Mojave Desert, one of the hottest and driest places on the planet, stretches from Western Arizona and Southwestern Nevada all the way to Los Angeles County. Graced with sights ranging from magnificent forests of Joshua Trees to burned out shells and parts of cars and hundreds of ghost towns, it also features some of the clearest views of night skies despite the incredible amounts of light pollution from Los Angeles, Las Vegas and surrounding towns.
At the heart of this high desert runs one of the remaining functional sections of the legendary The Mother Road, Route 66, and one of the busiest interstate highways in the world, Route 40. For majority of the year, tourists pass through paying little attention to what appears to be a dried out, desolate landscape, choosing instead to visit various art installations, legendary bars and restaurants.
However, on some rare days, vicious storms come not only as a reminder of awesome power of nature, but a reveal that this apparently dead place is merely dormant.
At 1:52 you will see a giant Perseids meteorite streak, viably explode & burn out.
At 2:40 you will see a rare sighting of early morning Zodiacal Light en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light
This video, which premiered on BBC Earth, was filmed as part of SKYGLOW, an ongoing crowdfunded quest to explore the effects and dangers of urban light pollution in contrast with some of the most incredible Dark Sky Preserves in North America. You can support SKYGLOW by visiting WWW.SKYGLOWPROJECT.COM
bbc.com/earth/story/20151230-experience-the-lonely-sky-over-a-legendary-desert-highway
The film was shot and edited by Harun Mehmedinović on Canon 5DIII & 6D Cameras aided by Alpine Labs' Michron, powered by Paul C. Buff Vagabond Mini. The startrails were created using the rotation of Earth's axis and STARSTAX. LRTimelapse was used to process some of the shots.
High resolution stills can be found here: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24210546/JPEG/SKYGLOW-MOJAVE%20BLUES-STILLS.zip
This video is part 1 of the Mojave Desert trilogy.
Credits:
Producer/Editor/Shooter: Harun Mehmedinovic
Music: Terry-Devine King
Special Thanks:
Gavin Heffernan & Romina Rojas-Pereira
Semezdin & Sanja Mehmedinovic
Matt Walker & Pierangelo Pirak
Kevin Noble & Paul C. Buff Inc.
Greg Horvath & Alpine Labs
International Dark-Sky Association
Northern Arizona University
State Of California
Locations:
Mojave Desert, CA