Lowell Observatory

Author's Comments

Flagstaff earned its dark sky designation honestly, and you can feel it the moment the sun is fully down and the town does not respond the way other towns do. The light pollution dome that hangs over most American cities simply is not here. Lowell sits up on Mars Hill above all of it, and on a clear winter night the Milky Way comes through with a clarity that I still find slightly disorienting after years of chasing it in worse skies. The Clark Telescope dome is the photograph. White against a deep sky, the seam of the dome opening just slightly, the galactic core rising behind it in summer or Orion wheeling over it in winter. I have made versions of this image in every season and the one I keep is from late February, around ten in the evening, when the air was cold enough to be still and the dome held the last suggestion of ambient light from the visitor center below. A thirty second exposure was enough. Any longer and the stars began to trail. Come for an evening program if you want to look through the Clark itself, which is its own kind of pilgrimage. But if you are here to photograph, plan to stay past the program's end. The observation deck thins out, the lights dim further, and the hour after astronomical twilight is when the sky settles into what it actually is. Bring a tripod you trust. Bring layers. The elevation is seven thousand feet and the temperature drops faster than you expect.

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