is a very fast moving type of aurora, where the rays appear to converge. But by the time I finished a time lapse and pointed my camera straight up, most of it was gone.
    At the Zenith
  • A bitter wind blew across the icy mountainside in Björkliden, Sweden, while the moon illuminated the landscape below. I had heard about this overlook, but couldn’t find it in time to capture the first wave of auroras at 10PM. But since it was my last clear night in the Arctic, I waited until 1AM for the aurora to come back. A green stripe first appeared to the east, featureless and unmoving but slowly getting brighter. It was almost like a rubber band building up tension, until suddenly it released. Within seconds the northern lights filled the entire sky, moving and changing faster than I could possibly capture it. This is known as a substorm, and they occur several times a night when geomagnetic conditions are favorable. The solar wind piles up charged particles on the tail side of the magnetosphere. When the magnetic field line snaps, these particles are quickly funneled towards the Earth’s poles which causes a sudden expansion and brightening of the aurora. It’s not completely understood what triggers this ‘snap’. But the unpredictability is what makes the aurora so fascinating to watch, you never know what it's going to do next.
    The Second Substorm
  • In mid-latitudes I always consider bright moonlight as an obstacle to seeing the aurora. But in the Arctic the aurora is so bright that I can use a short exposure, and including the moon in the shot is not an issue.
    Snaking Aurora
  • While camping at Castle Gardens, I captured the stars for 2 hours to put together into this startrail image. A campfire cast a warm glow on the bluffs and hoodoos above.
    Castle Aglow
  • I spent the night at one of my favorite places: Diamond Butte fire lookout in southeast Montana. Once my wheels left the pavement, I drove for 100 miles without seeing another human. Open range cattle, pronghorn antelope, deer, and elk seemed to outnumber people 1,000 to 1. Here in the middle of nowhere are some of the darkest skies you'll ever see. 360° of sparkling stars over the rolling hills and grasslands makes it hard to get any sleep. After the moon set at 1AM I waited for the milky way to get into position. At 3:30 the core of the galaxy containing nebulae, dust clouds, and star clusters moved above the tower. Also visible is the bright planet Jupiter, in the middle of the Dark Horse Nebula.
    Looking Out
  • It’s a view I came across in early spring: a lone tree on top of a hill overlooking ranches, ponds, a canal, and the Bighorn Mountains. The milky way was the perfect backdrop when I returned to shoot it on a warm night in July. The green stripes in the sky are from a phenomenon called airglow. During the day sunlight ionizes oxygen atoms in the upper atmosphere, and their recombination at night emits a small amount of light. This chemical reaction occurs about 100km up at the same height as the aurora, which is caused by a different process. Ripples in the airglow come from gravity waves, which may originate from the jet stream or a particularly powerful thunderstorm complex. I often find airglow in my pictures anytime I’m shooting under a dark sky. But this night was the strongest I've ever seen it. The wave pattern was very apparent, although the color was undetectable to my eyes.
    Beckton Milky Way
  • It was a warm summer night at the Terry Badlands. I took this self-portait just before going to sleep at 1AM.
    Warm Montana Night
  • In a high valley deep within the Absaroka Mountains, the night sky simply doesn't get any darker than this. The willows and the Wood River were lit entirely by starlight. A month ago the milky way would have been in a better position in between the two peaks. But visiting much earlier in the summer isn't possible because the water level is too high. This river must be driven through, there is no bridge. Even though the sounds of moving water can be soothing, I always feel a little uneasy being next to a river at night in grizzly country. All other noises are masked out by the water, so I'm unable to hear or be heard by any wildlife that may be nearby. I left my camera here to shoot a time lapse, but the lens predictably fogged up after a couple hours. In the 1880's gold was discovered on Spar Mountain (on the left). The mining town of Kirwin quickly sprung up, but it didn't last long before it was abandoned. Several historic buildings still remain in this fascinating ghost town.
    Night in the Absarokas
  • It was half past midnight on the last day of August. A solar wind stream blowing at 700 km a second reached Earth a little sooner than predicted. The northern lights had been dancing on and off for the past few hours. But then I noticed a strange pattern, which was dim enough that I wasn’t sure it was really there. A long exposure revealed greater detail and color. The picket fence pattern is related to a rare, recently classified type of aurora called STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.) STEVE most often appears as a bright, pinkish ribbon of light found away from the main band of aurora. STEVE may or may not be accompanied by this green picket fence, but on this night the brighter streak of light was absent. It was my first time seeing it this far south in Wyoming. Lake DeSmet provided a beautiful blurred reflection when the wind let up. This night was the first of 4 in a row that I’d capture the aurora. The weeks surrounding the spring and fall equinoxes tend to be the most favorable for geomagnetic storm conditions. But around here the weather tends to be a lot clearer in the early fall, which is why I have more aurora sightings in September than in March.
