Winter is fading away in the higher elevations of northern Arizona. Snow has melted across much of the area allowing the trails to be used again for walking, running, and, especially, mountain biking. While the trails were covered in snow this winter we did most of our mountain biking in Sedona. Although snow does fall there, it rarely lasts long. Here are a few photographs from Sedona mountain biking this winter.
Winter is slowly coming to an end and we are about to transition into the warmer months of spring and summer. During these upcoming months, the center of our galaxy—The Milky Way—will be rising earlier each evening.
For photographers—and just about everyone else, too—staring up on a clear, moonless night with the Milky Way glowing above can be a magical experience. For those who live in brightly-lit cities, however, the Milky Way can be difficult or even impossible to see. From an article at PBS:
Light pollution — the needless shining of bright lights into the night sky — has robbed whole generations of the chance to see nature on its largest scale. It is estimated that as many as eighty percent of all the people alive today have never even glimpsed the Milky Way. (When a massive power outage struck southern California in the 1990s, Los Angeles residents reportedly called 911 to express alarm about strange clouds hovering overhead; they were seeing the Milky Way for the first time.)
With the rapid advancement of digital cameras in the past decade the ability to take images of the night sky has become remarkably easier. Not easy—just easier. Cameras can now take long exposures at high ISO settings to reveal details of the night sky not easily visible to the unaided eye. This has resulted in magnificent photographs of the Milky Way but also other objects such as comets and Deep Sky Objects (DSO).
Still, long exposures of the night sky can result in the stars leaving streaks (i.e., “star trails”) across the image. This is the result not of the stars moving, of course, but the earth’s rotation. Typical wide-angle lenses used for photographing the Milky Way are limited to about 15 to 30 seconds before trails become obvious. In order to capture enough night-sky light at these exposures requires high ISO settings which can add considerable noise to the image. Of course, sometimes star trails are desired as seen in the image below:
Another option is to use a tracking device that follows the motion of the stars (or, more correctly, counteracts the rotational motion of the earth) allowing the camera to take very long exposures without star trails. The downside of this technique is while the stars remain pin points of light, the ground is blurred as the camera slowly moves during the exposure.
The solution requires taking multiple images: one of the stars with the star tracker on and a second image of the ground with the tracker turned off.
The image shown at the top of this post is a composite to two images: one of the stars and one of the ground.
The star image was taken using the iOptron Skytracker, a relatively inexpensive tracker. The image was shot using a low sensitivity (ISO 400) to minimize sensor noise. The lens was an ultra-wide 16mm shot at f/4 and the duration of the exposure was 534 seconds (~9 minutes). The exposure for the foreground was shorter in duration (4 minutes) and at a higher sensitivity (ISO 1600).
The two images were combined as layers in Photoshop. Masks were applied to each of the images and then blended so that the pin-point stars on one image and the sharp foreground of the other image remained.
It turns out that taking the images was the easy and fun part. Standing around in the middle of the night watching stars, meteors, and satellites cross the sky can be very enjoyable. Not surprisingly, the blending of the images took many attempts and much time.
The canyons that surround Sedona are known to contain many Native American dwellings and other artifacts. Visiting these sites can be an exciting adventure—especially if you don’t actually know where they are.
I suppose there are web sites and other sources of information that might show where these are and even include photographs and GPS coordinates. I’m less interested in visiting these web sites to get precise information than I am in exploring and finding them on my own. I certainly won’t find many this way—but that’s okay. It’s the adventure that provides the interest.
So we have been visiting and re-visiting some canyons in the area and trying to determine where dwellings might exist. There are several ways to do this. One is to look carefully at the cliff walls and decide if these might support a dwelling. The next is to look for faint paths created by others that lead to the hidden sites within the canyon. And the third is to listen for loud folks who’ve found something and follow them ;-)
Methods two and three above worked in our favor recently and we visited this dwelling. It was well preserved and there were some pottery sherds (also sometimes called “shards”) as well as corn cobs. As is often the case, visitors had picked up these artifacts and placed them on rocks or walls for easy viewing—although most archeologists suggest they be left where they were found.
Our appetites whetted, we plan to visit these canyons again and try to find more
sites.
We had a nice snow storm earlier this week that brought a bit less than a foot of new snow to Flagstaff—but more than two feet in the mountains. Time to get out and ski some deep powder!
So off we went to ski the backcountry. Our destination was the area known as “Allison Clay” on the west face of Humphreys Peak. Getting there is not straightforward as there is no trail. One has to bushwack their way from the lower sections of the Humphreys Peak trail around a portion of the mountain before reaching the open slopes. Nonetheless, the trek can be quite beautiful when there is a lot of fresh snow on the trees.
Along the way we stopped at “Flying Dutchman” to survey the conditions. The old snow had settled so much in the past few weeks that the new snow was insufficient to completely cover the rocks and many were poking through the powder. After a quick stop, it was time to continue to our main destination.
Normally setting a trail through the forest and finding Allison Clay is not that difficult—but on this outing I aimed too low and we ended up below the normal ski zone. Not a problem! As it turned out, we found another nice gully with deep, untracked powder. Up we climbed—determined that we would return through this gully on our way back. Higher up, we broke out into the open and began the moderately steep climb up the west face of the mountain. Then it was time to convert all that potential energy into kinetic energy—in other words, let gravity do its thing.
And, oh, it was GOOD—especially the powder-filled gully! By this time, however, we were getting tired since we had to break a lot of trail through deep snow just to get here.
Next morning—same thing. We did all the work yesterday breaking trail so today would be easier. Unfortunately, winds had increased overnight and the avalanche danger began to increase so we chose to ski through the trees and away from the open slope. That turned out to be even better because the powder in the trees was simply marvelous.
Clear, blue skies and deep powder. Wow!
Edit: 01/25/2017…fixed broken link.
Over the past few years I’ve been interested in capturing images of comets as they move through the inner solar system. Some have been easier than others primarily because of their brightness but also because of where they lie in the sky.
Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10), however, has been a challenge. When it first became visible in the northern hemisphere it was difficult to see in the early morning twilight. Later, it moved so that it was well up in the sky before twilight but then I was fighting both bright moonlight and cloudy weather.
Finally, clear skies have allowed me another chance to take images of the comet this week. It is quickly moving through the northern skies towards the constellation Ursa Major and made its closest approach to Earth (at a very safe distance of 110 million km) last night (17 January 2016).
The comet isn’t bright enough to be visible to the unaided eye but binoculars are sufficient to reveal it as a fuzzy spot in the sky. With a DSLR and long exposure it’s possible to get reasonable images.
The first set of images are from 12 January 2016. The comet is approaching the handle of the Big Dipper. One long-exposure image shows points of light for stars but a short streak for the comet as it moves through the sky.
The second set of images are from 18 January 2016. Occasional clouds and a quarter moon made it more challenging to get a great image but there will be more opportunities later this month.