Locomotoring

I have strong memories of lying down on the rooftop of my grandmother’s house in the outskirts of Kolkata and looking up at the stars. I must have been six or eight then and star gazing used to feel like a vacation treat. Where we lived, Delhi, the apartment building rooftops didn’t afford the intimacy needed for this quiet sport. And the sky above my grandmother’s house, away from city lights, showed up with a hundred times more stars.

Those starry skies helped develop my love for physics. I loved projects like SETI. I devoured space odysseys. It felt great to be part of the universe – irrespective of what I did or not do, the universe would carry on. I read a book where a space adventurer spends an entire lifetime on a space mission without finding a single life form. I read another book where the people on the planet live with two suns and permanent daytime – never seeing another star. Looking, reading and thinking about stars gave me goosebumps. Then I got busy looking at the computer screen, kindle screen, TV screen, … and decades went by. And with time, I saw fewer and fewer stars.

Then, a few years ago, my significant other took me to Joshua Tree National Park to celebrate the completion of 5 decades in this universe. I was born around the New Year and there are only a few parks in California where winter is dry enough for a ramble. On what had then felt like a whim, my partner borrowed a wide angle camera commonly used in astrophotography and we spent a couple of cold nights in the park, shooting stars. He did the shooting and I looked out for shooting stars. I also kept up the supply of hot tea. Afterwards, the shots got stacked and I had the first look of our own star trails (link). That made for the best birthday present ever. We didn’t know it then, but we had chanced upon a new moon in a cloud free Bortle Scale 2 sky. And that beginner’s luck switched something for my partner, a desire to lean into astrophotography.

Since that trip, we have happened to be under dark skies twice. First was Anza Borrego (link) where we glimpsed the Pleiades star cluster in between the cloud laden winter sky. Second was Alturas (link) where the full moon brightened up the sky all through the night. Last weekend proved the next significant step up in our star gazing luck. I say luck because one always needs luck. But after Alturas, we got serious with our dark sky vacation planning. We wanted a chance to shoot the Milky Way and that means summer months. We chose Pinnacles National Park, our closest dark sky at Bortle Scale 3-4, checked the moon phase and reserved a campsite.

We left home after work on Friday. By the time we got to the campsite, electric tent (#80), it was time to make dinner and prepare ourselves for the night ahead. The Night Sky app gave us the confidence that we could park our gear right outside the tent and still be able to see large swathes of the Milky Way. After some initial hiccups aligning the tracker to the North Star, we settled into the sky watching rituals. The #80 is close to the campground entrance, close to the toilets, close to the Highway and that meant constant comings and goings of fellow campers. We were blinded several dozen times. A large group of friends had gathered near us and were shouting boisterously by the fire. But even with all that light-filled disturbance that had us swearing like Captain Haddock, we knew we were going to get pretty images of the Milky Way.

The night time temperature was supposed to be 60F. But it felt colder as the night progressed. We drank tea to stay warm. By the time we wrapped up the rituals, the inside of the generous sized tent was in equilibrium with the night outside. The #80 is right next to a giant oak tree, the tree gives shade and acorn to the tent. I felt hyperactive – perhaps it was all that tea. To sleep, I counted the acorns hitting the canvas roof of the tent. We slept fitfully until the neighborhood crows decided it was time for us to climb out of our sleeping bags. By the time we made our morning coffee, the day was already warm, the quails were gobbling up ants and the woodpeckers were busy hiding acorns in the oak trunk. It got steadily hotter and by mid-day, the thermometer registered 100F. We lay on the hot plastic covered mattress, in a state of stupor, for over 8 hours, while the electric fan blew hot air around.

Just before the trip, I had been reading Rory Stewart’s book, The Places in Between, where he had followed Babur’s footsteps through Afghanistan. He had walked for months, in snow, with not much more than dry bread for meals. He hadn’t showered or shaved. He had walked 30 miles every day on roads littered with mines. He had slept on floors and had diarrhea much of the time. The fact that he survived to tell the tale is happenstance. At Pinnacles, I had access to hot showers, more food than I could possibly eat, a mattress in a large tent and yet, during those 8 hours at 100F, I wasn’t sure if I would come out of the stupor I was in. But I did. Evening arrived and it started cooling down rapidly.

While I was warming up dinner, a park ranger came by and informed me of the star “party”. Apparently, members of San Jose Astronomical Society had landed with multiple telescopes. They had set up their wares by the Bacon Ranch and we were all welcome to catch a glimpse of what the universe had to offer. In the company of dozens of other fellow campers, I saw the craters of the new moon, the Whirlpool Galaxy (Messier 51a), the Coathanger asterism, and the Hercules cluster (Messier 13). I also saw a dozen starlink satellites. A child referred to the lasers as giant chopsticks except each astronomer had one of the pair.

By the time the party broke up and our second night of shooting started, the night sky had gotten darker. North star alignment took only a few minutes. We had grown familiar with the trajectory of the Galactic Center in the landscape and the rituals proceeded smoothly. And when we were done, we were better equipped for the cold tent. I climbed into my sleeping bag with my sweatshirt, sweatpants, hiking socks and a travel blanket and slept soundly and dreamt of Bortle Scale 1 skies.