Astrophotography in Red Rock Canyon State Park, just an hour north of Los Angeles California!

Last week, my mom shared with me an article about Comet NEOWISE, currently traveling close by the Earth - just 64 million miles away - and visible to the naked eye! In the Northern Hemisphere, if you gaze northwest just an hour or so after sunset, you’ll find the comet sitting just below the Big Dipper, looking like a small streak of dust in the sky. Unfortunately for Dave and I, Los Angeles has so much light pollution that even on the darkest and clearest of nights, we knew there would be no way for us to see it from our apartment rooftop. This being a once in a lifetime opportunity (with it’s long elliptical orbit, Neowise won’t be back for approximately 6,800 years), we knew we needed to find a way to see it.

With our work schedules currently a bit sporadic and unpredictable, and money a little tight due to COVID, we didn't want to commit to a major road trip or overnight in a Joshua Tree AirBnB, so we checked online for a map of light pollution around Los Angeles. That’s when we discovered that Red Rock Canyon State Park, located just an hour and a half north of LA, ranks a 2-3 on the Bortle Scale! So, we packed up the car with the dog and his booties, our cameras, a tripod, some sweatshirts, and some folding chairs, and set out to see the comet!

We arrived at Ricardo Campground in Red Rock Canyon State Park about an hour or so before sunset. We paid our fees at the park entrance, and ventured into the campground to find what we hoped would be a nice spot to set up without a ton of other guests nearby (minimizing the chance for flashlights in our shots) and that would have a good vantage point for the comet in the northwestern part of the sky.

We’re not professional photographers by any means, and we don’t have the crazy expensive, high quality cameras and lenses that are usually used for astrophotography, but we did a bit of research about the proper settings to use for shooting the dark night sky with our Sony a6000, and hoped for the best!

The desert weather was perfect, warm with a gentle breeze, and as the sun fell behind the horizon and darkness slowly blanketed the sky, we knew our last minute scramble out of town was worth it. The sky and stars were stunning. The first bright spot in the sky was actually not a star, but the planet Jupiter. Next, Saturn appeared. And as the night got darker, more and more stars came out to play. The Milky Way was bright and glowing. It being a crescent moon and near to two meteor showers (the southern Delta-Aquariids and the alpha Capricornids), we were lucky enough to see lots of shooting stars!

We hung around and stargazed for a couple of hours in the dark. We experimented with the settings on our cameras and took lots of photos. Even if none of our photos had turned out, I still would have called it a perfect night. Eventually, we packed up the car and headed back to Los Angeles to sleep in our own bed (even though we would have loved to camp; Next time for sure!).

The next morning, cozy with a cup of coffee, I dumped the photos onto my laptop to see what we managed to get. I am so pleased with how they turned out! Again, don’t judge us against the professionals, but for our first try at astrophotography and just using our daily point and shoot, I couldn’t be happier with the shots! I can’t wait to get back into the desert for a proper camping and stargazing trip, but until then, these photos can remind me just how beautiful the night sky can be!