Very Large Array, Day 2

The next morning I was up at dawn to explore the rest of the San Lorenzo Canyon area before heading off to the VLA.

The main image I wanted to try and capture on this trip was the Milky Way with one of the VLA dishes in the foreground. Since the window for that photograph did not open until after 8:30 that night, I spent the day exploring the area and confirming some of my pre-scouted campsite. It was a great day to just be out by myself in nature exploring.

I did get some decent day time photos of the array as well.

Once darkness fell I was able to go back to a location that I had identified earlier in the day and capture the image that I wanted from this trip.

Since the arrays move through out the day while they track their deep space objects, it can be a challenge to get a good shot of them at night. Even with a relatively short shutter speed of 13 seconds, motion blur is an issue. I photograph my Milky Way shots as a single exposure, illuminating the foreground objects with different types of LED light depending on the effect I’m trying to achieve.

Setting up camp with a RTT when you are doing astrophotography is pretty interesting since everything has to be done really late at night on the darkest of nights (and locations).

Very Large Array, Day 3