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Babak Tafreshi | Photographer | Explorer | Speaker

National Geographic photojournalist, founder of The World at Night (TWAN), preserving natural night skies, bridging art & science

Author: Babak Tafreshi

National Geographic photographer, science journalist, founder of The World at Night (TWAN) program, preserving natural night skies, bridging art & science

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The change of light on earth and sky is cinematographically beautiful when the moon sets or rises at night. Here at @esoastronomy La Silla Observatory in the outskirts of Chile's Atacama Desert, the Milky Way rises as the moon sets. The scene was recorded in 2016 for the Borderless Sky documentary series about The World at Night project @twanight. The 5-episode series was mainly broadcasted on Arte and ZDF (Sternenjäger in German). @twanight #timelapse #astrophotography #chile #borderlesssky⁠

Sometime after midnight the dark night in Patagonia begins to change. The rising moon, still invisible at my location in the forest, lights up the 3400-meter high Fitz Roy; a truly spectacular mountain in Los Glaciares National Park of Argentina, on the border of Chile.

Visit these two websites for good answers to a frequent question I receive: What is a good starter telescope?⁠

To many of us who live under intense urban light pollution, where the artificial skyglow leaves nothing but a blank dome, the night sky is a forgotten part of nature. I hope images like this reconnect us with this essential part of the environment that we are missing. Here in a rural area of central Germany, the winter stars, from Sirius to Orion and Taurus, stand above the glow of Frankfurt 50 km away. Learn the many simple ways to reduce light pollution on darksky.org @idadarksky ⁠

The sky above Boston area did not clear this morning until the eclipse was about to end. Standing in our backyard at 4:50 my sleepy disappointed eyes sparkled as the moon was unveiled for just a minute through a tiny hole in the overcast sky; enough to capture a still and a quick video with a 600mm telephoto lens.

The next lunar eclipse, is almost total with the maximum at 9:03 UT on Nov 19 (4 am ET, 1 am PT). It’s best visible from the Americas, all the way from Hawaii and Alaska (Nov 18 night) to Canada, United States, Mexico and Central America, and down to Chile and Argentina. Also visible right after sunset on the 19th in Oceania and eastern Australia, East Asia, Siberia (the further east the better). It’s also partially visible in the UK, Scandinavia, Portugal just before sunrise on an open western horizon (see the map on slide 5). The moon will be only 6 degrees from Pleiades, the Seven Sisters star cluster, making a beautiful scene under dark skies (see slide 7 animation). While lunar eclipses are easy to see in urban areas too the best experience is away from light pollution where you see the dramatic change of light from a bright washed out full moon night with only a few stars to a strikingly starry sky an hour later in mid-eclipse. See slide 3; a wide-angle view of a total eclipse in Canary Islands (2015). Note how tiny the moon appears in a 14mm lens compared to slide 1 with a 200mm telephoto or slide 2 with a telescope. Slide 4 shows a normal lens (50mm) view of an almost total eclipse in an ancient village in Iran (2007).

In an ideally dark clear night sky, the Milky Way rises above a caldera, filled with clouds, in La Palma, Canary Islands. Jupiter is the brightest point in the image. Near the center is the orange star Antares, the heart of celestial scorpion. About 2400 meters underneath, lights from the ocean shore towns shines through the clouds.

A beautiful scene this evening with Moon & Venus conjunction. Did you see it? A reminder to reconnect with the night sky. Many of us in urban areas have lost this part of nature due to light pollution. I invite you to join “Under One Sky” virtual free conference on Nov 12-13 by International Dark Sky Association @idadarksky, a truly effective nonprofit that I support. The conference program includes talks by NASA astronauts about Earth at night as seen from the orbit, experts sharing ideas on reducing light pollution, and introducing dark sky protected sites around the world. Register on conference.darksky.org

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