Forest Fire Smoke Obscuring the Milky Way
Taken by Dan Bush on July 24, 2024 @
Albany, Missouri USA
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Date Taken: 2024:07:24 22:36:09
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Details:
“The Effects of Forest Fire Smoke on Night Sky Observations”
This is the Milky Way as it appeared in my skies here in Northern Missouri on two separate nights in July 2024. These two views were taken with the same camera that was never moved between the two dates. The camera is part of my Missouri Skies Meteor Detection Program.
The top image was taken on July 5, 2024, when the skies were fairly devoid of forest fire smoke. Notice how you can see the structure in the Milky Way with its bright patches of nebulous knots, stars, and star clusters waiting to be explored. Other wisps and cloud-like features in the sky is airglow which is a natural phenomenon that I won’t get into here.
The bottom image was taken on July 24, 2024, when the skies were inundated with forest fire smoke from wildfire locations spanning from Alaska down into Washington State, Oregon, and other points along the West Coast time zones. Notice how much of the detail of the Milky Way in the first picture is lost.
As an amateur astronomer of some 45 years, I can say that wildfire smoke has always been a part of my Summer night sky observations but never to the extent I’ve been seeing over the past few years. We have reached a whole other level.
Hikvision Surveillance Camera set to ⅓ second exposures with Slow Shutter set to level 8
Photographer's website:
https://www.facebook.com/missouriskies
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