Photographic Gold In Lost Dutchman State Park

For

The Young Professional - Congress Edition

Volume 2 Issue 2 – September 2014

A Publication of the Young Professional Network of the National Recreation and Park Association

High up on my list of things to do upon moving back to my hometown in Arizona was to get outdoors, out on the trails in the mountains and attempt to recover a dimly sensed loss of adventure, space, and desolation. In LA, I had unwittingly become a city boy trapped on an island of concrete and steel, crowded in by the throngs of young professionals and sprawling populations of homeless and huddled poor that reside within the piled up boxes and mounds of blanket shanty towns that sprout from the streets at dusk.

I had to get out into the open spaces. I had to break in a new pair of second-hand boots. I had to capture through my camera lens that essence of the land and the wide-open dark skies at night that remind a person of the price of city life – a life removed from the sublime wilderness from which we have arisen only in the last few moments in the history of planet Earth.

That deep geologic time rises sharply out of the desert floor in the form of the Superstition Mountains located east of Phoenix and is one of the most recognizable natural features on the horizon. The towering monolithic slabs were formed 29 million years ago from cooled volcanic ash and magma that spewed from the Earth’s crust and now rise some 3,000 feet above the desert floor¹. A fact communicated silently in the soul of the onlooker as the bald face of the jutting rock melts in deep reds and purples at sunset.

Since 1972, Lost Dutchman State Park has provided the gateway to this gently managed wilderness nestled between the foothill neighborhoods of the city of Apache Junction and Tonto National Forest. The park’s namesake was actually one German-born Jacob Waltz who partnered with a descendent of the Peralta family that originally developed a few prosperous gold mines there in the 1840s and who were subsequently ambushed and killed by Apache Indians ² – according to legend of course. The location of the mines and caches of gold were lost to history and to this day adventurous folk still trek the range among ancient cliff dwelling and petroglyphs in search of his fortune.

Over the next few months of visiting the park I built up my photography portfolio, sought out solitude, and on clear nights waited for darkness to practice my burgeoning obsession with amateur astronomy and astrophotography. In the Spring, recently in town from her globe trotting adventures, a friend and professional photographer chatted with me over some beers about shoots we might plan in the future and when I casually showed her an image I took of the full Moon rising over the Superstitions all soaked in purple dusklight, she got inspired. “I have a few more shots for my photo book that I need to get,” she said. “I’ll postpone driving back to LA for another day…let’s go be art nerds out in the desert!”

The next night with our combined camera gear, my telescope, and a couple of her friends we caravanned out to the park before sunset to hike about on the Treasure Loop Trail and image some of that late afternoon luster. As the dark crept in and the distant lights of Phoenix lit up the valley below, the desert nightlife began to sound out and we in turn hooted and hollered down the trail making our way to the parking lot where I rambled on about astronomy and set up my telescope.

Though the skies were free from excessive light pollution, scattered clouds eventually rolled in and blocked most of the stars and Deep Space Objects, but not before I was able to share a close up sight of Saturn and its rings traversing speedily across the field of view of the eyepiece. The girls squealed in delight while trying to snap iPhone photos and must have sounded like a pack of coyotes to any distant park ranger making their rounds. At least that is how I have begun to reassure myself on subsequent trips.

At night, camped outside the park after hours taking multiple long exposure photographs for those iconic star trails images, as the dark night’s silence is pierced by the cries of roving packs of carnivores I just try to imagine pretty girls over-excited about astronomy. Owls hoot, I sip my coffee and try to remain relaxed while my camera shutter clicks away in the darkness.

I suppose folks must be looking in the wrong places because I seem to find a little gold in those hills each time I visit.

Resources:

1 http://www.ajpl.org/aj/superstition/ 2 http://azstateparks.com/Parks/loDU/index.html

The Moon Illusion

Have you ever noticed - I'll bet you have noticed, how large and striking the Moon appears when you suddenly spy it low in the horizon shortly after rising or just before setting?  Have you ever been curious as to why this is?  Did you ever wonder how it happens, and how you can prepare beforehand to catch such an amazing sight?  Let's take a cursory look at the science and timing behind this phenomenon so that we can better understand, appreciate, and reliably experience that fat ol' Moon hitting your eye like a big pizza pie.

That's Amore!

Some basic facts and stats:  The Moon interacts with Earth, like most physical objects within the Newtonian mechanical framework, with extreme regularity and precise predictability.  So we have old Lunar calendars, a fairly long history of predictions of Lunar eclipses, and ancient stories involving the anthropomorphized or pareidolic images imagined upon the light vs. dark features on the near side of the Moon's surface (e.g. the man in the Moon, the rabbit in the Moon, etc.).  

