Recently while vacationing in central Oregon near Bend I rediscovered the night sky. Living in Seattle – between the sky being obscured by clouds and city lights – it’s easy to forget that there are stars up there.
Looking up at the sky the stars were brilliant!
We are fortunate on the west coast where there are more dark skies where we can see stars. Looking at a light pollution map you can see the contrast between the east and west coasts.
I discovered that there was an observatory run by the University of Oregon only about an hour away from where we were staying.
Unfortunately the observatory was closed, but the access road leading up to the site was still open. The observatory makes available a clear sky forecast that gives an indication of the kind of visibility that will be available on an hour by hour basis. The other variable that we needed to check were the smoke maps. The forest fires in California were causing some haze in the sky but not too much.
So we checked out the forecast and decided to get up at midnight to see what we could see. The first night the forecast had changed and so we just went back to bed. The next night we got up at midnight and made the drive. The last 8 miles to the observatory is a dirt road which crosses BLM land, so we had a few cows watching us as we rattled up the washboard road.
After the dust settled we looked at the magnificent sky.
My hope was to capture the milky-way, however I had not accounted for the timing of the earth’s rotation and it was located under the horizon by the time we arrived at 1:30am. Nevertheless the sky was beautiful.
Just before heading back to bed at 4am I put my camera out on the porch where we were staying and tried to capture the movement of the stars. The movie is best viewed full screen.
When looking at the stars in the sky Psalm 8 always comes to mind.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
On the Greisen Side of Life 
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