Celebrating Dark Sky Week

International Dark Sky Week is an annual event which is celebrated to create awareness about conservation of dark skies around the world. With more artificial bright LED lights at night we are slowly starting to lose stars from our lives. As an avid Dark Sky Seeker who was born and brought up in a heavy light polluted city, I was stunned to see billions of stars so bright shining with our Galaxy Milky Way.

Darks skies not just is beautiful to watch with the naked eye but the benefits of it are a lot. With control of light pollution, we can achieve energy conservation, and also saves wild life which are detracted by bright night lights of the cities and towns.

Not just that, but with recent studies, it also shows it affects humans health and we are definitely at a loss but losing the stars from our life.

I would like to showcase thru this photo series some of the dark sky areas in the US which can provide you with a great solitude to enjoy the night with billions of stars and hundred of shooting stars. Hope you like this series and Happy Dark Sky Week. Wish you all clear skies to enjoy the stars and as well as some shooting stars of Lyrids meteor shower.

Patterns of Earth

Patterns of Earth

Here is a collection of Aerial photographs of Earth seen from above when flying over from earths central latitude to its poles. 

The experience of flying over varied landscape and vegetation has provided me immense pleasure in capturing the different patterns that I could find from above. The photographs consist of both photographs taken from passenger flights and recent popular technologies using Small UAVs. 

The evergreens and tropical blue waters were a bliss in the tropics whereas as moving up I ended up seeing high deserts and rugged mountain peak. After moving further up north, the magical arctic exposes its beautiful rocky snow capped mountains with icy landscapes and even some beautiful auroras over frozen oceans. 

Hope you like and cherish this collection of photographs to celebrate the diverse landscapes of our one and only blue planet! Happy Earth Day!

    Maldivian Reefs  

    Maldivian Atolls

Tropical Coconut Tree Forest Kerala India

Saudi Arabian Landscape

Deserts of Iran

Dry River Beds of Middle East

Golestan Mountains

 

    Turkmenistan Oasis

Frozen Winter Pattern, Kazhakhstan 

    Russian Sunset

California Coast

    High Country Winter, California

Canadian Frozen Confluence

Magical sunrise over Canadian Rockies

 

    Patterns of Arctic Icebergs

Sunrise over the Arctic Ocean

                                                                       Polar Auroras

      Happy 100th Birthday, National Park Service !!!

In my pursuit to visit natural wonderlands of United States of America, I have been fortunate enough to visit 25 National Parks and preserves in the past 10 years and amongst which some of them were multiple visits and some even touching double digits. 

As I moved across different states, sometime for jobs I made it a point to visit nearby national parks. Sometimes, some of these parks me go so crazy, I use to fly, drive several hours to reach the location or once I even did a cross country drive from San Francisco to Maine covering multiple National Parks on the way from Yosemite in California to Acadia in Maine.

The night sky was one of the major attraction for me who was born and brought up in a City. I was fascinated by the number of stars that we could see with our naked eye. And as a photographer I got thrilled to capture them as well. 

As we are celebrating National Park Services Centennial today on the 25^th of August 2016, I wanted to relive my National Park Experience in this presentation of the below National Parks I had visited over the period of 8 years. Here is a collection of Photographs which I have carefully selected from my archives of all the 25 National Parks I have visited and which I feel portrays the National Parks feel to be there and enjoy and cherish it.

 

 As a nature photographer, I take pride in capturing the beauty of varied landscapes in some magical lighting conditions. National Parks provide me the opportunity to enjoy and capture the moment at the same time. Running National Parks is not a simple thing and I believe the National Park Service which does a great job 24x7 365 days deserves an applause in what they do. Starting from providing a conducive environment to the public to visit and enjoy the place, they managing rescue operations day in and out providing safety to public. They conserve nature and wildlife and as well create awareness amongst the visitors on how to conserve and not pollute the preserved parks and its wildlife. 

Keep Wildlife Wild and Nature a natural pristine untouched place for the generations to come. I am thanking NPS and hearty wishes to them for achieving this milestone. Happy 100th Birthday National Park Services.

Tips and Tricks to Enjoy/Photograph the most amazing meteor shower of the year 2016

Perseids is my favorite among various meteor shower which happens throughout the year. Perseids this year has been predicted to produce some extraordinary peak rates as per NASA which will be almost double the normal rate.

I have been recently asked how and where to catch this famous annual Meteor showers this year and below are some tips and tricks to enjoy and photograph this spectacular fireworks of nature.