    Emerald Waters
  • Over Labor Day weekend the Earth's magnetic field was battered by a solar wind stream from a coronal hole on the sun, which reached speeds of up to 800km a second. This led to the aurora dipping down to lower latitudes and I was able to catch it 4 nights in a row. I'm always in search of new north-facing viewpoints for picture opportunities. This night I spent at the top of the Judith Mountains in central Montana. Montana always has a better shot at seeing the aurora and being at a high elevation helped even more. The views reached far and wide out over the plains with more mountain ranges than I could count. As it got dark flashes of lightning were visible 250 miles away in Saskatchewan which I didn't even know was possible. The aurora danced all night long, preceded by a fiery sunset and followed by a stormy sunrise. It couldn't have been a more colorful stay on this mountaintop.
    Pillars Rising Above
  • Ever since I saw this mountain engulfed by a storm earlier in the summer, I was hoping to have a chance to get some better pictures of it. There's something about a lone isolated mountain that's just begging to be photographed under the stars. There are at least 10 Square Buttes in Montana, and this one isn't even the most popular. That makes it hard to find information on it. In case you didn't know, a butte is a flat-topped mountain with steep sides. This particular Square Butte rises 2600 feet above a town with the same name and a population of 20. Finding the right spot to place my tripod isn't always easy. I needed to be NNE of the butte, not too close and not too far with no hills or anything else in my way. There was no time to waste since the milky way and Jupiter were in position as soon as it got dark. The milky way won't be visible for too much longer before it passes behind the sun for the winter. To get a sharper picture I took a 12-minute exposure of the mountain and combined it with a shorter exposure of the sky.
    Galactic Butte
  • Waves crashed around my feet as I steadied my tripod and counted down until 8:04PM. That's when the International Space Station (ISS) was going to appear. It was a perfect pass, rising straight up over the horizon, before moving overhead and outshining everything else in the sky. The ISS orbits the Earth every 90 minutes at an altitude of 250 miles with a speed of 17,000 mph. At a cost of over $150 billion, the ISS is the single most expensive item ever constructed. The space station has been continuously occupied for 19 years by astronauts, who get to experience 16 sunsets and sunrises a day. The ISS is easily visible from Earth when sunlight reflects off of it's massive solar panels. Finding a spot in Orange County, California, that's dark enough to see the milky way is not easy. But at this time of year it's possible to look southwest over the darkest part of the ocean, while the rest of the sky is filled with light pollution and few stars. It took the ISS about 5 minutes to pass through the sky. I combined the satellite trail from 9 images with a single image of the stars to make it clearer.
    Up From the Ocean
  • It was 2AM in the boreal forest outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. I had spent the last 6 hours waiting, driving around and dodging clouds. A faint green glow was visible in the far northern sky, but there was no movement. Still tired from my red eye flight, I was almost ready to call it a night. But patience pays off when aurora hunting. Finally the anticipated solar wind stream arrived. In a matter of minutes the aurora rapidly brightened as charged particles from the sun interacted with Earth’s magnetic field. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it, there’s nothing else like watching an active display of the northern lights. The pulsing, flickering motion was similar to a campfire, filling the entire sky. It came from every direction, lighting up the ground enough to see. At times the speed exceeded my ability to capture it. Even a 1/2 second shutter speed blurred the fine details. After taking thousands of pictures that night, eventually I had to put my camera down and just stare upward in awe.
    Twists of Green
  • It's quite common to see clouds at night illuminated from below by light pollution. But it's strange seeing clouds turn green, illuminated from above. This was the solar wind stream I traveled to Alaska to see, and it arrived about 24 hours after I did at 2AM. The aurora was mesmerizing to watch as it became very bright, and  twisted and pulsed and flickered. It's not often that I point my camera straight up.