From modern Astronomy we have gleaned much more: the average distance from Earth to the Moon is 384,400km or 238,900mi - closer at perigee and farther away at apogee.  The Moon is about 400x smaller than the Sun, but about 400x closer which is why we have 1 to 1 Solar eclipses.  The Moon is also moving away from Earth at a rate of about 5in. per year so in the future eclipses won't be as cool.  The Moon is tidally locked to Earth and therefore shows the same side or face to us each day/night - there is no "Dark side of the Moon" unless you are referring to the far side during a full Moon, the near side during a new Moon, or any combination of the Sun's position in relation to the Moon's opposing side during its monthly phases as seen from Earth.  The full Moon always rises around sunset and sets around sunrise (that's why its full disk is lit), the new Moon is invisible (because its far side is lit) and only "returns" to the sky after a day or two as the waxing crescent and sets just after sunset, later and later each night.

The "SuperMoon" is a term coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979 and basically means any "new or full Moon that occurs at or past 90% of its closest approach in a given orbit" (from Wikipedia). Each full Moon has a name and you can find them all HERE (BTW June's full Moon is the Honey Moon which is why, as many weddings happen in June, the vacation period enjoyed by the bride and groom directly after shares the same name).  The "Blood Moon" is a media term given to the full Moon during an eclipse when it takes on a red, orange, or ruddy hue - this is due to the collective sunrises and sunsets all around the Earth (which lies directly in between the Sun and the Moon) passing through the Earth's atmosphere and then projected onto the properly aligned and therefore eclipsed full Moon's face (pretty damn epic in my opinion).  The actual Blood Moon is one of the names given to the full Moon in the month of October.

The dark parts of the Moon are called Mare (Latin for Sea) and are low lying plains of solidified Basaltic lava.  The lighter toned upper crust is where we find most of the impact craters, mountain ranges, ridges, rilles, and valleys which is covered by a fine dust called "regolith" that, because there is no wind or water erosion to smooth the dust particles' edges, is extremely sharp and jagged and clings to EVERYTHING.  12 Americans males have stepped foot on the Moon and the American flag left there by the astronauts of Apollo 11 has since been bleached white by solar radiation.  You cannot see any evidence of the Moon landings from any Earth or space based telescopes (due to limits of resolution and just how far away the Moon is) except for the images captured by the LUNAR RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER of which there are many.  Speaking of distance, it is possible to fit all of the planets in the solar system side by side (tilting Saturn to cancel out its rings) in the distance between the Earth and the Moon (from Reddit).  I think you can just squeeze in Pluto as well.  The Moon is about 4.5 Billion years old and was formed (according to prevailing theory) when a Mars-sized object named Theia impacted our planet and sent blasted material into orbit which slowly accreted into our only natural satellite.  The Moon's official name is The Moon.

That should suffice for now.  Back to size, perspective, and illusion.

There are a few competing hypotheses as to how the Moon illusion works its magic upon the human eye or brain, and indeed whether it is a true optical illusion or merely a cerebral or intellectual effect.  The debate dates all the way back to the 4th Century BCE when philosophers, Astronomers, and mathematicians like Aristotle and later, Cleomedes and Ptolemy were beginning to describe optics, refraction, and graphical perspective.  You may have heard about this particular historical episode in your high school art class as it was boiled down to the fact that perspective in art was basically 'discovered'.  Before this time "paintings and drawings typically sized many objects and characters hierarchically according to their spiritual or thematic importance, not their distance from the viewer" (from Wikipedia).  There was no use of vanishing points and hence no sense of 3D perspective, at least systematically, until roughly the 1400's during the so-called Renaissance period in Europe.

But much before that, Aristotle maintained that there was a mysterious magnification effect in play which made the Moon literally appear larger upon the horizon as it was viewed through more and more of the Earth's thick atmosphere. This hypothesis is easily disproven by holding out your thumb or a coin at arm's length at different times throughout an evening revealing the Moon's (mostly) constant apparent size depending on its point in its orbit.  Somewhat similarly, in Ptolemy's Opticks there was an attempt to explain the illusion through atmospheric refraction (a change in the direction of a light wave as it passes through a different medium like a straw that looks bent in a glass of water), but this too was disputed and never gained popularity.

The two main arguments still in competition are the Apparent Distance and the Relative Size hypotheses, and both slightly pick up where the other leaves off.   Apparent Distance brings into account the perception of graphical perspective touched on earlier and states that objects on the horizon are automatically perceived by the brain as farther away than when viewed overhead.  We view the horizon Moon in context with other visual cues such as distant trees, buildings, and landscape features which, by contrast, seems farther and thus appears larger than when viewed at zenith, absent any visual cues (see the Ponzo Illusion).  To add to this effect (which so far sounds closer to the Relative Size hypothesis), we expect the Moon, like other objects, to diminish in size as it recedes towards the horizon (along the narrowing vanishing lines as parallels converge to a point); as it does not, the illusion becomes more and more striking.