·       Darkness matters – The darker the sky, more easily you would be able to see the meteors striking our atmosphere. Start planning to be away from city lights and find an open spot with nice clear view to the north from where the Perseids will radiate from. Plan to take a nice chair and sleeping bag if you would like to relax and enjoy the show while your camera does its job to capture the shots. 

·       Timing – August 11, 12 – The best nights to watch for Perseids is August 11^th with expected rate of 200 meteors per hour, but August 12^th night being a Friday would not hurt either if you are aiming for a nice weekend activity which is expected to produce almost 80-100 meteors per hour.

·        Watch out for weather – If you are really particular about the catching the best of the show, be weather aware. Keep your options open where you would like to venture out and keep an eye out to see which of those spots will have clear skies, less humidity. The lesser the clouds and moisture in the air, the more will be the visibility. With 60 Percent moon which will be up in the sky until midnight, visibility will be hindered but it will become perfect conditions soon after the moon set till an hour to Sunrise.

·       Camera/Lens requirement – Any Camera which can go up to 6400 ISO will be able to capture the stars and meteors with ease along with the foreground. Grab a nice wide angle lens varying from 11 – 24mm with a minimum aperture of 2.8 to try and capture most of the meteor strikes. If you do not have one, don’t be discouraged, you can either rent one or take up the challenge and capture something unique with telephotos. 

*    *Tip – Try to catch the Andromeda/ a prominent constellation and wait for few meteors to fall in the frame.

·       Setting up the camera – Being a very consistent meteor shower, you can safely point your camera towards North-North East to capture the maximum number of meteor strikes. But, if you are trying to capture some nice foreground or Milky Way along with it which doesn’t line up – I will not be afraid to put the camera in that direction and start capturing the action, as the meteors do land up anywhere in the sky though the majority might look like it radiates from constellation Perseus. General setting for Camera I would recommend would be having ISO at 1600+, Shutter Speed at 25s, Aperture at widest possible of the lens preferably 2.8, and focal length between 11 and 24mm.

If shooting telephoto (Focal length more than 24mm) – recommended settings would be ISO – 3200+, Shutter speed – less than 15s to avoid star trails and aperture preferably 1.8 to 2.8.

*Tip – Always take some trial shots to finalize your frame which you would not regret after coming back. Do not keep running around and pointing your camera to a different direction every time you see a meteor in a different direction than where your camera faces. This will drastically reduce the chance of capturing the meteors. Be patient and confident about your frame you have set up, if you don’t end up catching a ton of them at least you will have a nice timelapse or a star trail to take back with a few single images with some nice pretty meteors. Prevent throwing other external light source when the camera is shooting the timelapse to avoid changing of lighting condition on the foreground which may become a hindrance when post-processing.

·       Watch out for lens fogging and battery – The best way to capture meteors would be to have the camera running on timelapse mode with continuous exposures which will increase the chance of capturing majority of the meteors falling inside your camera frame. But being on timelapse for a long period of time, lens might start fogging due to various environmental factors such as temperature and humidity. To prevent disappointment later, you can act on it upfront by having a hand warmer wrapped around the lens. And to prevent battery from running out due to long exposures and temperatures, it will be good if you could carry a battery pack/ extra batteries for your camera.

·       Enjoy the show – With all these planning and photographing, do not forget to enjoy the show. I can vouch that Perseids had been the best meteor shower with some nice big trails and if you are in a real dark spot, I bet you would able to see the colors of the meteor with your naked eye.

Finding Dark Skies near San Francisco Bay

As the awareness to protecting night sky increases, being a member of International Dark Sky Association and an advocate of Dark Skies, I wanted to explore the available remaining dark skies close to home and close to cities that could still be enjoyed and preserved. I was 25 when I first saw milky way, and I wanted to create awareness to others to not miss this spectacle in their life time and preferably experience it at a younger age. The following is my effort in identifying areas and locations in the state of California with a collection of pictures constituting of beautiful landscape combined with enviable dark skies which are not too far from where the masses live but devoid of dark skies due to city lights. I also believe with summer time people should take advantage and take their kids to such places and show them the nights how our ancestors enjoyed.

Davenport, CA is a quaint town in the coast of CA with near proximity to big cities like San Jose, San Francisco. The quality of dark skies is completely enviable in the south - Southwest where the Milky Way will be visible at this time of the year. The skies are so dark that you would not even find light domes in the horizon from the beach . 

