To protect the irreplaceable remnants of the ancient residents of Chaco Canyon (strucutures, artifacts, petroglyphs, pictoglyphs, etc.), night time access to most of the park is prohibited. In the summer, access on the loop road and backcountry trails is limited to 7am - 9pm (except for the early access on the summer solstice, for example). Besides the campground and the visitor center, the only other place you're officially able to be after 9pm is Fajada Butte Viewpoint. So I spent parts of my two overnights shooting the Milky Way from there.
The first two shots were taken before dawn, probably between 3:30 and 4:15, on the morning of June 22, 2025. I needed to wait until early morning because moonrise for the waning crescent moon was going to be around 3:30am, and I wanted the moonlight to illuminate the foreground for my shots. The first shot (probably taken later) got photobombed by what was probably an International Space Station flyby.
All shots are single exposures, high iso. Top shot was a Nikon 20mm f/1.8, ISO 2000, 25 seconds. Second shot was Nikon 35mm f/1.8, ISO 4000, 20 seconds. Third shot was a Rokinon 14mm f/2.8, ISO 6400, 30 seconds. My main night sky camera is a Nikon D780. For most untracked shots, exposures of 30 seconds or less limits the star trailing due to the earth's rotation, especially for wide-angle lenses. Processed in Lightroom for Mobile.
The first two are looking more or less west, as you can tell if you check when the Milky Way was vertical in mid-June. I assume that's Gallup and other small towns causing the orangish glow. Sunrise would have been coming from the other direction. Third one was probably southeast-ish, to capture the rising core of the Milky Way, and still fit Fajada Butte. This was probably around 11pm on the night of June 20th.
There's an actual, modern observatory at Chaco, behind the visitor center. I assumed they'd have programs every weekend, but, checking the calendar on their website, I saw no night sky programs scheduled, other than a star party, with volunteers from Albuquerque providing telescopes, the month before.
The weekend we were there would have been a good dark sky weekend for observing, but it was also the summer solstice, with numerous sun-related events going on, so I guess it's not totally surprising they didn't do any night sky stuff that weekend, but, other than the one star party, I haven't noticed any night sky events on the calendar this year (not that I check every day!). That also sort of makes sense, if only because the place is so isolated that you're not going to get a lot of "drive in for the night, then head home" drop ins, espcially not from tourists. Still, to have a spiffy observatory and not put it to use from such a dark sky location seems like a shame.
The ancient residents of Chaco certainly watched the sky, as well, as evidenced by the "supernova pictoglyph," which I noted in the previous post. What I forgot to note is, if you look on the wall below the overhang and process your shot differently, you see a large round object, with a possible tail, stretching off to the left. There's some speculation this might be a comet.
In any event, as illustrated by the shots, there's a pretty amazing night sky to be seen from Chaco Culture National Historic Park, so lots to see after dark, too. And there are occasional star parties, "manned" by volunteers from the New Mexico amateur astronomer community. I may try to volunteer for one of those some day, too.
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