    Straight Up Awesome
  • At the end of October I had the the chance to spend a week in Alaska. I timed this trip with the arrival of a solar wind stream so the northern lights would be extra active. The sky only stayed clear for a couple hours on this night, but that was enough to see this bright ‘aurora rainbow.’ Only by shooting a panorama with my widest lens could I capture all of it. Most of the lakes and wetlands around Fairbanks had these bubbles in them. They are made of methane gas suspended in the ice. Just 30-40 cm underground is the permafrost, which normally stays frozen year round. But as the Arctic warms and the permafrost thaws, the decaying plant matter (also known as peat) releases methane into the atmosphere. During the summer this gas is invisible. But for a short time after the water freezes and before it gets covered with snow, these frozen bubbles are visible. Many area lakes have such a high concentration of methane that it’s actually possible to pop these bubbles and light them on fire.
    Rainbow of Aurora
  • The aurora display only lasted a couple hours on this night before a snow storm moved in. But it was very bright and active. I shot most of it from a frozen pond a few minutes outside of Fairbanks. Methane bubbles were suspended in the ice.
    Bright Green Stripes
  • Once the aurora got going, I returned to this pulloff. I couldn't see it, but my camera captured a moose grazing on the left, which was likely the same moose I photographed earlier in the day. Seeing aurora colors other than green is rare in the Arctic. This was one of my only photos with a tinge of red.
    Midnight Moose
  • At first the aurora was confined low on the northern horizon. But then it brightened and filled the sky. It's not often I can shoot a time lapse on a highway. But traffic was very light.
    Night On Richardson Highway
  • I’ve always liked this particular road on the west side of the Bighorn Mountains. With plenty of steep twists and sharp turns, switchbacks and hairpins, it ascends to a waterfall and campground. The poor maintenance, few guardrails, and occasional rockfall add to the thrill. If the snow were any deeper I couldn't have made it to the top. Before it got dark I found the perfect viewpoint so I could return later. The bright moon illuminated the beautiful landscape and clouds, I just had to wait for it to move off to the side. At 10PM Orion rose directly above the peak in the middle. Then all I needed was a car to paint the road with its headlights. So I left my camera perched on the side of the mountain to shoot automatically while I slowly drove to the bottom and back up. After combining all the car trail images with a single image of the sky this was the result. Highway 14A is the road on the right and the lights in the distance are from Greybull I think.
    Switchbacks and Car Trails
  • In December the planet Venus graced the western sky shortly after sunset. Aside from the moon, no other object in the night sky shines brighter. Venus always follows or precedes the sun in the same path known as the ecliptic. It’s also called the Evening Star or Morning Star, depending on which side of the sun it’s on. Because it’s an inner planet, Venus is never more than 47° from the sun in Earth’s sky. Anyone who points a telescope at the planet would notice that Venus goes through phases much like the moon. It is fully illuminated when it’s on the opposite side of the sun farthest from Earth. When it’s closest to Earth it turns into a narrow crescent. Galileo first observed the phases of Venus 400 years ago, which helped confirm the heliocentric model of the solar system. I attempted to capture Venus setting over Cloud Peak, but clouds were hugging the tops of the peaks and hid them from view.
    The Evening Star
  • In December the constellation Orion rises in the east immediately after sunset. While camping in Joshua Tree National Park, I picked a campsite that faced a boulder formation in that direction. When clouds moved in, I wasn’t sure I would get any pictures. But then a small gap appeared, leaving halos around the brighter stars. The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is visible in the center. It is one of the largest stars in the Milky Way, 1400 times the size of the sun. It's also a variable star, which means the brightness changes regularly. But in recent days it has been attracting attention because it’s currently dimmer than ever recorded before. Betelgeuse is at the end of its stellar life cycle and when it goes supernova its brightness in Earth's sky will rival that of the full moon. Since the star is 640 light years away, it may have already exploded centuries ago. But the likelihood of seeing a supernova anytime soon is still very small and they remain unpredictable.
    Boulders of Orion
  • In January I went out to capture one of my favorite photogenic trees late at night. It sits by itself in a field near a small abandoned house. Cassiopeia, one of the most recognizable constellations, is like a celestial clock. In 23 hours and 56 minutes it will make one rotation around the North Star. But unlike a clock, it spins counterclockwise. When closest to the horizon the 5 brightest stars make the shape of a W, but when it's highest overhead it looks like an M. From anywhere above 35°N, Cassiopeia is circumpolar. That means the constellation neither rises nor sets, always staying above the horizon. In order to get a sharper picture I shot a 12-minute exposure of the foreground, and the tree branches didn't even move an inch. Windless nights are quite rare during winter in Wyoming.
