The yellow clouds there are actually lite by light pollution.
After driving off-road for a few minutes, pulled over in the gravel and rushed out. At first, my sight was filled with the truest blackness, I scan the surrounding desert for signs of danger, but I quickly realized that there is just not enough light. Then I looked up, a pair of meteors flew across the sky, one which made a spectacular explosion. That moment, a full season of stress all went away and left me breathless.
I am no stranger to distance driving at night, being on the cycling team, we raced across the Westcoast plenty of times. A bag of spicy chips, two cans of energy drink, and a few podcast episodes, and I can drive night and day. That night was no different.
It was the Sunday before the finals week, I was initially going to finish all my finals before I head back to Vegas the following Tuesday, but instead, I made a change of plans at the last minute. At the Outdoor Adventure department meeting (wasn’t a real meeting, but we’ll call it that) I have heard about a meteor shower (thanks Liz!), and the best time to view it would be that Sunday night, 3 days before my trip back.
一个说走就走的旅行, “a journey decided at a moment notice,” is exactly the kind of things I get myself into all the time, so I made up my mind.
A major concern I had upon doing some research was the weather — it will be cloudy everywhere that weekend. Astrophotography has 3 challenges: away from light pollution to avoid hazy fog, a moonless night to avoid monsters in the woods, and a clear sky to draw powers from the stars. Luckily for me, there is a spot on my way back call Hollow Hills, on the way to Death Valley (thanks Gary!), and fortunately for me, there is a slight wind of clear sky, maybe 100 miles wide, a just-big-enough opening.
My plan for the night was to pack up and leave around 10-11 pm and drive for 2 hours, getting to the location at 1 am. That would put me right at the beginning of the cloud opening. I had to finish some school work and wasn’t able to leave until 1 am, which put me back 2 hours. I rushed down I-15, hoping I didn’t miss the window.
As I drove out of LA, the whole sky was covered in clouds, lite from the city lights. It was quite epic because it was white, I think that is because it was still dark enough that I can only see in greyscale. I got to the exit on the Hollow Hills, a dark little town, and looked for the exit.
I cannot believe that I missed the exit, and there were no more exits for another 70 miles!! I kept searching for an exit that I can turn around on. There are little gravel roads for cars to turn around to the other direction, but it was too dark for me to see and slow down in time. I was in this dilemma where if I don’t drive fast I might not find an exit in time and miss the meteors, but there is a chance that there are no big exits all the way until Vegas, where it will be both too late and too much light pollution.
Finally, I found this little awesomely creepy gas station to pull over to, and I pulled out on to the gravel road across it.
After driving off-road for a few minutes, pulled over in the gravel and rushed out. At first, my sight was filled with the truest blackness, I scan the surrounding desert for signs of danger, but I quickly realized that there is just not enough light. Then I looked up, a pair of meteors flew across the sky, one which made a spectacular explosion. That moment, a full season of stress all went away and left me breathless.
I ended up staying there until the morning, just to look at all the stars. Whenever I get a chance to see a sky full of stars, I think about how some Homo sapiens 150 thousand years ago also looked up and saw a similar sky. What do they think about when they look up into the galaxy?
What do the Homo erectus people think about when they saw the sky? The Earth has changed a lot, but yet still so insignificant in the history of the universe, mountains and rivers come and go, but the galaxy will likely look the same through the period of time we humans can meaningfully understand. The thought of that makes me feel connected to our ancestors, and feel our journey to become human.
