Assignment: The Milky Way.
Setting: Wildhorse Lake, elevation 8420 feet on the slopes of Steens Mountain.
Highlights: in September, 2022, I ventured to the top of Oregon’s third highest mountain for an amazing night of photographing the Milky Way. Through crystal clear air, at almost 10,000 feet above sea level, the Milky Way displayed its showpiece- the galactic center- a cosmic-sized combination of a lava lamp and a laser light show.
Returning to the same location after two years, circumstances had changed. For most of the summer, megafires had ravaged Eastern Oregon, leaving a thick smoke ring that extended for hundreds of miles. Conditions eased about a week before the trip, only to return literally the day before I left, as new fires broke out. The evening I reached the top of Steens Mountain, I held my breath as twilight deepened. The sun disappeared through a blood red ring of smoke. The smoke was everywhere. You could taste and smell it. At 8 pm, thirty minutes past sunset, the sky had darkened, but few if any stars penetrated the gloom.
I had timed the visit to coincide with the few minutes when the galactic center would transit over Wildhorse Lake. That narrow window of time, beginning about 9 and ending by 9:15, was rapidly approaching. My eyes had barely adjusted to the dark. The camera actually saw the ghost-like image before I did, capturing the first outlines of the Milky Way about thirty minutes before the transit, giving me the critical time I needed to adjust the exposure in order to bring out the surprising colors and shapes of the galactic center.
But one color in the camera’s finder came as no surprise, the signature red of the summer fire season, lighting the Milky Way like a torch as it emerged from the twilight.