    Night On the Homestead
  • The Squaw Mountain Fire Lookout Tower is just 25 miles west of Denver and has a great view of the city lights coming on. The fog and clouds quickly cleared out as it got darker.
    Denver At Twilight
  • There’s perhaps no better way to practice social distancing and clear your head than to spend some time under the stars. The idea for this picture came months ago: to capture Orion setting over this jumble of giant boulders called the Fallen City. After doing the math and simulating the view, I determined exactly where to put my tripod and when to make it happen. But one problem is this is a very windy spot in the Bighorn Mountains. My attempt in February was foiled by the wind and I could not get any clear images. But March brought another chance with calmer weather. A fresh snowfall topped with rime ice made the forest glow in the starlight.<br />
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The Orion Nebula is the brightest in Earth’s sky. It can be seen with the naked eye from dark skies and looks spectacular in a telescope. Also visible next to Orion’s Belt are the Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula. To get this picture first I took a series of images of the sky with my camera on a star-tracking mount. Once the nebula set, I turned the tracking off and took a longer exposure of the foreground.
    Orion and Fallen City
  • Just before 11PM there was a double reflection in the Powder River. Venus is on the right and Sirius is on the left.
    Sirius and Venus Reflected
  • An owl hooting, geese honking, coyotes howling, and a river gurgling - these were the sounds that filled the air on this frosty night. At this dot on the map called Moorhead in southeast Montana, there’s nothing really here. But that’s the point. It’s in a black zone on a light pollution map, which means the night sky doesn’t get any darker than this. The core of the Milky Way galaxy, after going behind the sun for the winter, has now returned to the pre-dawn skies. Also joining the Milky Way is a trio of planets: Saturn, Mars and Jupiter. I wasn’t sure if they would make it over the bluff before astronomical twilight began. But they did, casting long shimmering reflections on the Powder River. When two or more planets pass close to each other in Earth’s sky, it’s called a planetary conjunction. Since the planets more or less orbit the sun in the same plane, conjunctions are not all that rare. But they’re always beautiful to see.
    Milky Way and 3 Planets
  • At the end of March Venus was at it’s greatest elongation. That is when the 2nd planet from the Sun is at it’s highest and brightest in Earth’s sky. Outshining every star and planet, it’s even bright enough to see during the day under the right conditions. Because Venus is an inferior planet orbiting inside Earth’s orbit, it never strays more than 47° from the Sun. When Venus is east of the Sun it is the Evening Star. But when it is west of the Sun it becomes the Morning Star. Counterintuitively Venus appears brightest during it’s crescent phase because that’s when it’s closer to Earth. The Moon was also a crescent on this evening. It’s always challenging to capture the Moon with the stars as they appear to the eye since it's so much brighter. But the passing clouds acted as a filter and helped to balance the exposure. Above the glowing cloud is the Pleiades, the most recognizable star cluster in the sky. A week later Venus would pass through the Pleiades, an occurrence that happens every 8 years.
    Filtered Moonlight
  • The full moon in April is called the Pink Moon. But the name has nothing to do with the color, it's just called that because it coincides with the blooming of a certain type of flower. The color of the moon can vary from red to orange to yellow, depending on the clarity of the atmosphere. While low on the horizon the shorter wavelengths of light get scattered. But as it rises higher the lunar surface shows it's true color. This was also the biggest full moon of the year because it was at it's closest point to Earth, known as perigee. But it only appeared 7% larger than average, hardly worth being called a supermoon. Conditions weren't looking very promising around here since the sky was about 90% cloudy. But I hiked up to this spot overlooking Moncreiffe Ridge anyway. The moon was only visible for a few minutes as it passed through a small gap in the clouds. The plane flying by didn't show up on any flight-tracking apps, so I'm guessing it was some type of military cargo plane.
    Moon Over Moncreiffe Ridge
  • At first it had the appearance of puffy clouds on the southeast horizon. Then as it rose higher the Milky Way revealed more detail. The clouds were made not of water vapor, but of stars too numerous and densely packed to resolve individually. The bright core of the galaxy is split in two by a dark lane of cosmic dust known as the Great Rift. The Milky Way was soon followed by the rise of Jupiter, and then Saturn. Meanwhile shooting stars periodically flashed across the sky during the peak of the Lyrid meteor shower. The Lyrids are the oldest known meteor shower, first observed 2700 years ago. Of the 15 meteors I captured, this one was the brightest. Devil’s Kitchen is a small basin containing badlands-type terrain, but it may as well have been another planet. It’s a barren wasteland located on the west side of the Bighorn Mountains filled with fascinating geologic formations of all different colors. When I first found it last summer I knew I had to return to shoot it at night.
