Monsoon season usually arrives in New Mexico in July and August but this year there were many stormy evenings in May, and then not as many as expected later in the summer. The dramatic clouds and rain often make for spectacular sunsets!

     All photos shot with Motorola MotoX4 and edited with Snapseed.

     April of 2019 was a particularly prolific month for the New Mexico sky. Almost every day, I would look out my back door and see something amazing. It took a lot of work to narrow it down to only the best images. I mean, how do you pick which of your children is your favorite?
     Sunset tip: It's all about the clouds. When guessing whether or not there's going to be a good sunset on any given night, look for clouds. Too many clouds could mean an all grey dud, but no clouds almost certainly means a very un-dramatic ending to the day.
     To see my 2019 sunset collection in it's entirety, click here.

     All photos show with a Motorola MotoX4 and edited with Snapseed.

     Every evening I sit at the dining room window and watch to see what my New Mexico sky is going to do. On some cloudless nights, it doesn't do much, but when those clouds roll in the show is a sight to behold. And all I have to do is step out my back door! I have so many of these sunset images that it would be silly to try to put them all in one blog post so these are my best shots from the month of March 2019.
​     Click here to see the full Year In Review.

     Those of you who follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook know how many sunset photos I post throughout the year. In an effort to keep track of them all, I am archiving them by month. These are my best New Mexico sunset photos from February of 2019. All images were shot from my back yard in Meadow Lake, most while standing on my back steps or from the spot in the back 40 affectionately known as "Horse Poo Hill". All images shot with a MotoX4 and edited with Snapseed. 
     To see my other posts featuring New Mexico Skies, click here.

     The Magdalena Ridge Observatory is located atop a towering mountain overlooking the San Agustin Plains of New Mexico. Though the point of the observatory is to look up and not down, with otherworldly views that stretch to the horizon (beyond there be dragons...), the trip is worth while just for the sights alone. 
     Speaking of the trip, this journey is not for the faint of heart. The Magdalena Ridge Observatory is not open to the public so the only time that nosy photographers like myself can visit is when they host their open house events. See their website for more information about when these events are scheduled. Furthermore, the road to the observatory is also not open to the public, and for good reason. Attendees of the open house event are instructed to park at a camp site at the bottom of the mountain. From there we all load into a shuttle bus and begin the 30 minute, 10 mile journey up the super steep one lane dirt road with no guardrail. There is literally not room for two cars to pass each other going opposite directions on this road which is part of why they don't want visitors coming and going at random intervals. As a passenger on the shuttle, it is safe to assume that the driver doesn't want to die in such a horrific manner as driving a bus off a cliff, so if you stay calm and busy eyes with your Twitter feed, all will be well and you'll be there in a jiffy.

     In 1980 Congress designated 31,000 acres across the Magdalena Mountains in the Cibola National Forest as the Langmuir Research Site.  It's primary purpose was studying weather patterns and natural phenomena such as lightning. Pictured below are a building for studying lightning and a hanger for a weather balloon. Both buildings are no longer in use. Behind the balloon hanger was a much older looking silver domed building like that of a telescope but no one seemed to know what was in there or what it was for or maybe that's where they keep all the top secret stuff.

     Interferometry is a technique used by astronomers to obtain the resolution of a large telescope by using multiple smaller telescopes. The electromagnetic radiation collected at each of the smaller telescopes is combined to recreate the image that would have been obtained with a large telescope. This process is commonly referred to as aperture synthesis. At present, the Magdalena Ridge Observatory only has one Interferometer (pictured below) but in the near future more will be coming so they can set up their array. The goal of this project is to produce images of astronomical targets at resolutions over 100 times that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

     The most interactive part of the open house is the tour of the 2.4 meter telescope. This telescope scans the skies looking for anything that may be a threat to the earth, like asteroids that could be on a collision course; or present a threat to national security like satellite remote sensing, space surveillance, and missile tracking.
     During this part of the tour, guests are able to go up inside the dome and see the telescope up close. You can even have your photo taken in the telescope if you like. One of the special features of the 2.4 meter telescope is it's rapid tracking capability of 10 degrees per second. Being able to move at a high speed allows the telescope to track things such as fast-moving asteroids, comets, and resident space objects in low-Earth orbits. To facilitate the rapid movement of the telescope, the dome also has to open and rotate rapidly. The tour of the 2.4 meter telescope culminates in an excellent demonstration of the rotating dome. Everyone gathers around the telescope and the operators rotate the dome. This creates a crazy optical illusion where it looks and feels like the floor you're standing on is turning instead of the dome. It's a very convincing illusion.

     These images were shot on November 9, 2019 with a Canon Powershot Elph 360 and edited with Fotor.