Favorite Places
Dark skies anyone?
Do you have a place you feel drawn to? A favorite vacation spot? Your go to place for relaxation year after year? What is it about that spot that brings you back? Perhaps you return to that spot every year, perhaps physically you have never been back but on a regular basis you go back to that spot in your minds eye.
I have several of those places. To this day, whenever a certain fragrance of fresh cut grass or a fresh cut hay field wafts to my nose, my brain immediately takes me to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where as a youth I spent time working on my Uncles farm. And physically, I do return to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on occasion, good memories, good cousins, good smells, solitude, quiet, dark star filled skies.
So this spot shown in the image above is kind of special to me. My dad and his next older brother logged this piece of land after WWII. My dad did not serve in the military like 4 of his brothers did. Instead he stayed home, worked the farm, and was a riveter building the tail section of the B26 bomber. His next older brother was drafted into the Army, sent to the Pacific Theater, survived, came back, and logged this piece of land with my dad over a winter before each got married. My dad farmed this land for a while, sold it to his brother, who passed away a few years ago at the young age of 100, I worked this land, crimping and bailing hay for a few years while in High School. If blindfolded, driven to this spot in spring or summer, I’m pretty sure I’d recognize it by the smell. A special place.
And then there is this spot…
The difference from Michigan’s upper peninsula couldn’t be more stark, the Alvord Playa. This place has captivated me since my first visit nearly 35 years ago on a camping trip with my brother. I first learned about this place while working in Portland, Oregon. As a meteorologist I found myself always looking at maps to determine how the weather would interact with he terrain. And when looking over maps, I often found unique places. I saw a hot spring listed on the map near this spot and decided I had to go. I’ve been to the playa (and hot springs) many times for pictures like this one…
And this one…
And it was to the Alvord Playa I went just a month ago when Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was visible. I arrived at this location about 30 minutes before sunset. It was a typical evening on the playa, clear skies, no wind, and complete silence. The silence in such a vast space is awe inspiring. As the sun set I was scanning the sky wondering where the comet was. This was in the first days after the comets closest approach to the sun. I looked, waited, looked, consulted my phone for the comets location, looked some more, then finally, there it was, near the western horizon. This first image of the comet below was taken with the sky still fairly light, some brighter stars visible. Notice a faint lighter streak of light pointing down and to the right from the comet, opposite the comet’s tail. This is sunlight reflected off debris stripped off the comet from the previous few days on the comet’s closest approach to the sun.
This last image is a composite of several images to get rid of some noise and clean up the image a bit.
When Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was near earth it was thought the comet had an 80,000 year orbit around the sun. Since then, more detailed observations indicate that the comet may never return. Instead, interactions with gravity of the planets may have altered the orbit such that it is no longer in an orbit around the sun but instead is now on a hyperbolic path that will take it forever away from out sun.
The Alvord Desert is only a 3 hour drive from my house, so it is a convenient goto place for dark skies and solitude. The playa is sometimes filled with water (never go onto wet areas of any playa. Your vehicle may be there for months, and your tracks will be there for generations.), more often, dry, and always filled with stars on moon free nights.
And recently I found another favorite place, farther from home, but filled with unique geologic features, and dark skies. Below is an image of a few of the Trona Pinnacles with an 8 hour time series of stars rotating overhead.
The Trona Pinnacles are tufa that formed when the Searles dry lake bed was an actual lake, hundreds of feet deep. That lake is now long gone leaving behind an otherworldly landscape. Climate change anyone?
If you have any comments, questions, criticism, or something you’d like to share about this post, this area, or if you’d like to share one of your favorite places. Please leave a comment. If you enjoyed what you read, hit that like button at the bottom, it means a lot.
Thank you. Something about being alone under a canopy of stars far from civilization that is so relaxing.
Beautiful night captures! I'm always inspired by other's astrophotography.