Dark Skies and Endless Stars
Solstice Star Watching at Chiricahua National Monument
In 2021, Chiricahua National Monument was designated the 104th International Dark Sky Park. Based on our experience last night, the title is well deserved.
I’ve literally never seen that many stars in my entire life, have you?
~ Kelly
We saw on Facebook that there were going to be telescopes set up in two different locations in honor of the winter solstice: Chiricahua National Monument, and Picacho Peak State Park. Both are about 90 minute drives from our house, but we decided that Chiricahua would probably be darker, and less crowded.
I don’t know what it was like at Picacho Peak, but at our location the sky was amazing, and we shared the experience with about 15 or 20 other people.
A few members from the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association came out and set up four telescopes for guests to look through. I don’t have pictures, but you’ll have to trust me that we saw the rings of Saturn.
It was a nice setup. Rangers from National Park were there with an information table and plenty of red lights. They illuminated the path to where the telescopes were, and even had red cellophane bags to put our phones in to cut down on potential light.
There is a small parking lot at the Faraway Ranch House where the event was held. We got there about 5:30, before the sun went down. There was also a shuttle bus from the park’s visitor center, which was about another mile up the road. I think the shuttle made two trips, and at least at the beginning I think there were about 20 people there. Everybody was really nice, and politely waited in line for their turn to look through the telescopes.
I looked through the telescopes a couple of times, but of course I was anxious to try to take a few pictures of my own. I suppose if was a “real photographer” I would have brought my Canon camera, wide angle lens, and tripod that I think is hiding under the bed. Instead, I was eager to try out the little mini-phone tripods I bought last year, and astrophotography mode on our Pixel phones.
To take our own sky pictures, we moved a little bit away from the group and the telescopes. I also quickly figured out that my pictures weren’t going to look too great through the red bag. Luckily, I figured out that I could just put the red cellophane over the front of my camera (touch screen still worked) and leave my back cameras in the clear. I put the phone in the tripod grip and laid down on my back on the ground so that I could see the screen.
Astrophotography mode:
It was pretty straightforward and almost automatic. The first step was to put the camera in night sight. Then it seems like for the astrophotography mode to kick in, two conditions have to be met:
The scene has to be dark enough
The phone/camera has to be still enough for a set time
Once these conditions are met, the moon symbol (night sight) will change to what looks like a cluster of stars (astrophotography mode).
Press the shutter button and a red countdown timer will pop up on your screen. It seemed to be about 3 and a 1/2 minutes long. Just leave it alone, and wait to see what happens.
I’ll be honest, we were mostly unsuccessful. I’m going to partially blame a couple of cars that drove through the parking lot and shined their lights right at us during several of my attempts. But it also could have been user error. This was literally the first time I’d attempted this.
None-the-less, I ended up with one image that was pretty close to what I was hoping for (the shot at the top of this post). Kelly also took a turn, and if anything, I think hers may have come out even better.
Our next camping trip.
Now that we’ve tried this out, I have a feeling it’s going to be a bit addicting. I need to find the other mini-tripod (bought two, could only find one), then get out and practice this a bit more. But once we’ve mastered it, I think we’ll have to head out to the Chiricahua Mountains again, this time for a whole night.
Not sure we’ll get much sleep though, as I expect we’ll be up taking pictures!
Til next time,
Todd
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