Scotts Creek, CA is a beautiful beach area on the road side few miles north of Davenport CA where the Scotts creek merges with the ocean, this is a beautiful spot to enjoy the stars which demands just getting down from car got out and look up. 

Pescadero, CA - Pigeon point light house is again a short drive from Half Moon Bay getting out of all hustle bustle and touristy crowd to enjoy the peacefulness of country side with really dark skies despite the light from lighthouse tries to take the darkness away. This would definitely be a nice spot to enjoy the stars with family learning about planets, stars, galaxies providing kids chance to see the occasional shooting stars aka meteors. 

Majors, CA is on the way to Santa Cruz and any where getting out of the car to look at the beaches will provide you with stunning views of beaches as well as a pretty good dark skies. As we are near to another big town Santa Cruz, we will start seeing a light dome of light pollution but its a beautiful few miles drive away from city to enjoy the Milky Way. 

Yosemite, CA - Yosemite and high sierras is a 3-4 hour drive from San Francisco Bay Area which gives a nice weekend retreat away from city life to the wild beautiful mountain landscape with plenty of opportunity for night skies as the area has the best chances of having clear nights in Summer. 

Dark Skies - A Comparison thru Photographs between Light Polluted Sky and Unadulterated Dark Sky

The light pollution may not look as a big problem from the outside but it has been proved that the excessive light thrown out creates health issues to human beings. Scientific evidence suggests that artificial light at night has negative and deadly effects on many creatures including amphibians, birds, mammals, insects and plants which depend on natural day light and star light for their activities. Here are 5 photographs with 5 different level of light pollution plotted against Milky Way.

Gaining Cosmic Energy -  This is a perspective of gaining the cosmic energy from such a beautiful location Mono Lake with literally no light pollution from surrounding towns and the sky turns up with all the details possible of our Universe!! It was taken with a 50mm lens on a full frame with 15s exposure with ISO 3200 without tracking. 

Mono Milky Way - This is again from Mono Lake taken on the same night but after an hour when Milky Way moved south from South East, and this time it is over the lake with lights from the small town of Lee Vining which acts as a distraction along with some very little light coming from far off place which might've been created from the wild fire which started on the same night over Yosemite National Park last summer. 

Double Arch - Galactic Milky way arched nicely over the Earthly Arch Rock in Joshua Tree National Park during an eventful night when my wife standing inside the Arch saw several meteors striking the earths atmosphere. We listened to Coyotes singing and supposedly Mountain Lion Purrs and Meows!! This panorama shot stitched together with 7 single exposure vertical photographs. The small light domes seen here are an indication that there are some lights far from the place which creates these domes. Larger the dome larger is the light pollution from near by cities.

Blue Ridge Parkway - This was my first milky way shot of the 2015 season!! It was a sad story to start when nothing went right when I wanted to time-lapse  the moon set and milky way rise over the blue ridge Looking Glass Rock, eventually it turned out the roads were closed. Clueless what next, went to looking glass falls to catch the milky way but it turned up it was very hard to control shadows of waterfalls to the light polluted bright sky. Then I had the urge to at least see the milky way with my eyes for all the effort I had taken and wanted to give it a try once again at 5AM and hence drove back all the way again to blue ridge parkway.  There were lights from many small resorts and towers all across the mountain valley on the way up and hence I drove to the top of that intersection where the road was closed, and to my surprise Milky Way was visible against so much of light pollution from near by cities.

Monument Night Sky - Here is an example of how the light pollution and clouds can make the night sky viewing even more worse. Clouds tend to stick on to the light thrown at it from the lights of towns and it worsens the impact of light pollution on the viewers. When the clouds are not seen while star gazing, it means its an unpolluted place, and where it can be seen with such colors it means its a light polluted place. 

Also, excessive usage of light in the night just increases the usage of energy there by increases the demand/shortage for power. And as per International Dark Sky Association (IDA) : “We do need some light at night, but much of it is wasted by lights that are overly bright or left on when not needed. Unshielded fixtures waste the most energy. Their lights shine upward instead of down on the ground where it's needed. In fact, IDA estimates that that up to 50 percent of all outdoor light is wasted. That adds up to $3.3 billion and the release of 21 million tons of CO2 per year! To offset all that CO2, we'd have to plan 875 million trees annually”. Hence I ventured out to capture the beauty of the night sky to spread the word to the masses to show what the city dwellers like myself have been missing.  Hence this small comparison of the Light Pollution.