Kevin Palmer

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  • 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
  • The stars of the milky way galaxy glow above Blacktooth Mountain at 1AM on a July night. From most places, clouds are easily visible at night because they are lit up by light pollution underneath. But under a sky this dark, you can't see the clouds. You only notice the absence of stars as a cloud passes by. These thin clouds gave halos to the brighter stars and planets. The bright red object on the right is Mars. To the left in the constellation Scorpius is the red supergiant star Antares. The name in Greek means "like-Mars" since it's a similar color, and often the same brightness as the red planet. Just above that is Saturn, the 2nd brightest object in the picture.
    Jewels of the Night
  • I found this area while wondering the backroads north of Sheridan at night. The aurora I had tried to capture was a bust, but when I left the milky way was perfectly placed above these bluffs. Mars and Saturn were close together after their conjunction last week. I lit up the formation with my headlamp from the side to add depth.
    Planetary Bluff
  • 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
  • The sun had not even been down an hour yet when the first green curtains overspread the blue twilight sky. Why am I not on the summit already? As I hoofed it up a mountain in Greenland, I barely needed my headlamp as the lights above illuminated my way. Route finding can be tricky at night, but I had scouted out this peak the previous day so I knew where to go. Finally I reached the top, and all body heat generated from the strenuous climb was quickly stolen by the icy wind. Below stretched out the Nuuk Fjord, 2nd longest fjord system in the world. Rising nearly 4,000 feet above the sea is Sermitsiaq, the iconic island peak which dominates the skyline of Greenland's capital city. While Mars cast its reflection across the water, ribbons of green, purple, and red shimmered overhead. Oddly the northern lights seemed to prefer every part of the sky except north. For hours the show continued, in waves of varying intensity. It was a night I'll never forget.
    Nuuk Fjord Aurora
  • 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
  • Mars and the milky way shine above the Pryor Mountains on a dark night.
    Red Planet and Milky Way
  • 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
  • It was July 4th weekend, and most of the campgrounds in the Bighorn Mountains were full. But I didn't mind because I found a dispersed campsite instead with an amazing view of the milky way.
    Good Night
  • The aurora was so bright that it made the mountains, snow, ice, and everything else turn green.
    When the Ground Turned Green
  • The milky way glows behind Loaf Mountain at Old Crow Lake in the Cloud Peak Wilderness.
    Loaf Mountain Milky Way
  • Medicine Rocks State Park in eastern Montana is a great place to shoot nightscape photos. Lots of interesting sandstone rock formations rise out of the prairie, and the full moon provided illumination. This picture was part of a time lapse. I shone a light on the other side of the rock to make it glow inside.
    Like Swiss Cheese
  • The very dark skies of southeast Montana are always a great place for stargazing.
    Late Night Wandering
  • 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 milky way galaxy is reflected in the calm waters of Sibley Lake. Here in the Bighorn Mountains there wasn't even a hint of light pollution and the stars were very clear.
    Sibley Lake Milky Way
  • Every tidal cycle brought something different. An endless stream of icebergs floated down the fjord, stranding themselves in this small bay when the tide turned.  Earlier that morning there were so many pieces of ice that I couldn’t even walk across this beach. But by nightfall most were carried away and only a few remained. It was my last night in Nuuk and the forecast called for 80% clouds. I just had to wait for that 20% gap. Geomagnetic activity wasn’t particularly high either, but this far north it doesn’t take much. Greenland is located under the auroral oval, where shows like this may happen any time the sky is clear and dark enough. When fringes of purple or pink line the swirls of aurora, it’s often associated with bright, rapid movement. A still image doesn't even begin to show all that's happening in the sky. Rays of light pulse inward from every direction, converging overhead at the zenith. It’s mesmerizing to watch and hard to look away from, though part of me wished I had a second camera with me to capture it all.
    Energetic Swirls
  • Mars Reflected
  • Mars and the Milky Way
  • The milky way glowed above Lake DeSmet, Wyoming, on a summer night. The red planet Mars is visible on the far right. I stood on a small rock in the lake for this self portrait.
    Counting the Stars
  • 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
  • The constellation Orion hangs above the snowy peaks of the Bighorn Mountains on a cold and windy night. The diffuse glow on the right is called the zodiacal light. This glow can only be seen where the skies are very dark, any light pollution will drown it out. The zodiacal light is caused by the sun reflecting off of grains of dust shed by comets and asteroids in the inner solar system. This dust is concentrated along the zodiac (also known as ecliptic), which is the orbital plane that the sun, moon, and planets travel in our sky. The planet Mars can be seen touching a cloud at the bottom of the glow. Because of the angle of the ecliptic, this phenomena is best seen in the west after dusk in the spring, or in the east before dawn in the fall.
    Glow of the Zodiac