Winter Lights

January 13, 2018 – High Plains Trail

I was surprised how cold it felt, standing around fiddling with a camera on a winter’s night. It wasn’t long before I could not feel the camera controls. Gloves didn’t work. Best to set everything up ahead of time.

Had it been so cold at night in ancient Mesopotamia? If shivering Babylonian astrologers had not been able to carve cuneiform into the frozen mud of the Tigris and Euphrates, we might call these stars by their Polynesian names, instead of the ancient Arabic forms we still use today: Aldebaran, Arrakis, Merak, Mizar.

And so it must have been warm, those winter nights in Babylon, and wondrous to gaze upon these stars and planets, the better to chart their journey into heaven.

Image Note: The above image is a composite of 15 images stacked; each image is ISO 1600 f/8.0 20 sec, Nikon D5500 + Sigma 18-35 f/1.8 lens at 19mm. The mountains and snow are lit by a half moon, out of frame to the left. The flare in the lower right is from the city of Boulder.