Home on the Range

The above image, that I took last week in the Grand Tetons, reminds me of the song, "Home on the Range" that was written by Dr. Brewster Higley and first published in 1876:

• Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam
  Where the Deer and the Antelope play;
  Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
  And the sky is not cloudy all day.

That "range" in the foreground is located at the Elk Flats Ranch Turnout, in Grand Teton National Park. It is one of the best places in the park to see a panorama of the majestic Teton Range and be where the “buffalo roam”.

The bison herds here are huge — grazing and roaming from one side of the road to the other, and often causing traffic jams (a small price to pay for this amazing spectacle).

Only a few miles away, on Antelope Flats, you can often see the "deer" (bull elk) play, like I did the morning before:

Below, is a nightscape photo I took almost 15 years ago, at virtually the same spot:

Both this photo, from nearly 15 years ago, and the recent image I took last week, have four things in common:

• Both have a lot of green and red airglow.

• Both have smoke near the horizon from recent wildfires (obscuring some of that airglow, but adding an orange "sunset" look to the image).

• Both were taken just a few minutes before the end of the Astronomical Dusk (close to 4:00am) in order for the Milky Way to move westwardly enough to align with the Teton Range (although this places the core of the MW below the horizon).

Differences:

• The older image is single exposure with a 24mm lens (f/2.8 • 15 sec • ISO 8000)

• The recent image is a stack with a 15mm lens (15 stacked exposures @ f/2.8 • 15 sec • ISO 6400) + a starlight blend with a longer exposure (f/4.0 • 240 sec • ISO 3200) to give the foreground more detail. The use of the 15mm lens also allowed me to include more foreground (and sky), which was important to this story.

• If you were able to see enlargements of these two images, you'd notice the stacking technique has given the more recent image a lot less noise.

Standing amazed under a heavenly night: Many people have never heard the words to the 4th verse of "home on the Range":

• How often at night, when the heavens were bright,
  With the light of the twinkling stars
  Have I stood here amazed, and asked as I gazed,
  If their glory exceed that of ours.

This verse so perfectly describes my feelings on this night—and on many other nights I'm under the stars. So many people today never get to experience the night sky as our ancestors once did. Nightscape photography gives us a wonderful perspective and appreciation for our Earth and the universe!