The Relative Size camp emphasizes the relative size of nearby visual cues to account for the illusion.  When on the horizon the Moon is seen in comparison to smaller objects, fine in detail and of more familiar dimensions.

 

Shown here (above) in the classic Ebbinghaus Illusion, both circles at the center are the exact same size, yet appear larger or smaller in the context of the circles surrounding them. Now have a look at these three images (below) all taken by me on the same evening from two different locations and at different focal lengths as the two or three day old Moon was setting over Phoenix, Arizona.

   

               

With the right equipment and know-how, and with enough planning (or luck I suppose) the landscape astrophotographer can even create seemingly impossible images such as this image from a timelapse video produced by artist Mark Gee who had to write up a full explanation of the shot after critics (including me) accused him of not labelling what must clearly be a composite image:

It doesn't help that he lives and shoots in the Southern Hemisphere making this Moon appear slightly upside down or sideways to those in northern latitudes.  This is a perfect example of what can be accomplished with a forced perspective combining a long focal length (1300mm) and a warped perspective of the subject or foreground (the people on the hill are 2.1km away). 

The Moon's orbit, position, and phases can be extremely confounding to the novice, but its a pretty shallow learning curve to begin to understand the Earth-Moon system, its fluctuations and phases, and how to prepare yourself throughout the months and seasons to best observe her as you attune your mind to the shifting realms of Earth's night sky.

Relevant (iOS) apps:  GoSkyWatch, Star Walk, Sky Week +, Phases of the Moon, The Photographer's Ephemeris

Let Me Tell You About My Gear...

* Cue Wes Anderson montage scene with Mark Mothersbaugh theme music GEAR!!  I dunno maybe it's a guy thing - maybe it's just a thing.  But gear makes the hobby.

As a boy it started with baseball.  The glove was a magical extension of your body and you exercised it.  You put a ball in the web and wrapped rubber bands around break it in, you oiled it, you wore it around the house pounding your fist into it.  Your bat was your first multi-tool and you had a bucket full of spiders and baseballs of varying condition and lethality in the backyard shed.  Cleats - check.  Cap - check.  Cup - check.  Game time.

You moved on, got into music and you bought a guitar.  You had to have the cool sunburst paint job, the right strap, the right practice amp, the whammy bar, and at least one really great distortion pedal.   You experimented learning just what the perfect pick was for your personal style taking years discovering the path, the path to the perfect setup.

I went overboard when it came to skateboarding.   I had reappropriated my fishing tackle box with all its little compartments now employed in the storage of used or extra bushings, nuts, bolts, risers, washers, bearings, slightly used bearings, bearings I should throw away, casings of busted bearings stuck in old wheels, tiny wheels from the early 1990s, old trucks, my older brother's cracked trucks that I kept like a trophy, king pins, curb wax, Husker Du's, Husker Don'ts, spacers, stickers and stuffed way back underneath the bed - old cracked, snapped and "focused" (purposefully snapped in four equal pieces) skateboard decks.  And of course the stacks of VHS skate videos, dog-eared CCS catalogs, and poured over and ripped up Transworld magazines - all the various ephemera, accoutrement, and  kit and kaboodle.

And I'm not gonna even talk about $$$Sssnowboarding.

But that was all child's play, training for the real deal.  The real gear.  You see, although astrophotography has a long history of amateur involvement (first recorded astrophoto was of the moon and taken via daguerreotype by Louis Daguerre himself!) , it was mostly accomplished through dry photographic plate processes utilizing large observatory telescopes.  But throughout the 1970s-1990s with the advent of CCD (charge-coupled device) cameras, webcams, digital cameras and in combination with innovations in telescope and go-to/tracking mount technology we saw the rise of a new standing army of astrophotographers getting better and better at cheaply (relatively speaking) pulling down the heavens and stuffing them into your mindblown faces (more on the history and processes of astrophotography in a later post).

I have to give credit here to the iPhone.  That wondrous conflict-mineral laden computer/camera/phone/totem/pacifier/plaything that fits right into your pocket was instrumental in getting me hooked on the hobby.  A friend and I were out at the shore for the spring 2012 supermoon, trying as well to spy Saturn through patchy cloud cover over Long Beach and a sudden, reactionary force swooped down upon me, I thought "I'll snap a photo with my phone!" (said no one ever before this century) and within a few moments I had taken my first astrophoto:

With the flash still on like a total n00b.