    Night at Devil's Kitchen
  • When I passed by this overlook of Seminoe Reservoir earlier in the evening I knew I had to return at midnight. As the milky way first rises it forms a huge arch from the northeast to southeastern sky. The only way to capture it all is by shooting a panorama with my widest lens. Stripes of green airglow crossed the sky and the yellow glow is light pollution from the Denver suburbs 150 miles away.
    Midnight Arch
  • Wandering around these sand dunes under the Milky Way, it looked like I had stepped into the Sahara Desert. But the freezing temperatures reminded me that I was still in Wyoming. The Killpecker Sand Dunes are actually the largest active dune system in the world outside of the Sahara. But the sand is spread out in many piles across 100 miles. They cross the Continental Divide at elevations over 7,000 feet. This pile was in Seminoe State Park. After shifting sand began covering this road, it had to be rerouted to the west. It was a strange feeling walking deeper into the dunes in the dark, as sand in every direction messed with my depth perception and I couldn't tell if I was going uphill or downhill. Strong winds during the day had cleared the dunes of all tracks left by humans or ATV's. It was a good thing the winds were calm now at 3AM because blowing sand and camera lenses do not go well together.
    Shifting Sands
  • It may have been past midnight, but this roadside pond was teeming with life that was very much awake. Green eyes reflected back at me as cows shuffled around. Bats swooped through the air to catch the swarms of insects. The calls of an owl, geese, killdeer, and other unidentified birds added to the chorus of crickets and squeaking mice. The water was a near perfect mirror, which is a rare sight in windy Wyoming. Earlier in the spring it’s necessary to wait until the early morning hours to see the Milky Way. But at this time of year the core of the galaxy is up completely by the time it gets dark. The shooting star was just an unexpected bonus. There was no meteor shower happening, but on any given night about 6 meteors are visible per hour from dark skies. These are called sporadic meteors, and somehow I captured 2 bright ones in less than an hour. In the center of the image is Jupiter next to the fainter planet Saturn.
    Second Sporadic
  • At the end of June I returned to one of my favorite places: Bighorn Canyon. Located on the Wyoming-Montana border, this vast canyon ranges from 1,000 - 2,500 feet deep. The remote location and dry desert air makes it a great place for stargazing. But capturing a canyon on a dark night can be a challenge. In pictures they only appear as a dark void, since very little light makes it's way down between the steep walls. But on this night I had the assistance of the crescent moon just out of frame to the right. The moonlight was bright enough to light up the cliffs, but not bright enough to drown out the Milky Way. This natural arch is set back against a steep hillside, which meant there was really only one spot to place my camera. After a hot day, I heard several rockslides echo from down below. And while walking back to my car, I met a baby rattlesnake who was not too happy I was there.
    Window to the Universe
  • After hearing about a comet named C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE), I finally got to see it for myself on this morning. Not really knowing what to expect, I set my alarm for 3AM. I was immediately blown away by how big and bright it is. Even after most of the stars had faded out against the light of dawn, it was still visible. The long tail stretched at least 5° across the northeast sky. I’m looking forward to getting more pictures of this comet, but that is assuming it holds together. Comets are very unpredictable. 2 of them were hyped up earlier this year, only to break apart before ever getting bright. Then Comet NEOWISE came as a bit of surprise. This was taken at Fort Peck Lake, the largest in Montana. With it’s many coves, arms, and inlets, the reservoir has a shoreline of more than 1,500 miles.
    Comet at Fort Peck Lake
  • There are some things that just don't happen every day. One of the brightest comets in decades is swinging past Earth this month. As I brainstormed to figure out where to capture it, Steamboat Point seemed like an obvious choice. Anyone who has driven Highway 14 would recognize this iconic peak of the Bighorn Mountains. It gets its name because of the massive rock face that sticks into the air like the prow of a steamboat. Even though storms were around in the evening, I was not expecting them to last. But lightning flashed to the north for the entire night. The red color is an effect caused by viewing from a long distance through the thicker atmosphere. At 2:30AM, the comet rose above the northeast horizon, tail-first. A comet's tail always points away from the Sun. The 67% moon off to the right lit up the mountain, while shadows added depth to the scene. Soon after this, noctilucent clouds joined the show, but that's for another post. By the time the sun rose my memory card had 1400 new images. It was a night very much worth losing sleep over.
