Starlight

Joshua Tree National Park is a rather unremarkable place, compared to places like Bryce Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone. It doesn't really look any different from the surrouding desert, and there are surprisingly few Joshua Trees. I was told that it is a very nice place if I visit during the wildflower season, but that can be said of anywhere else in the desert.

However, it is the closest national park to Orange County. Furthermore, it is remote from any large cities yet easily accessible. Not many people drive through, and it is eerily silent. At night, even fewer people are driving through. This makes it a perfect place for stargazing.

Well, almost perfect, if you discount the sub-freezing temperatures encountered at night. A bit cold for lying outside at night, but at least the temperatures keep the rattlesnakes in hibernation. Coyotes don't hibernate though...

Last week, it rained everywhere in California. People were treating it as if the end of the world was coming, but after five days it eventually cleared up.

Joshua Tree National Park cleared up one day early, and it appeared it was the only place in the area to do so. Everywhere else I looked, the forecast for Sunday night was either "rain" or "cloudy."

Why did it have to be Sunday night? Well, the Geminid meteor shower was paying a visit, so I wanted to see them somewhere with minimal light pollution. Hence, my visit to Joshua Tree.

As you can see in the photograph above, the sky was brilliant. There were hundreds of meteors to be seen per hour, and it was the most amazing meteor shower I have ever seen.

However, a clear sky in Southern California is not without a significant problem, especially for photographers such as myself.

Joshua Tree National Park's proximity to Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego means that the nearby Interstate is relatively well-traveled. This is fine because unless you're at the southern edge of the park, the Interstate is relatively distant. However, when it comes to air traffic, aircraft that you would normally not see become visible. This means that at any given moment in the evening, there are at least five planes visible, sometimes more. Even as I sat outside shivering at 1:30am, there were planes flying overhead.

This means disaster for astrophotography. It's relatively easy to edit out an airplane if it is flying through an area with few stars. The longer the exposure, though, the more difficult it becomes to edit out the airplane. For one thing, the trail that it leaves becomes longer. Worse, however, it the fact that when the airplane's trail overlaps the trails that the stars leave, it becomes pretty much impossible to edit it out of the photo. Next time, I need to budget more time and go somewhere more remote.