Ad Astra Observatory

Art Morton wrote:
> awesome photo not shot by me
>
>

The way you get dark sky in the Bay Area is to get to the top of a local
foothill and wait for the marine layer to fill in the valley. When that
happens, it’s like San Jose just disappears, and the sky gets inky.

I assume you noticed this guy is in the Bay Area.

I don’t have gear or skills anywhere close to this guy, but here’s a
photo that I shot from the same location as his RGB:

That’s on film, with a junky cheap camera lens, and before I knew what I
was doing in the processing arena.

This place (Coyote Lake) is a fairly easy “head down after work” kind
of a drive from where I live, maybe like driving from your place to
Steven’s Pass or closer. I would do it more often, except that I have no

tripod and honestly, I have just never really enjoyed trying to lug gear
out to a dark sky site.

I have a feeling, though, that like a runner who trains in Denver and
then competes at sea level, if I ever go to a dark sky site, I’ll really
get some data worth posting.

But I think that the IFN might be out of my league. (:

FSQ and STL-11k. I have toddlers for goodness sake. By the way, I think

we all know what he got for Xmas — look at the dates on his previous
images and the dates on the IFN one. (:

J