    Worth Losing Sleep Over
  • All night long lightning flashed to the north over Steamboat Point in the Bighorn Mountains. Then at 2:30AM Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE rose above the horizon. Finally as the first light of dawn came, noctilucent clouds appeared. It was the brightest display I've ever seen. Seeing all these things at the same time made it a night to remember.
    A Night to Remember
  • Noctilucent (night shining) clouds are a rare and beautiful type of cloud. About 50 miles high in the mesosphere, no other cloud is higher. They are only seen in the summer, usually from high latitudes between 50°-65°. Occasionally they are  sighted from lower latitudes. After trying and failing many times to spot them from Wyoming, the morning of July 10th brought this incredible display.
    Treetop Noctilucent Clouds
  • Up until the lunar eclipse started, I still wasn't sure I would be able to see it. In between an overcast day and an incoming snowstorm, weather models were showing a brief clearing. The clouds parted not a moment too soon. Compared to the last recent eclipse, the moon was a lot higher in the sky at 50°, which made it more challenging to shoot with a foreground. I needed to find something tall, where I could set up my camera underneath and point it southeast. The Needle's Eye is a natural arch that stands at the entrance to Tongue River Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains. I knew I wouldn't be able to fit the moon inside the arch, but just above it. The scattered clouds which remained made a red halo around the eclipsed moon. Closer to the arch is a cluster of stars known as The Beehive.
    Threading the Needle
  • I've been wanting to get an image like this for a long time. But it's been several years since we've had a comet this bright. This comet named 46P/Wirtanen was discovered in 1948 and will make it's closest approach to Earth next week. I had my doubts that this picture would happen. The comet would only be positioned above this snowy mountain for 3 nights at most. Even rarer than a clear night in December, I needed a night with no wind. But at 2AM on December 7th, everything came together. The temperature hovered around 0°F; it was a frosty nostril kind of night. When I first arrived in the Bighorn Mountains the comet was just visible to the naked eye, but the best view was through binoculars. In my pictures, it's about 2-3X the angular size of the moon. To make this image I captured a series of 6 shots using a star tracking mount. I had to be careful to align everything as accurately as possible while processing.
    Comet and Mountain
  • At 2:30AM my alarm went off after catching a few hours of sleep. The moon was about to set, leaving me with 3 hours of darkness to watch the Orionid meteor shower over Devils Tower. My camera captured this bright streak of light shortly before twilight began. But the fact that it appeared in 2 frames and lacks any colors suggests that it was a satellite flare and not a meteor. The diffuse glow rising up diagonally from the horizon is called the zodiacal light. Also known as false dawn, the glow is caused by the sun illuminating the dust which is shed by comets and asteroids in the inner solar system. This cone-shaped glow is projected against the constellations of the zodiac, which is the path that the sun, moon, and planets travel through the sky. I've seen the zodiacal light before, but never this bright and prominent. It can only be viewed from the darkest of locations, far away from light pollution, on very clear moonless nights.
    False Dawn and Iridium Flare
  • Kirby is an abandoned ghost town in southeast Montana. I'm not exactly sure what this building used to be, possibly a post office. I want to come here some night to shoot the aurora since it faces north, but haven't had any opportunities recently. I happened to be driving by at midnight, so I stopped for a few pictures. The tall grass was still soaked from earlier storms.
    Kirby Midnight
  • I can't say I miss the very humid days and nights of Illinois. But I do miss the fireflies. Their flashing lights are nowhere to be found in drier areas out west. Fireflies (also called lightning bugs) thrive in hot and humid weather. They are typically most active in the late spring and early summer. They flash their lights in the evening before quieting down when the temperature drops. I recently spent a few hours at Spring Lake, which is a place I've gone stargazing many times. This firefly entered the frame near Mars which stood out prominently as the red planet. Mars gets slightly brighter every night until it reaches opposition at the end of July, at which point it will be the brightest it's been in 15 years. Saturn is also visible, just right of center in a star cloud of the milky way. I was a little disappointed when a breeze came up and ruined the reflection, but it did provide relief from the biting mosquitoes.
    Galactic Firefly
  • This strange rock formation is found at Shoshoni Point overlooking the Grand Canyon. The milky way was shining brilliantly above at 4AM. Jupiter is the bright object on the right, while Mars and Saturn are near the top left.
