Enduring 115 Degree Heat in Badwater Basin
Story time! This is a story about weeks of planning, a four-hour drive in darkness, enduring blistering burn-your-eyes-out 114 degree heat, sitting in Badwater Basin from sunset (8pm) until 1am, and waiting for the milky way to be vertical - all for this shot!
Next time you see an amazing shot of the milky way, be sure to take a moment to appreciate the work involved. I have attempted astrophotography a few times over the last decade and have always struggled to get good results.
Here I will share my current knowledge, in hopes it may help another photographer :)
When and Where to Go
I didn’t hold back this time. Now that I live near Death Valley - a great candidate for low light pollution - I began doing more research than I’ve ever done before to find the BEST time of year, best time of month, best time of day, best location, etc… for astrophotography.
The best tool is the Dark Sky Map - which has data on where the best dark regions for the entire planet are. Using this, I settled for Badwater Basin within Death Valley - the lowest point in North America at 282ft below sea level. It is known for being a huge flat salt basin with octagon formations on the ground.
But the WHEN is not so simple. There are several very important factors to consider:
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Position of the Milky Way - First, think about where you want the Milky Way to be in your shot (arched or vertical). Then, figure out how to make that happen. The ‘how’ has two factors - location and time of year.
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Moon Position - This is very important! You’ll want as LITTLE moonlight as possible (new moon).
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Cloud Coverage - Ideally you monitor this up to the day of, making sure everything is as clear as possible. Clear Sky Chart has great data as it allows you to select your location and monitor cloud cover, smoke, wind, etc…
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Current Conditions such as Forest Fire Haze - This is particularly more common these days. Everything else could be 100% perfect, but if there is smoke from a forest fire blowing across the State(s), you will have less than ideal conditions. I am a fan of Fire Smoke’s website for seeing smoke conditions. It predicts about 24 hours out.
After doing my research, I picked out an evening that looked ideal for Death Valley.
Our journey was a two-hour drive to Badwater Basin with us arriving about 30 minutes before sunset. Badwater Basin is one of the hotter regions within Death Valley, as it serves as a heat trap being below sea level and with the surrounding mountains. It was about 115 degrees at 7:30pm, if you can believe - the type of heat where it blows into your eye sockets and burns intensely.
We opted to wait in our car until the sun was just out of sight, then we had to lug all of our equipment a MILE out into nothingness. The trail at Badwater Basin starts very wide, where all the tourists have trampled. It then slowly gets more narrow as less people go out that far. The best spot is when you’ve reached the point where the trail is literally a narrow foot path. That is where the best formations remain intact.
How to Take Your Image
You can just set your camera on a tripod, get the stars in focus (manually, not just the infinity symbol on your lens), and take a 15-25 second shot. But if you want the best results, there is a lot more to do.
The best tool to consider is a Star Tracker. You mount this handy tool to your tripod. From there, simply align the Star Tracker up with the North Star. Once done, it will track that star, moving slowly with it. You mount your camera to the tracker, and now you can take LONG exposures without the stars forming star trails (lines).
This is obvious perhaps, but the earth is rotating, and so a long exposure on a tripod will eventually turn the stars from dots to lines. The general rule is you can get away with 15-25 seconds on a tripod. But this doesn’t give you a whole lot of light. With the Star Tracker, you can get 2-4 minute exposures instead!
On top of that, what many recommend is an image stack. You take around 8 to 10 photos back-to-back (each 2-4 minutes long). You also take a dark frame, a shot with your lens cap on but with the same exact settings. This is important for editing later. If you don't have a star tracker, try taking 30 photos and then around 3 dark frames; this will give you some beefy editing power even without a tracker.
So, as you can see, it can get quite complex! Now, unless you are just wanting an image of the stars (no landscape), then you’re good to go.
But, if you picked out a cool location and actually want that location in your image - well it gets even harder. That is why we arrived at sunset. I took an image of the scene I wanted before it got dark. Then I took my star images. In editing, you’ll composite the landscape with the sky.
Realistically, the entire night will be focused on ONE single image. That is because you want to set your camera up for the landscape shot and then not move it until you later capture the stars - all so they can align together.
How to Edit Your Image
There are a million ways to edit this, but after some research, I’ll share my current method that produced the image below.
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Pre-Processing and Stacking - Siril is a piece of software that will take your 8-10 shots and black frame and compile into one stacked image for you. It is not remotely user friendly and took me some time to learn, comment below if you want an easy walkthrough!
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Stitching Panos - If you opted to actually take multiple shots for a wider view, now is a good time to stitch them together. I currently favor PanoramaStudio for stitching.
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Adobe Camera Raw - I found opening the TIFF from Siril into here helped the best. Adjust exposure, contrast, color temp, boost clarity/dehaze, apply color noise reduction, etc….
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Composite Landscape - Now in Photoshop, you’ll align that landscape image and work to merge the two together. Your image is starting to come together finally!
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(BONUS) Noise Reduction & Sharpening - Optional, but I ran my image through Topaz Photo AI to denoise and sharpen a bit.
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Final Touches - Last, you can work in Photoshop some more with final details, masking areas for enhancement, adjusting colors, etc…
The End Results
After all that was set and done, I came out with an image I was quite proud of. It is the first image below, but there are a couple of others I thought I’d share from that evening. We were out in Badwater Basin until around 1:30am, at which point it was still nearly 106 degrees. The mile walk back in pitch black was…fun…to say the least. Then we had a long two-hour drive in darkness. Lastly, it was hours of editing!
There is still so much more to learn, such as doing sky trails. I hope to explore more Astrophotography out West, just not in 100+ degree weather again…
Badwater Basin Astrophotography - The WINNER
This is my final main composite, which I spent most of my time on. Believe it or not, I ended up using a sky shot that only had 2 photos and 1 dark frame. I was tired by the end when it was more vertical, what can I say!
Alternate Shot
This one was taken earlier in the night (given the Milky Way is not vertical yet), and also with a landscape focused on a formation up close.
Milky Way Arch Panorama
This one's not the best quality as I used a secondary tripod while my Star Tracker was set up on the primary one. This was from multiple images stitched together and was taken early in the night when the arch was visible to my left over the mountains.
Badwater Basin at Sunset
While we waited for darkness, I took the opportunity for some other images.
Badwater Basin at Sunset
Badwater Basin during Blue Hour
This was our path back to the car. That light there on the horizon is another car to give you a rough idea of the distance back.
