A few miles away from Sunriver, the Central Oregon sky gets very dark at night -- at least it did last Wednesday after the crescent Moon had set. A one-minute exposure at ISO 1600 and f/4 captured the scene. Overhead, stars of the Milky Way blazed a path of light arching upward, reminiscent of fire engulfing the nearby tree. But instead of flames and smoke, the "fire" was the cold glare of a trillion distant stars in our galaxy. Its center is partially hidden by massive dust clouds between our Milky Way suburb and the galaxy's crowded "downtown."
In another direction that same evening, the stars performed a dance above this tree (click for a bigger version of the sixteen-minute, ISO 200, f/4 image):
In perfect circles, their dance took them around the North Star and its attendants:
Well, almost perfect. You'll notice that they were slightly off-center from the apparent focus of their dance, since the North Star is not exactly in line with Earth's axis. However, it's close enough for most uses of the word "North."
Near the North Star, the Big Dipper presided over Mount Bachelor, both of them framed by the faint reddish glow remaining from the sunset hours before:
A closer look at the "star" just above the mountain shows it was not a celestial object. Apparently, we humans felt compelled to decorate the beautiful peak with its own nighttime beacon:
The snow adorning the mountain was quite visible during the day, but at night the starlit scene required a two-minute time exposure at ISO 1600, f/4 (click for a bigger image).
None of these shots would have been possible in a location with city lights sprayed up into the air. Unfortunately, dark skies are getting harder to find in the United States, especially on the East Coast. This night-time satellite view shows the situation quite vividly. I'm glad we live in a place like Oregon, where there are still many places to "see" darkness! :-)
