Tom Schwabel Photography

Happy Earth Day!

See more icy places:
https://tom-schwabel.pixels.com/collections/polar+regions

I spent a couple hours fumbling around in the freezing cold and pitch-black dark of the New Mexican high desert a few weeks back to create this photo of one of the famous radio telescope dishes of the Very Large Array. Over the years, the VLA has been involved in key scientific research such as mapping the Milky Way's center, detecting water ice on Mercury, imaging black holes and protoplanets, and confirming gravitational lenses (Einstein rings). If you've seen the movie Contact, you should be very familiar with this location.

The total exposure time here is 51 minutes, and you see the stars appearing to rotate around Polaris, the north star, as the earth turns. If it were possible to do a 24-hour exposure, you would see each star complete a full circle. The light pollution in the distant horizon is likely Albuquerque, 100 miles to the northeast.

See more:
https://tom-schwabel.pixels.com/featured/starlit-sky-over-very-large-array-radio-telescope-in-new-mexico-tom-schwabel.html

The Icelandic Highlands take on a whole different look when viewed from the air! Here, a glacial river spreads out into a giant plain of volcanic black sand creating complex and ever-changing patterns.

See larger:
https://tom-schwabel.pixels.com/featured/aerial-view-of-glacial-river-in-iceland-highlands-tom-schwabel.html