Crater Lake Night Sky

As I've written here previously, my plan for while we were at Crater Lake was to capture a photo of the Milky Way.  Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate on the single night we had at Crater Lake.  The clouds had rolled in as the sun was beginning to set and, by the time the sky was inky black, the sky was completely obscured by clouds.  

I should point out that our original plan was to only do a day trip to Crater Lake and then head back to Klamath Falls at the end of the day.  I got to checking out the lodge online while Sheila was at work after we had talked about this added day trip and luckily fell into a single night availability for one of their loft suites overlooking the lake.  This little change allowed us to cancel one night at a hotel in Klamath Falls and have Adam and Joi join us in the Crater Lake Lodge suite for a night.  This provided us with two full days at Crater Lake but only one night for nighttime photography.  On this particular night, it was cloudy.  As luck would have it, the previous night and the following night were clear!

On the positive side, the partly to mostly cloudy conditions make for nice sunset and sunrise photos so I did manage to capture nice photos of those.  I'll share those in another blog entry.  (There is a lot to share about this cross-country rail journey so there will probably be a series of about two dozen blog entries.)

So, even though the sky conditions were lousy for capturing a photo of the Milky Way, I did manage to capture an image of the night sky when the sky was still slightly illuminated and only 50% obscured.  This sky wasn't clear enough nor dark enough to capture a photo of the Milky Way but I was able to capture some stars over Crater Lake.

This is a single 15 second exposure and, considering the time of evening and the sky conditions, this is a pretty nice image.  Although it doesn't appear as though it was completely dark outside, I can say with absolute certainty that I was shrouded in complete darkness while trying to capture this image.  The long exposure makes it seem like it was brighter out there than it really was at the time.  I couldn't see a thing around me while I was capturing this photo.  The moon, which was behind me, was helping to faintly illuminate the lake.  

I'm not sure it was worth dragging a travel tripod across the entire country for this single image but at least I managed to capture some stars. 

After capturing this image, I stepped inside the lodge to join Sheila, Adam and Joi for a couple of drinks in the Great Hall.  

I didn't capture an image of the roaring fire in the huge fireplace in the Great Hall because there were people sitting in front of the fire.  This is an image of a smaller fireplace in the Reception Hall adjacent to the Great Hall earlier in the day when we arrived...

Oh wait...  I did capture an image of the larger fireplace in the Great Hall!  I captured this photo on the following morning after having breakfast in the dining room.  This is a very nice and very comfortable Great Hall.