Clear skies and getting away from city lights allowed me to get out and shoot the stars this past Monday. It was, as always, amazing to me to see how many points of light are above when conditions are right – it is breathtaking.

Here, thanks to a long exposure, you can see the center of our galaxy. The bright ‘star’ you see is actually Saturn and toward the left edge of the image you can see two, faint meteors streaking side by side

I visited this awesome Colorado park this past weekend for the first time since I was probably only thigh-high to an adult. It was a great visit getting away from the city and signifies the start of my camping season in earnest.

One of my big goals for the weekend was Milky Way photography. Well, Mother Nature had other plans. I set my alarm, crawled out of the warm comfort of my sleeping bag at 3:00am, emerged to 38 degrees and… Clouds! Being a sailor, you can imagine I used a few “colorful metaphors.” 😀

Nevertheless, I was awake so figured I might as well snap some pics. In between the cirrus clouds you could get a hint of the brilliant display of stars that you can see once you get away from population and lights.

I didn’t get the images I wanted but I did appreciate the quiet and solitude standing on the shoreline of the lake without another person in sight.

Today, NASA successfully landed its InSight probe on the red planet. That made me recall all the times this past summer when I was doing astrophotography and staring up at the Milky Way and a very bright, red ‘star’ – Mars.

Seen here in this image taken back in September, you can see InSight’s new home toward the bottom left corner. Of course from the probe’s point of view, we are little more than a bright blue dot in the sky. Kind of cool to think about.

From last weekend’s trip to the Colorado high country. Taken on Friday night, I was pretty beat after working and driving but made myself leave the warm bed at camp and go out and capture a few images of the show after dark. Certainly, ideally, I would have gone far later at night but as is, the images didn’t come out too bad.

Here, you clearly see the center of our galaxy and as an added bonus, Mars (bright red, bottom left). Just below Mars, the lights from a plane is seen and if you look close toward the top right you see the faint light trail of a satellite.

Last winter I bought myself a second camera body (#Canon 6D Mark II) and a fast, wide angle lens (EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM). Landscapes and stars were my biggest reason for selecting this gear and while I have indeed used it on daytime subjects, I had yet to use it on the night sky – until last week.

It wasn’t ideal but there was a brief window of a couple of hours between sunset and moonrise and I gave it a shot. I came away with some captures that I am pretty pleased with, including this one. You can see the center of our galaxy and, that bright, red light to the bottom left is Mars, at the time its closest to Earth in years. The trails of two satellites are also seen. The glow on the horizon is light from Granby and Winter Park.

Ideally this would have been taken later at night / earlier in the morning during a new moon and in a bit more remote location, something I am going to be trying to do in the coming weeks. But, given the situation, I think this came out pretty good. I did goof and forget to take off my polarizer filter which meant a higher ISO than what would have been needed otherwise and haze from wildfires in California had an impact as well.