Saturday evening, August 12, there was a night sky event at Lost Maple State Natural Area west of San Antonio. Lost Maples is a rather remote park and thus has little light pollution at night and is a wonderful place to view the night sky. And, there was much to enjoy in the night sky on this evening as the Milky Way is near its prominence in the northern hemisphere in August and the Perseids meteor shower was at its peak; that combined with a moonless sky made it the best night of the summer to view the night sky. It was a clear and warm summer evening and after twilight ended at around 10:00PM, the sky was filled with stars in a way that can’t be seen in the city.

I was invited by the park to come set up a table, and talk to people about astro-photography. I immediately said ‘yes’, of course, as this involved two things I love: talking about photography and Texas state parks! I didn’t really know what to bring or display when I said yes, but I ended up printing out about 10 of my favorite night sky photos on 8×10 paper and I brought my camera equipment to talk about. They set me up with a table among the others that were there. There were people talking about telescopes, plants and wildlife, members of some other parks in this region, games, etc. Surprisingly enough, a lot of people stopped by and asked me about my pictures and quite a few wanted to know about camera settings. Below is my little table (I didn’t create the sign).

A team from a site called YOLO TX was there and interviewed me. There was a reporter asking me questions and two video camera operators. I was actually kind of nervous. I haven’t seen the final product yet, but if they put in on their website, I’ll link it here.

Anyway, on to the the night sky. The San Antonio astronomy society set up a viewing area on a hillside near a place called the Murphy House. There was a nice view of the night sky and many people were there with chairs looking at the Milky Way and watching for meteors. There were also many telescopes set up. I hung out and shot a few photos from this point, but I didn’t think there was really much of a landscape to go along with the sky and I didn’t want to shine my light around with so many people trying to see the stars. Below is my shot. You can see that the Milky Way is prominent in the sky with just a little light pollution on the distant horizon. I also saw a few meteors but I can’t tell if that streak in the photo is a meteor or satellite.

Before going to the park, I tried to think of some new ideas for shooting the Milky Way out there that didn’t involve me climbing up a steep ridge in the dark. What I came up with was shooting the park entrance sign with the Milky Way in the sky above. I liked this idea because it sort of lets you know how nice the night sky viewing is out at the park. Looking on Photopills I determined that this shot should be possible. So, I left the hillside after about half an hour and went down to the park entrance and conditions were about as I’d hoped.

The tricky part for me was getting enough light on the sign so it would show up (and waiting for cars to go by). I found that when I shone the light on the sign, it lit up a lot of other things too like the ground, the stop sign, weeds, etc. I found this to be distracting so I decided to take a frame with the sign lit up and a frame with it dark and attempt to combine them in Photoshop to get what I envisioned. Below is my result. It was breezy and there is some motion blur in the trees during the 20 second exposure.

It took me a few tries, but I think I got a good image in the end. I found that I had to mostly edit both images first in Lightroom before combining them as the final image from Photoshop couldn’t be denoised. So, I first denoised both images, made the adjustments to the sky in the dark frame, and the worked on the glare on the sign in the lit frame and then sent them as layers to Photoshop. In Photoshop I put the picture with the lit sign as the background image and carefully drew a mask over the sign in the dark image to expose the lit sign in the layer below. I was worried about ghosting around the sign, so I had to zoom in really tight and painstakingly work the edges of the mask. It was worth it to me. What do you think?

After the night sky, I went back to my tent and had a warm night with an occasional breeze, and I managed about 5 hours of sleep. When I awoke during the predawn twilight, I could see that some clouds had moved in. My plan had been to hike down to the ponds and shoot photos during the first light. I wasn’t sure that was going to work, but I put away my tent and made the hike anyway as I have never regretted a hike.

I had been thinking about shooting some reflections at the pond on this morning, but the wind was disturbing the water too much to get a clear reflection. Below is a long exposure of one of the ponds, looking east at about dawn.

I decided that from here, I would take a nice long hike and make a loop before heading back home. I ended up hiking up the East-West trail and out to the West Loop trail and back; about 7.7 rocky miles total with a bit of a climb at the loop. Below is a park sign about halfway out.

I probably wouldn’t have made this little trip if the State Park hadn’t invited me, so I am glad they did. It’s nice to get out and get a good view of the night sky at least once a year. And usually I find that the heat isn’t nearly as bad as I think it will be, so perhaps I should stop checking the temperature before I go. Thanks for reading.

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