All that is to say that I still really haven't broken out of the beginner stage and my gear list represents the culminated efforts of lots of research, a few Christmases, a few birthdays, and some extra hours at the office slowly allowing me to gain experience with multiple introductory methods and techniques.  I'm sure I'll make a few updated posts as I drop a few thousand doll-hairs and level up, but back to the present and my gear:

The Scope:

This is my light bucket and "she" doesn't have a name because I didn't name "her" because I don't do that crap. It's an Orion XT8 8" Dobsonian (RIP its creator, John Dobson, popularizer of 'sidewalk astronomy' who past away today 1/15/2014) Reflector (it uses a primary and secondary mirror to reflect light as opposed to a Newtonian which employs glass lenses) telescope.  This is one of the simplest telescopes you can buy and is the standard type for beginners, provided that you can haul around ~30-40 lbs. without injury.  It tilts up and down and swivels 360 degrees on it's base allowing the user full access to the heavens above with only a red dot sight (ACOG sight for you FPS gamers) mounted near the eyepiece for navigation.  This means that the scope is not computerized and you must learn your way around by 'star-hopping' through the constellations using 1) assorted astronomical facts and charts stuffed into your memory 2) star wheels 3) smartphone apps 4) big thick reference guides like Burnham's Celestial Handbook and the smaller National Audubon Society Field Guide To The Night Sky (more on books later) and one of my favorite methods 5) aimless scanning.

The Eyepieces, accessories, etc:

I use the provided 1.25" (diameter) 25mm Sirius Plossl eyepiece along with a 2x Barlow lens (effectively doubling magnification) and  I also made use of a friend's 16 and 9mm eyepieces before the move to AZ.  I plan to make the jump to wide-angle 2" eyepieces, Barlows, and filters for the increased field of view or FOV as soon as economically possible.  Solar observing and imaging is made possible by my full-aperture 8" Orion Safety Film solar filter and is an indispensable member in the arsenal, enabling  off-hours observation and imaging of sunspots and sometimes even faint filaments or other solar surface details.  I borrow binoculars for the time being, but I really want to get these snazzy image-stabilizing binos that will set me back a cool $300.  Also, absolutely necessary is a few random red, rear bike lights and especially my Energizer brand red/white headlamp (the red lights are imperative to maintaining dark adapted vision) which is always kept close.

The Imagers:

I already mentioned the iPhone.  Its a 4th generation and has nothing special about other than it being a combination phone/camera/computer that fits in my pocket and is made from minerals mined by 3rd world children.  I did make a nifty DIY mount using an old plastic smartphone case, parts from a clamp for a bike light, and a bunch of black electrician's tape.  It worked pretty well until I realized that 1) it got me no closer to doing decent long exposure iPhone photography because my long exposure app doesn't really cut the mustard (more on apps later) and 2) I could basically maintain enough steadiness with just mah two hands to accomplish what I could with a camera phone (nothing against Orion's smartphone mount, they look pretty handy).  But it was a fun exercise in making my own gear (MYOG).

My DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera is a Canon Rebel EOS XSi (not yet modified for the IR filter).  Its one of the "quieter" cameras that Canon makes and is thus perfectly suited for the purposes of astrophotography as working with such faint or distant light sources ramps up the amount of "noise" of any given image.  I have two lenses that I am using right now, 1) a standard Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II lens, but it is outfitted with a UV filter and combination Super Wide Angle/Macro Lens made by Neewer that all screws onto the front (all items towards the medium-low cost end of the spectrum) and 2) a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom Lens (which is also towards the medium-low or "intro" end of the spectrum, but seems pretty durable for the price for most anything an amateur is going to get into).

A quick aside: In Optics, the f/, or F stop or Focal Ratio is the ratio of the lens's focal length to the diameter of the entrance pupil (the image as 'seen' through the front of the lens system).  It is a dimensionless (without physicality) number that is a quantitative measure of lens speed.  As the f/ stop number increases, the aperture gets smaller and light gathering power decreases (from wikipedia) and a similar effect governs telescope optics:

I'll probably invest in some "faster" lenses as I progress, but I'm pretty psyched on my current configuration. Other than all that I have my camera bag, lens cloths, backup batteries, charger, memory cards, usb cables, a remote shutter release for all my long exposures, and a DIY film canister mounted PS3 webcam (Infrared Filter modified) for use in lunar and planetary videos which are then separated into frames and stacked to bring out detail - a technique that I haven't yet ventured into due to software deficiencies.  Also, a big ups to my moms for handing down her video camera tripod made by SUNPAK - its totally smooth and sturdy (currently trying to modify its quick release mount to be pinned to my backpack shoulder strap for use in wilderness hiking/photography) and really facilitates quick setups, operations, and mobility.

So that's about it for my gear setup and hopefully I will have to do many many many updates as you all begin to learn about prime focus adapters, focal reducers, EQ mounts, Alt/Az mounts, tracking, CCDs, Oxygen III and H-Alpha filters, SCTs vs. APO Doublet or Triplet refractors, autoguiders, all-sky cams, various software programs, dark/light/bias frames, green laser pointers and red laser collimators.  And that's not even going into how bad I want to build my own large aperture Dobsonian telescope and 360 deg. swivel binocular chair:

Cheers and thanks for reading!  Clear skies John..