    Shoshoni Point Galaxy
  • Pairs of eyes stared back at me as I made my way through the forest at 3AM. Three elk dashed away along the unmarked path to Shoshoni Point. This was the one Grand Canyon overlook I could find with a view to the southeast. The south rim is not the ideal place to photograph the milky way because it's located in the southern sky while most of the viewpoints look north. Once I got to the edge the galaxy was shining brilliantly above, but below it was a black abyss. Neither my eyes or my camera could see any detail in the canyon, it was just too dark. But after shooting the milky way I left my camera in position and waited for morning twilight to brighten the sky. This helped to fill in the shadows and I combined the images later. The majority of the canyon is out of the frame to the left. Someday I'll have to return to the north rim for a better view when it's not closed. Three planets are visible in this image if you know where to look.
    Grand Canyon Milky Way
  • It was 4AM in the grasslands of southeast Montana. I was spending the night under the stars while my camera clicked away, but the cold breeze made sleep hard to come by. I thought I detected a bright flash of light, but wasn't sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me. It wasn't until I got home that I found the source: a fireball meteor. According to American Meteor Society reports, the meteorite (if it survived) likely fell near the CO/WY border some 300 miles away. It theoretically should have been visible from at least 10 states, I can only imagine how bright it must have been overhead. The green color reveals the composition to be mostly nickel, and it left behind a vapor trail (known as a persistent train) for over 10 minutes afterwards. My only goal was to capture the milky way for the first time this year after it hid behind the sun for the winter. The fireball was just an unexpected bonus.
    One In a Million
  • The line in the sky is the International Space Station, 262 miles above the earth. The ISS orbits the earth every 93 minutes at speeds of over 17,000 mph. When it passes overhead, the ISS becomes brighter than any star and can take as long as 6 minutes to cross the sky. There are many apps and websites (such as http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/) that tell you when to look for it. <br />
In the foreground is a mysterious abandoned structure that resembles a lighthouse. I don't know how old it is or what it was built for. I first found it a few months ago at Banner Marsh near the Illinois River.<br />
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Date Taken: August 3, 2014
    Space Navigation
  • The milky way was shining brilliantly on the morning of summer solstice, the shortest night of the year. Thin clouds were making haloes around the brighter stars and the planet Saturn. A long exposure revealed colors invisible to the human eye, including green airglow and purple nebulae. There wasn't a meteor shower going on, but I captured this bright random meteor in one of the time lapse frames. On any given night there are an average of 6 sporadic meteors per hour visible under a dark sky. The skies here were very dark, with amazing views of the Bighorn Mountains in every direction. This was taken from a fire lookout tower on the 9,500' summit of Black Mountain.
    Solstice Meteor
  • The Brightest Perseid
  • A Geminid meteor streaks across the sky above Picnic Key in Everglades National Park, Florida. The star Canopus is reflected on the water with the brightest star Sirius in the middle of the picture and the constellation Orion above. My flashlight lighting up the trees was actually unintentional. When a raccoon approached me I instinctively shined a light in its direction. The raccoons here are very bold because they have no source of freshwater and attempt to steal from campers.<br />
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Date Taken: 12/13/2014
    Make a Wish
  • The High Park fire lookout tower at almost 9,500 feet was the perfect place to watch the April full moon rising. It was a location I scouted out in advance on Google Earth, when I was looking for an ideal foreground to the east. The two peaks are Hesse Mountain on the left and Hazelton Pyramid on the right. If you look closely to the upper right of the moon the planet Jupiter can be seen. Winter is far from over here in the high country. The 3 feet of snow made it a challenge to find a route to the summit since I had never climbed this peak before. But it was much easier on the way down since I could simply follow my snowshoe tracks and the bright moonlight meant I didn't even need a headlamp.
    April Moonrise
  • On this January night the moon was 3 days past full which means it didn't rise until 3 hours after sunset. When the moon crested the horizon it was dim and orange, for the same reason that the sun is orange when it first rises. Because earth's atmosphere is thicker at the horizon, it absorbs blue wavelengths of light and lets warmer colors shine through. This view is from the mountains west of Sheridan, whose lights can be seen glowing on the left. This entire mountainside along Red Grade Road burned in a wildfire nearly 10 years ago. But even dead trees can look photogenic in the right light.
