Vasundhra Arulazi

May 29, 2024 Big Bend
Looking up and across the horizon, zooming past the shrubs and cacti, I could already identify constellations that are nowhere near visible in the suburbs of Houston. Scorpio rising in the south, Virgo above my head, and thousands of shining diamonds glistening across the midnight sky. Looking through the lens of my dried contacts, I took in the night sky with a sense of awe. The night sky was like a song to my eyes, and I couldn’t help but feel how insignificant we are in the universe.

At Panther Junction (somewhere in the middle of Big Bend), we stopped the car, and I grabbed my camera from the trunk. I had all my equipment except my tripod (:|). Where’s my tripod? It’s obviously 10 hours away from Big Bend, nestled in the corner of my room, waiting to be picked up, of course! Obviously, I had to forget one of the most essential camera gear, but I figured out another way: I placed my camera on my backpack, rested it on my clothes, and angled it towards the sky. As I sat on the rooftop of my car, I could clearly see the wispy Milky Way with my dilated eyes. The river of stars across the black quilt blanket sprinkled with twinkling stars in every direction. The river varied in warm and cool colors, showing the star’s age and temperature. It was my first time peering at the Milky Way in solitude and without distracting light pollution. The silence of the night was broken only by the occasional sound of nature and the wind whispering through my ears. The only downside was the moths flying through our car and sitting on top of my camera. This practically desensitized me towards moths. After shooing the moths away, I looked in awe for a few minutes before I got to photographing the celestial sight. Taking pictures through the lens of the camera, allowed me to view the hundreds of thousands of stars not visible through the naked eye.

Here are a few photographs that I took using a Nikon D850 w/ Sigma 20 mm lens: