TL;DR: Anam and I missed shooting the comet NEOWISE in 2020 on our first attempt (on a weekend) due to clouds and the monsoon in general. Led to a crazy roadtrip on a weekday night in the following week and finally capturing the comet - some of my self-proclaimed best astro work. See photos below.
P.S.: Just like my innovation with Pre-Scripts, TL;DR here means you are "Too Lazy; Didn't Read" :)
2020 did have a silver lining - all the time spent with loved ones was not something any one of us imagined. It was fun to work from home - with all your favorite TV shows or movies playing in the background (if you're wondering, that is my usual work-flow - I like having some familiar show/movie playing in the background - helps me keep focused, I guess - feel free to share more WFH tips and tricks in the comments :))
Like I have mentioned in my recent post, I started a photography hobby sometime in 2018 (around my birthday, when I made my parents gift me a semi-pro camera - Sony A6000). Now, photography has its ups and downs - making time for shoots amidst a busy work schedule and home life can be a challenge, but of course, the satisfaction of taking and publishing (read as posting on Instagram - @artbymunaf) the photo is a rush (the likes and comments help, obviously). This post is about one of our (my and Anam's) most tiring experiences with my laborious hobby - there are several of these stories, which I plan to share going forward.
Living in Southern Arizona has its perks for a photographer - especially the astro-inclined ones. Part of the reason I got into astrophotography was visits to this observatory - Kitts Peak and reading about the dark sky locations nearby. Having spent most of 2019 driving around Arizona, Utah, and California for some of the best dark skies and making some investment in equipment like a star tracker (allows you to take longer exposures for light objects in the night sky by compensating for the Earth's rotation - that was a mouthful!), 2020 offered very few travelling opportunities, what with travel restrictions, hectic work, and school.
July 2020 rolled around as normally as you can imagine - we had all been stuck at home for a few months already and I was itching to get out and shoot some more night skies (having already captured some Milky Way shots that I loved). That was about when the Comet NEOWISE started showing up in our night skies - seeing NEOWISE behind basically all the landmarks in the world wasn't helping with the lockdown syndrome. As luck would have it, Tucson has a monsoon season which decided to start around this time as well. In terms of things that disappoint astrophotographers the most, it goes - full moon, light pollution, cloudy skies, in no particular order. After waiting a few weeks for the skies to clear near home, I decided to take things into my own hands and drive around in search of dark and clear skies.
It all started Saturday, the 18th of July - as I was keeping an eye on RADAR weather maps for the past few weeks, I noticed that there was a chance (yes, just a 20% chance) that there would be clear skies at Picacho State Park (about a 50 minute drive from home). This was my cue to load up the car with all of my gear and some snacks to spend the night at Picacho State Park - we were all excited and reached there around 7pm (an hour and a half before sunset). Getting there was easy enough. After paying for the park entry with basically all the quarters in the car, we settled at a picnic area with some shade and a view in the direction of where NEOWISE was, it was now time to wait. The view from this spot had a few saguaro cacti and the highway (I-10) which I was already planning in terms of composing the shot with the comet (high hopes, I know). This is where we settled down and waited for darkness to arrive so I could do polar alignment (I was going all the way with my gear - NEOWISE was likely a once-in-a-lifetime thing). That is when the clouds started rolling in - it wasn't properly dark yet, so I was still cautiously optimistic. I did make use of the sunset colors and the subjects around to get some nice deserty shots like this one.. I know, the clouds here seem flimsy, but, trust me, it almost seemed like they knew where the comet was and were trying to hide it!
Anyway, after several hours of waiting there (NEOWISE would already set by 10pm or so - about an hour and a half after sunset) and not seeing event a faint glimpse of the comet (either with our eyes or the cameras'), we decided to call it quits for the night. This of course, wasn't our first rodeo - I have had several such experiences with clouds, equipment failures, and in one instance, Coyotes (this is a long story and warrants its own post). By 9:30 or 10pm, we packed up our gear and headed back home. As disappointing as it was, I was more determined to capture the comet in the next few days.
Thankfully, from a work standpoint, I had completed a tape-out a couple of months back and was working on new projects which kept me occupied during the workday, but affording some time off in the evenings. Anam hadn't started grad school yet, so we were okay with trying something out on a weekday. The weather forecasts weren't looking promising - and NEOWISE was going away real fast! Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say, so I expanded my weather map radius to a couple of hours away from home. I did not want to go and stay at a hotel (it was still the early-ish COVID days, so we did not want to risk it), so it had to be a there-and-back trip.
A small note about dark sky spots in general - they are usually isolated with very few people frequenting them. This makes them a bit - for want of a better word - creepy, to say the least. They are invariably away from cities and off the beaten path. Now, I have come to terms with having astrophotography for a hobby, but Anam is still getting used to the isolated nights under the dark night skies.
Back to Wednesday, July 22nd. After extensive research (read Google maps and weather searches), I had a plan in my head - to use a small rest area on I-8 (actually just a pull-out from the highway, called (aptly, I might add), Table top Roadside Tables - about 90 minutes from home to finally capture NEOWISE. Being ever the engineer, I did have a psuedo-back-up plan (which is what ended up being). We started from home about 5:30pm after work to allow for dinner and petrol breaks. Picked up dinner from our favorite Italian place and off we were! Here's a map for reference, in case you are interested:
The skies did not look promising where we were, yet. Even as we were reaching the first planned spot (the roadside tables), cloud cover was about 50% of the sky (very scientific data here, from the driver's seat) and mostly still covering N/NW (where NEOWISE should be visible). As we approached the pullout on to the "road-side" tables, the cloud cover did reduce, but N/NW was still covered. The pullout was but just a glorified parking lot - presumably for highway drivers to park and rest for a few hours if needed. There was enough room for setting up our gear, but then, clouds. There was one truck parked there, but nothing else - it was also open to the highway without any separators. I pulled out my trusty cloud cover app and noticed that there was no way the N/NW cloud cover was going away anytime soon. Time for decisions had arrived. We knew I would beat myself up if I don't get another chance in the next couple of days to capture NEOWISE. We had already spent a couple of hours into this pursuit, so we figured, what is another 4-5 hours?
This is where the back-up plan comes in - to drive all the way to Dateland, AZ - which is a total of about 2.5 hours from home (one way). Thus started our adventure - to the hospitable sounding "Sentinel Rest Area, Westbound". This one was a fully equipped rest area in its own right - with amenities like rest rooms, concrete cabanas with benches (for resting, presumably), and vending machines. There was also excellent lighting for the night - which made us feel safer. The deal with Anam and I is to always listen to our guts - if it doesn't feel right, we don't pitch our gear there. This place felt OK, there was some activity - several trucks parked and resting and several cars and drivers using the amenities. The best thing was, the cabanas faced N/NW. After appropriate amount of stretching and resting, we started to setup the gear around 9pm. Timing was really perfect - the moon was new, so the chances of NEOWISE capture looked great!
We picked the cabana farthest away from the parking area (but still in line-of-sight, to feel safe), and started setup. Facing N/NW is great for polar alignment AND capturing NEOWISE, so, the setup was up and running in a few minutes! In preparation for this night, I had watched all YouTube videos I could find on capture tips and processing ideas as well. Especially useful was this chap called Peter Zelinka (excellent channel for astro gear) and I ended up using his suggested flow. I can give a long-winded description of the photos, but a picture speaks a 1000 words, so:
And a photo of gear (I will do a post about the gear someday..):
Once I had my fill of the comet, we stayed there until about 10:40pm and started the long and arduous journey back home. Reached home around 3am and the first thing I did was to copy the photos from the SD card to my computer - I was NOT going to tempt fate and risk losing these RAW photos. Once copied, we just crashed and fell asleep.
The next morning, we were up and running by 9am, but caught up with sleep after work. The editing had to wait for next night when I followed the tutorials to the "T" and got these photos and posted them. This took a few hours, but, boy, was it worth it!
All in all - a great late night roadtrip to the best of Americana - the rest areas and highways that define this country. The infrastructure that allows people like me to go nuts and make these trips is something I am always amazed by!
We did survive this ordeal, but I told Anam that I should probably look for a less arduous hobby. Glad she was up to being a partner in crime with my nuts hobbies! :)
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