Hunting NEOWISE

Living in Colorado has a lot of advantages when it comes to the great outdoors. Having clear skies in the evening during the summer months is not one of them. This is really only an issue if you like to do astrophotography and even more so if you want to take some photos of the NEOWISE comet.

With my son at my mom’s for a week and my wife away at her friend’s place for a “girls weekend”, I decided it was the perfect time for me to hitch up the OGT Expedition 2.0 trailer to the Gladiator and hit the dirt looking for better opportunities to photograph the comet.

Since the main reason for this trip was to photograph the comet and the Milky Way, I started my planning off a little different this time. I needed to find a place that had clear skies forecast for the days I was going to be there. Most forecasts only tell you if it is going to be cloudy or not, but I needed more detailed information on cloud cover at various hours throughout the day/night. For this type of forecast I use a site called Astropheric. Besides forecasting cloud cover, it also gives you information on the skies Transparency and Seeing (useful for telescope viewing), tracks the ISS Path, sun and moon rise/set times, temps and dew points among other things.

After finding a large area in Wyoming that had little to no clouds forecasted, it was time to find a suitable location to photograph from at night. For this you need to find a location that has as little light pollution as possible. I use the site Light Pollution Map for this.

Trying to photograph both the comet and the Milky Way in the same trip is a little difficult as they are in opposite directions from each other in the night sky. The comet is to the northwest and the Milky Way moves from the south east to the south west as the night progresses. Luckily I was able to find an area north east of Cokeville WY that had little light pollution in either direction.

At this point I was ready to use Gaia GPS and Google Maps to scout out possible campsites in this area. I was able to find what looked like several good spots relatively close to each other. I always to try and mark out 4-5 possible sites so that I have some backups ready if need be. For this trip, I actually camped at a better location near several of my marked sites.

The site was not too far from a possible water crossing I’d noticed on Google Maps. I love water crossings and any chance I get to drive through one I take! I did not know it now, but this water crossing would add even more interest to this trip then usual.

Since my planned destination was a pretty long drive from my house and I know I was going to get a late start in leaving, I went a head and planned to brake the trip up into two days. The first day I would pound the highway to the Sand Wash Basin Wild Horse Management Area. I’ve been here a couple of times to photograph the wild horse and it was roughly half way alone my route, so I decided to stop there for the night. If the skies turned out to be clear, I could get some decent shots from there as well as photograph the horses the next morning.

As the forecasts told me, there was pretty heavy cloud cover that night so I did not get any photos of the comet or Milky Way. I also did not see as many horses this time out and since I still had a good ways to drive and find a campsite, I took just a few shots and hit the road again. Well, there was one little issue before I could hit the road. It turned out that I had left the coupler for my CO2 tank back at home. This meant that I could not air back up as I was leaving the dirt. The nearest gas station was some 80+ miles away, so it was going to be slow going for a while.

With my paced already slowed and taking a highway I’d never driven before, I was pleased to find an interesting bridge just about half way to the gas station that I could stop and check out.

The Swinging Bridge (not a very apt name as it did not swing when I crossed it) is a very narrow bridge that crosses over the Green River. It is posted as an 8′ max width and 20 ton limit bridge. I had my trusty laser measuring tool with me for my photography, so I pulled it out and checked the distance between the two sets of “gate keeper” poles at either end of the bridge. It turns out that they were almost 8.5 feet wide and since the Expo 2.0 is only 7.5 feet wide, I decided to go ahead and make the crossing. For posterity’s sake. Okay, I really just want to get some cool photos!

There was a “High Clearance 4×4” road on the other side, but I did not have time to go explore it. I’ll have to do this on another one of my trips to photograph the wild horse.

I also found the fencing they used leading up to the bridge interesting. It was part old logs and part old Marston Matting. For those that don’t know, Marston Matting was used to build make shift airstrips during WWII and was a major player in the air war in the Pacific.

