Even more sights in the sky

Carl has been wanting to get a picture of the Milky Way for a long time (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/02/a-slower-day.html. https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2022/07/viewing-milky-way.html). Prime viewing time of the Milky Way for our location started 6/13, but, wouldn't you know it, even though we've had super clear skies for weeks, clouds started moving in each afternoon during that week. The prime time was going on for two weeks, so on 6/19, after we did dance lessons and danced to the band at the White Mountain Dance Hall, we decided to try to find a dark place to try to see the Milky Way and take pictures.

From the dance hall, we drove east and tried driving down a side road a little ways... but we ended up on what appeared to be private land, so we turned around. We then went to a wildlife area where it appeared on Google maps that there may be a couple of lakes over which we could look toward the south/southeast. However, it appeared that we may have disturbed a couple of vehicles of folks who may have been engaged in romantic encounters (one was already parked when we got there but soon left, another drove in but left as soon as they saw us), and unfortunately, we were too close to the ambient light from Show Low so we decided to try another spot.

I had seen pictures posted on Facebook from near Vernon, so we headed east on US-60 heading toward Vernon. Carl was concerned if we got into Vernon, there would be too many lights from houses, so he found a side road and we decided to take it. 

While it looked like from the map that the road might proceed a ways off of US-60, in reality, there was a gate just a little ways off the highway. 

The satellite view on google maps shows a little better that there is a line paralleling US-60, that's a fence (https://www.google.com/maps/@34.2828492,-109.8527299,184m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu).

This capture from Google street view allows you to see it better -- of course, it was well after dark by the time we were there, so we didn't exactly have this view when we turned off of US-60! (link to google street view of location)

Now, the gate had a sign on it indicating that we should close it if we went through it, and *maybe* if we still had the Jeep, we may have attempted it, but we decided that discretion was the better part of valor and that we should not take the car beyond the gate.

However, there was also a walk-through gate, and we decided that it would be doable for us to take the tripod and our phones on the other side of the fence.

Our Google Pixel phones have the ability to do "astrophotography". If we put the phone on "night sight", it will take a slightly longer exposure picture (the ones that we took of the planets over the last few nights used that setting). If the phone detects that it is being held very still (like being mounted on a tripod or sitting on a firm surface), the night sight indicator (crescent moon) will change to a astro indicator (stars), and it will take a 4+ minute exposure. Now, in 4 minutes, the earth will rotate enough that the stars will not look like points, but will rather look like short streaks; software embedded in the phone's camera will post-process the resultant image and correct for the earth's rotation, so the stars look like points.

Here are a few of our results:

This was before we crossed the fence, and we got less sky and more trees than we wanted.

On the other side of the fence... better! If you click on this picture when looking at the blog online, I think you'll get a big image of this picture, and you'll be able to see a streak at the bottom of the picture just above the tree to the right -- I think that was an airplane.

A better composition of sky and trees

Another picture with a streak of an airplane near the top of the leftmost tree.

And... the "money shot"...

Carl wanted to get a picture of us looking at the Milky Way. We couldn't really tell what the camera was pointing at, but I stood where we thought the foreground of the picture would be, and I set a timer on my watch for 4 1/2 minutes. Carl started the astro-shot and hurried over to stand next to me. We stood still, though we could talk for the 4+ minutes. Once my watch timer went off, we went to the phone camera to see what we'd gotten and were pleased with the results! 

When the camera takes the 4 minute exposure, it also takes a video. That picture of us is actually a screen shot from the end of the video as it has us more lit-up than the resultant picture. We think, because headlights from traffic passing on US-60 would illuminate the area briefly, that we happened to capture a moment of the headlight illumination. Carl did a small amount of post-processing to bump the saturation levels up a bit. 

We think that we can now check-off "get a photo of the Milky Way" from our to-do list!