Joshua Tree Night Sky

Starry Sky Over Juniper Flats | C25-0005

Each year, in late February or early March, we make our annual trip to Palm Springs in search of warm weather and a break from the Minnesota winter. And as part of the trip, we always make at least one, if not two trips out to Joshua Tree National Park (JTNP), which is just a short, barely one hour drive from where we stay out in Palm Desert.

Recently I had been reading about night sky photography and that JTNP is one of the best locations for photographing the stars and the night sky, so I decided this year would be the year we stayed in the park after dark to try and capture some night sky images.

We headed to the park in mid-afternoon planning to some late afternoon photography before finding a spot to set up for the night sky shots. Sunset was 5:43pm on this day in early March, so I (wrongly) assumed it would be dark enough for the stars to come out by 6:30pm, showing my inexperience with night sky photography. We had staked out a spot in the parking lot at Cap Rock, not knowing that it one of the “official” places for star gazing and night sky photography.

I had my Nikon D810 with 24mm lens set up on the tripod just after sunset, but well before it would be dark enough to even see the stars. The camera was set up facing southeast, so waiting for truly dark skies took even longer due to the light pollution of the setting sun and Palm Springs over the horizon at Keys View. This is evident in the lower right corner of the images shown here. It was almost 7:00pm before the stars could be seen — I should have taken the time to find out when Astronomical Twilight would be reached (7:06pm) which is really the beginning time for night sky photography.

As we were waiting for the stars to, other vehicles began arriving and most seemed to be photographers, there to do the same thing as us — photograph the night sky.

Even with my inexperience, I did manage to get a couple of nice images, as shown here. The second one, with the red light on the rocks, was due to tail lights of a car returning from catching the sunset up at keys View.

Stars and Red Rocks | 25-0003

I have already started making plans for night sky photography on our next visit to JTNP; however, this time we’ll be better prepared.