I first posted some photos of this trip up highway 242 to the Dee Wright observatory, to capture the Aurora Borealis, in October of 2024. That was before I purchased this new Luminar Neo Photo processing program. I didn’t like the quality of the photos and couldn’t wait to see if I could make them better with this new program and the Digital Neutral RAW files. They came out much better than I expected, but the files were huge, and I could not download them onto my Facebook page. Time to learn how to lower the size of the photos, without losing the quality. In other words how to make a photo that is 20 mbs into one that is 6 mbs or 3 mbs…
This photo just happened to be the smallest of the photos I picked to share. I liked the look of the moon rising over the main structure of the observatory, with North and Middle Sister mountains on the left side. It was about 9 in the evening and everything was dark except for the moon. I was packing that sort of fixed tripod, that had broken, and hoping I didn’t run into anybody since the legs were extended. My housemate Susan and I climbed to the top and got set up before the larger crowd of people showed up.
I loved the look of the cars coming up to the parking lot and the reflection onto the blue coats of the two people coming up the lower steps.
The light show started of gently with a light blush of color and you really couldn’t see it unless you had a camera.
Then the color took off.
I loved that I could see the stars behind the light show and even headlights coming up Highway 242 from the east and passing Black crater.
Within an hour of arriving at the observatory the light show was pretty much over and the moonlight was again reflecting off of the clouds with North and Middle Sisters silhouette at the horizon.
I hope I can see the Auroras again and maybe next time I will have new tripod legs.
Deanne Dements Photography 