After airing back up at the gas station, I made my way up to the area I was going to camp at. I spent that afternoon and evening scouting around the local area and taking some photos while I waited for night to fall.

No sooner had I gotten camp setup and Maximus was wanting to know where dinner was!

He was much happier when I took him on a hike.

There was a lot of lavender growing in the area and it smelled just as nice as it looked.

The sun was finally setting and while the low clouds to the west and north were not what I was hoping for, they did make for a pretty sunset.

As luck (or was it planning) would have it, I was still able to get a photo of the NEOWISE comet and the skies were mostly clear to the south west for Milky Way shots later in the night.

The setting sun and the low thin clouds made the comet glow a bright reddish orange. It immediately made me think of the comet in George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. Which I happened to be listing to book one of on this trip. I’ve read all of the books several times over the past 17 years, but this is the first time I’ve listened to them. The story is the same of course, but the characters take on a different feel to them when someone else gives them a voice that does not match the one you have in your head.

Finally with darkness all around me, I was able to get my photographs of the rig with the Milky Way and the comet.

I’m personally not a big fan of the LED string lights people put on the outside of their campers, but I think I’m going to have to look into some for these types of photos. A little light coming from the truck and trailer would really help to give some life to the images.

I did setup my propane fire pit and get a “selfie” shot. Just the light coming off the fire gives the photo a little more life I think. I wish I would have thought to add some more lighting to truck in this shot so that it stood better. Something I will have to work on in a future shoot.

The next day I continued to explore the area and found some pretty good hills to go up and down.

I managed to hit 23° on a long climb up a hill. That equates to a 42% road grade! For this climb I tested out the Jeep’s Selec-Speed Control. This is basically a cruise control for off roading. I was able to set the speed to about 3mph and the Jeep maintained that speed all the way up the hill. It was pretty cool.

I also decided to go checkout the water crossing to determine if it would be worth hooking up and dragging the trailer all the way there for some photos (it was about 2.5 hours away from my campsite) the next day before heading home.

The water crossing was a little bit interesting as they had put down a paved “bridge” across the Hobble Creek. The “bridge” was underwater, but it did seem to keep the creek bottom from getting tore up from people driving though it.

I had left my tripod back in the trailer, so while I was propping my camera up on rocks to take these photos, I heard the sound of a low and slow helicopter approaching. I was down close to the creek at this time and the really tall brush only offered a glimpse of the chopper as it flew down the creek. I ran back to the crossing in hopes of getting a few shots of it as it flew by. Only, it never passed by and it’s sounds where all but gone. Realizing that it must have landed right along the creek, I hiked down the road a little further and walked right into an active search and rescue mission being conducted by the Lincoln County Sheriff’s SAR.

Someone had gotten lost a couple of days before and the helicopter was flying the SAR teams in and out of the area they were searching. Otherwise it would have taken them several hours each way to hike back to where they were searching.

I’ve not been able to found out any information regarding the search, so I don’t know at this time if they ever found the missing person or not.

On the way back to camp I had my first and only real issue of the trip. I hit a pretty good sized pot hole while going about 20~25mph and the force from the hit was to great for my new overland style “Upper Decker” tonneau cover. It appeared to break either the hinges that attach the front of the cover to the truck bed or the bolts that hold them in. Either way the cover had shifted all the way forward to rest against my back glass and a little to the passenger’s side.

Being that I was doing this trip solo, I had to be a little creative to get the cover slid back in place enough to make the trip home.

Back at camp I again waited for night to fall and took advantage of the nice golden light to grab a few more images.

Earlier in the day I had found an old barn that I really wanted to photograph with the Milky Way, but I was a little bit concerned about doing more off road driving then I needed to with the damaged tonneau cover. But a ratchet strap on all four corners secured it enough that I decided I should go make the images while I had the opportunity to. It was unlikely I’d be back to this exact location in the future.

I’m really glad I decide to go photograph the old barn, as it turned out to be my favorite Milky Way photo I’ve taken to date. It was also a great way to wrap up an extended weekend photography trip!