Grrr..... I asked for one thing on this trip. Just one thing. It was even on the schedule. I wanted to shoot star trails over the tufa formations at Pyramid Lake. The thought of desert skies with no haze or humidity is pretty much a wet dream to an east coast astronomy nerd. She changed the schedule because she didn't want to have to drive back from from the reservation after dark. I was placated with a promise of being able to shoot star trails over Crater Lake instead. Once we were at Crater Lake, the haze and clouds rolled in. I could feel my blood pressure rising as the night got darker. But I still scouted out a spot during our day. About 10 pm, the sky broke open and it was go time. So we went to our chosen dark sky site, got set up, and started an exposure. I even showed her how to set her camera for optimum settings. Then I made the biggest mistake of the evening. I said "and now we wait in the car for an hour and a half or so."
She freaked out. "I didn't think they took that long. I thought it was only like 5 or 10 minutes. I need to get some sleep. We need to make it to Beaverton by 8 tomorrow night."
I calmly explained the concept of sidereal motion and that we were recording the movement of the stars across the sky. She got pouty and bitchy. We compromised on one hour.
Halfway through my exposure, a car happened by and unintentionally hit my lens with the headlights. No hard feeling to the driver, if I were on my own, I'd simply start over and reset the clock. As was, however, I had to start over with the same clock. But now the moon had dropped below the horizon, so nothing was illuminating the lake anymore with the ghostly sapphire blue it had started with. So I had to guestimate exposure for the last 30 minutes. I guessed wrong and wound up with short star trails over a dark black blob that could be anything.
Usually, a night's worth of sleep dissolves any anger I might be feeling. Unfortunately, not last night. I still can't begin to explain how fucking pissed I am. I live outside the freaking east coast megalopolis, I haven't seen skies like these since I went to the Australian outback 12 years ago, and it'll probably be years until I see skies like that again.
Once again, as seems to be the perpetual occurence whenever she's involved, I ask for one simple thing and she finds a way to fucking ruin it. Fuck.
She freaked out. "I didn't think they took that long. I thought it was only like 5 or 10 minutes. I need to get some sleep. We need to make it to Beaverton by 8 tomorrow night."
I calmly explained the concept of sidereal motion and that we were recording the movement of the stars across the sky. She got pouty and bitchy. We compromised on one hour.
Halfway through my exposure, a car happened by and unintentionally hit my lens with the headlights. No hard feeling to the driver, if I were on my own, I'd simply start over and reset the clock. As was, however, I had to start over with the same clock. But now the moon had dropped below the horizon, so nothing was illuminating the lake anymore with the ghostly sapphire blue it had started with. So I had to guestimate exposure for the last 30 minutes. I guessed wrong and wound up with short star trails over a dark black blob that could be anything.
Usually, a night's worth of sleep dissolves any anger I might be feeling. Unfortunately, not last night. I still can't begin to explain how fucking pissed I am. I live outside the freaking east coast megalopolis, I haven't seen skies like these since I went to the Australian outback 12 years ago, and it'll probably be years until I see skies like that again.
Once again, as seems to be the perpetual occurence whenever she's involved, I ask for one simple thing and she finds a way to fucking ruin it. Fuck.
It sounds like a beautiful site!