Viewing Arizona Morning (and Night) Skies

The sun is rising earlier every day and the winter is getting shorter.  That means I may have only five or six weeks left to have real opportunities to grab such photographs.  As the dew points go down in the early morning hours as we approach Spring there will be fewer clouds early in the day. 

Now, there are occasions when clouds appear in the hours around dawn but by 8:00 they have dissipated and the sky has turned into our clear, brilliant Arizona blue.  Near sunset, a few may reappear, providing a bit of a colorful sky as the sun sets, but for the most part the night sky is crystal clear.

Being so far from any city lights makes it pitch dark here after sunset.  There are few street lights, and due to laws that require them to be focused straight down, there is very little peripheral light from them.

This creates two benefits.  One is for the people who life out here.  You can look straight up and see stars in every directions as far as the eye, and if you're lucky enough to have a telescope (which many hobbyists do), can possibly can imagine.  I have laid flat on my back during summer nights and watched brilliant, thrilling meteors, flying through the heavens.  It's an awesome experience.

It's also little wonder that Arizona, especially Pima County, is the location for some of the nation's world's premiere  observatories.  Just 16 miles from Green Valley, on Mt. Hopkins (elevation 8,586'/2,617 m) in my Santa Rita mountains, is the Whipple Observatory which is the the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 

I have toured it twice.  There are ten smaller telescopes spread up the side of the mountain until you reach the summit, where the 21'/6.5 m MMT telescope is located.  It is operated by the University of Arizona, which uses it for solar system, galactic and extragalactic astronomy.

(As usual, there has been no processing of this sunrise other than a slight crop.  It is as is, straight out of the camera.)