Monday, August 12, 2013

The Milky Way and Perseid Meteor at Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Tree and the milky way, desert at night
Saturday night was a wonderful night for us at the Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. Normally, we would never think about going to this place in the middle of summer because of the heat. But we decided to go to catch a glimpse of the Perseid meteor shower. As city dwellers, we don't get to see starry sky much because of the light pollution. And in summer, we often get thick marine layer which makes it even harder if not impossible to see the meteor shower. So we packed our things and went to the national park which is just little more than 2 hours drive. The August weather in the park was very pleasing. It was cool and a little chilly but really comfortable. The park was kind of crowded for this time of the year. Most of them were either photographers and/or stargazers. We saw so many stars and shooting stars although it was not really completely dark like Death Valley NP. But it was fantastic regardless. We made some wishes too! I'm not a big fan of star trails images so I didn't take any. To me, I like photos of stars the way we see it with our eyes, as bright dots in the sky. We got good photo of the milky way and some of the meteor. Although we saw a lot of it, we didn't capture as many. We'll definitely going to see this event again next year.

Joshua Tree and the Milky Way, starry night in the Mojave desert