Colorado Captures

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The darkness of a new moon reveals a spectacular view of the stars in winter from a high mountain pass road. A little light appears in the background from businesses in Summit County, but otherwise, the sky was plenty dark enough to make out constellations including Orion, Canis, Gemini, Taurus, Auriga, and more. Best of all, the Milky Way stands out very clearly right in the middle.

This long exposure image (77 seconds) was captured near the top of Loveland Pass and the Continental Divide at an elevation of 12,000 feet – roughly an hour west of Denver, Colorado. Okay, so it wasn’t much of a hunt, but it was a lot of fun.

Here’s a little cheat sheet to help you out. And yes, all of the items labeled in the cheat cheet are visible in the image above.

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For those who are interested, here’s some background constellations shown above:

In Greek mythology, Orion was a great hunter who eventually offended the gods, especially Apollo. Apollo tricked Artemis, the Goddess of the hunt, into shooting Orion on a bet. When she discovered that she had shot Orion, she quickly lifted him to the heavens and made him immortal, where he now hunts eternally with his two dogs, Canis Major and Canis Minor. In front of him is his prey Taurus the Bull.

The myths surrounding Auriga the Charioteer vary, but it is an ancient constellation dating back to at least to the Ancient Greeks. Some say Auriga invented the chariot and others that he trained horses for the best chariots.

Gemini is a constellation made up of two stick figures known as the twins, Castor, who was a great horseman, and Pollux, who was a great boxer. According to one myth, Castor and Pollux (a.k.a. Polydeuces) were the sons of Zeus and Leda (from Leda and the Swan) and were hatched from an egg. Their sister was the beautiful Helen whose face launched a thousand ships to do battle in front the Trojan city of Troy.