I’d been want­i­ng to try astropho­tog­ra­phy for a while; a week­end spent in east­ern Wash­ing­ton was my first good oppor­tu­ni­ty. Gold­en­dale is a tiny town with very lit­tle light pol­lu­tion, and an obser­va­to­ry that I’d vis­it­ed a few years ago. We stayed in a cab­in about 15 min­utes from the town, and it turned out to be a ter­rif­ic setting. 

Lead­ing up to the week­end, I spent a good bit of time on the web­site Lone­ly Speck, read­ing up on lens­es, cam­era set­tings, and the need to buy a head­lamp (good advice, it turned out). 

The first night there, I was excit­ed to final­ly get to try things out but by then had for­got­ten a few of the fin­er points — details like how to focus in the dark. I did get a cou­ple of decent shots, but I was in a hur­ry, not to men­tion a tired from the four hour dri­ve from Seattle. 

The sec­ond night (shown here), I think I got it right. 

Shot with Fuji X‑T2, Roki­non 12mm, 25 sec­onds at f2.0, ISO 1600.