Dark Sky Country

Big Bend National Park was declared an International Dark Sky Park as of 2012. The park has the darkest night sky of any national park in the lower 48 states. I got to experience the dark skies on a recent trip to Big Bend National Park. The enormity of the park and the lack of populated areas within and around the park contribute to the dark skies at night. I have never experienced the solitude and the darkness of a night in Big Bend until recently. It was almost spooky or supernatural how dark the sky was. The quietness and darkness in the park at night amplifies all your senses. Every little sound heightens your awareness as you peer into the darkness.

Being by myself at night in the middle of Big Bend was a spiritual experience as I gazed up at God’s creation. I grew up in the Christian church and during the service there was a time where the congregation would stand up and sing the Doxology in praise of our mighty God. I stood there staring at the sky, and the memory of that song started going through my mind. Doxology: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above the Heavenly host. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.” I carried that song in my mind the rest of the night as I drove out of the park and put my head on my pillow.

Being in a place this dark gave me an excellent opportunity to shoot some pictures of the Milky Way. I had my tripod and Sony A6600 with me along with my Sky Guide app on my phone. This enabled me to determine what time and what direction the Milky Way would appear in the sky. I only had a small window between 2 and 4 a.m. to get some shots before the moon came up and washed out the darker sky. This was my first attempt at shooting the Milky Way. I had some good conversation with my brother about settings and methods since he has a lot of experience with astrophotography. I took a head lamp that had a red light so my eyes would adjust easily. I set my camera to shoot raw images and used manual focus. I turned off my long exposure noise reduction and disabled my image stabilization. I focused on the brightest star in a group and let the star come into focus almost to the infinity setting. I enabled live view mode to see the image easier on the tripod. My white balance was set on the daylight setting, and I used a two second Shutter delay to reduce the chance of camera shake. The lens I used was a Sony 20mm wide angle lens with a 2.8 F-stop. I experimented with ISO settings anywhere from 3200 to 128000. My shutter speed was in between 10 to 30 seconds.

With such a long shutter speed, it was somewhat exciting to see what kind of image you would get after the shot was finished. It was amazing to me the images I would get that were not visible with the naked eye. My wife and I sat on the porch of two of the places we stayed and took pics and identified stars and formations such as Scorpius, Cygnus and Orion. Some of the shots from the porches where we stayed include the lights of Terlingua and Lajitas. I think the town lights added an interesting element, but the darker skies with a mountain horizon are my favorite shots. Needless to say, we are both ready to explore some more dark sky sites in our great state of Texas and beyond.

I also took a lot of daytime photos which I will share in later posts. If you have not been to Big Bend, put it on your bucket list. Spring and fall are the best times to avoid the heat of the Chihuahua Desert. God’s handy work is amazing in this park.

God bless you and thanks for reading my blog. Enjoy the video.

Tim Lumpkin

Legacy-Outdoors.net

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