    Moment of Moonrise
  • On the morning of April 15 the moon was eclipsed by the earth for over an hour. It snowed here most of the evening but the clouds cleared shortly before it started. From midnight to 5am I took a picture every 20 minutes and assembled them into this sequence. At first the moon entered the earth's penumbra, and a subtle diffuse shadow began to appear. When the moon entered the umbra, It became much darker and slowly started turning a reddish orange. Sunlight being refracted through the earth's atmosphere is being cast upon the moon. It is essentially the light from all of earth's sunrises and sunsets that is lighting up the lunar surface. After being fully eclipsed for 1 hour and 18 minutes, the steps repeated in reverse. By the time the moon came out of eclipse, it was a lot lower in the sky which is why it looks darker and more yellow on the bottom right.<br />
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Date Taken: April 15, 2014
    Lunar Eclipse Sequence
  • It was nearly 11pm in southern Saskatchewan. I had just watched a bright auroral substorm send colorful arcs high into the northern sky, but it was starting to fade. Then I turned around, looking south, and this is what I saw. A bright pinkish strip of light stretched from east to west, while the crescent moon hung low on the horizon. It's one of the most unusual things I've ever seen in the night sky. This strange type of aurora is called Steve. The name started as a joke, but it stuck.  Steve was first captured last year by a group of aurora photographers in Alberta. After ESA flew a satellite through it earlier this year, it was discovered that it's comprised of very hot (10,800°F) ionized gases moving along at 4 miles per second. This ribbon of light is 16 miles wide and thousands of miles long. I watched as Steve started overhead nearly paralleling the US-Canada border, before slowly moving south. It turned into a green "picket fence" pattern before fading away. It was awesome to see such a mysterious phenomena which is still being studied by scientists.
    Steve and the Moon
  • In late September a high speed solar wind stream reached earth, causing a G1 geomagnetic storm. The aurora borealis became visible in the northern part of the United States. Around here the weather was completely clear and there was no moon making conditions perfect for viewing the northern lights. I went to the grasslands outside of Lodge Grass, Montana, where there was very little light pollution. The aurora was at it's best shortly before midnight. While the pillars danced from right to left, nearby cows mooed and coyotes howled. Quite a few meteors and satellites lit up the sky as well. The geomagnetic storm is ongoing and the aurora may be visible again tonight.
    Lodge Grass Aurora
  • At 1AM the aurora spread out and filled almost the entire sky above southern Iceland, while the moon illuminated the landscape.
    Green Skies at Night
  • The northern lights shine through evening twilight over the Atlantic Ocean near Ólafsvík, Iceland.
    Ólafsvík Aurora
  • After waiting hours for thick clouds to clear over Grundarfjörður, I gave up and headed back to my campsite. But to my surprise the clouds parted briefly as I got close to Olafsvik. I stopped at this perfectly calm lagoon, which was lit up by the moonlight. The aurora wasn't as active as before, but it was still visible.
    Inverted S
  • After seeing only about 1 hour of clear skies over 5 nights, I was determined to catch a good aurora display on my last night in Iceland. The southern coast was showing the best weather forecast. So that is where I went, camping in the shadow of the glacier-capped Eyjafjallajökull volcano which was lit up by the moonlight. This is the same volcano that erupted 7 years ago with the giant ash cloud causing the biggest disruption to air travel since WWII. As soon as it got dark the northern lights came out and stayed the entire night. Compared to lower latitudes, the aurora up here is brighter and moves and changes so much faster. It will often appear anywhere in the sky, not just limited to the north.
    Volcanic Green
  • The lookout at the top of Cougar Peak, Montana, is lit up from the flames of a small fire. The stars of the northern milky way shine in the background.
    Cougar Peak Lookout
  • I combined some of the last aurora images I took before dawn into this startrail. I stacked the pictures in Starstax using comet mode and in reverse order so the stars seem to be rotating clockwise instead of counterclockwise. This allowed the bright purple pillar to show through more easily.
    Rotational Velocity
  • Stars appear to rotate above this abandoned barn in 3 hours time. In reality it is the stars that are stationary and the earth that is rotating. In 23 hours and 56 minutes, the stars make one counterclockwise rotation of 360 degrees. This 4 minute difference is what causes the stars to change position from night to night, and the constellations to change from season to season. Earth's northern axis happens to be pointed at Polaris, or the North Star. It hardly moves at all in the course of a night. For thousands of years people have been using Polaris to navigate. It not only tells you which way is north, but it also tells you your latitude. In this case the North Star was 40 degrees above the horizon. Those in the southern hemisphere do not have such a star to guide them.<br />
I found this old barn in Jim Edgar State Park a couple nights ago.
    Dark Barn Startrail
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