What is a moonbow, and what does it take to get a picture of one? And do rare events in the night sky lose their appeal after you've seen a bunch of them? Dean chats with Jeff Pfaller, astro-photographer and author of "Dark Skies: Rare Phenomena in America’s Public Lands" to learn more.
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Episode Transcript:
Looking Up is transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. This transcript may include additional material from the conversation, not featured in the audio.
Dean Regas: On July 13, 2024, I was hanging out with the Des Moines Astronomical Society at their observatory in Iowa.
[Field Audio from Moon Occultation]: Yep. It's perfectly centered on the moon.
Dean Regas: You know, just a bunch of people watching the moon go in front of stuff. Well, as the moon orbits the Earth, it passes in front of stars all the time. But rarely does it cover or occult a bright star.
But that night it did, and we were ready. I photographed a lunar occultation of Spica when the brightest star in the constellation Virgo suddenly disappeared behind the moon.
[Field Audio from Moon Occultation]: Hey. Just disappeared. Wow, that was it is just like, boom. You weren't watching, you'd missed it. That was it.
Dean Regas: What's it like being at the right place at the right time to not only witness, but capture a rare event in the sky? One word. Thrilling.
[Field Audio from Moon Occultation]: That was it.
Dean Regas: From the studios of Cincinnati Public Radio, I'm your host, Dean Regas, and this is "Looking Up" the show that takes you deep into the cosmos or just to the telescope in your backyard to learn more about what makes this amazing universe of ours so, great. My guest today is Jeff Pfaller, an award-winning photographer and world traveler who wrote and took all of the photos in the new book "Dark Skies."
OK, so, maybe you notice the audio reactions in the occultation from the intro were a little bit sedate, and I get why people weren't all that amazed. This event was probably a 5 out of 10 on the coolness factor, really. I've seen a lot of rare astronomical events. Lunar eclipses, solar eclipses, the Northern Lights.
I've seen a decent meteor shower and a splendid comet. Ooh, ah. These are widely deemed the top five astronomical events to see in your lifetime. I've even watched the planet Venus pass directly between us and the sun. That event is so rare called a Transit of Venus that it won't happen again until the year 2117.
And I got to see it twice.
[NASA Coverage of 2012 Venus Transit]: It's once in a lifetime event. It's really cool. You can see it through. And this if it can look closely, there's like a really, extremely tiny black dot, which is Venus.
Dean Regas: But one thing I have not done yet was observe a moonbow. Now, what's a moonbow? Well, it's when at nighttime the full moon shines so brightly that it bends off of mist from a waterfall to create a faint, ethereal rainbow.
There are two places to see them: Yosemite National Park in California and Cumberland Falls State Park in Kentucky. I've seen pictures of them but never experienced them with my own eyes. I wonder what they're really like. I'm hoping Jeff can tell me.
Jeff Pfaller: Hi, Jeff Pfaller. I'm a dark sky photographer and national parks explorer.
Dean Regas: Well, Jeff, thanks so much for joining me today.
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah, it's great to meet you and talk to you and excited to talk about all the cool things you can see outside at night.
Dean Regas: Well, we're going to dive right into moonbows because I have not seen one in my life and I have taken that you have seen lots of them.
What do they look like to the naked eye first?
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah. I mean, moonbows sound like something that a poet might dream up, right? Like they don't seem possible, but yeah, they're real. They're a little bit like the Northern Lights, or the aurora, if you've ever seen those. So, the first thing in human eyesight to go is color, or our ability to see color.
So, when you see a moonbow, it kind of just looks like a white band in the mist. And that's if you know what you're looking for. So, a pretty common experience is for people to try and be taking a picture and take a long exposure and they'll not know if it's happening. And then they'll look down at their viewfinder and be like, oh my gosh, it's there, because the camera can just see much more light than we can.
Dean Regas: What are your best photography tips for moonbows?
Jeff Pfaller: It's essentially just a long exposure. You know, if you have a DSLR or a mirrorless, you're going to want to be wide open. So, have your aperture at its lowest f-stop. ISO can be, you know, 800 to 1,200 to 1,600, or whatever your preference is.
And then just start with like a six-second exposure and see where that gets you. Like that'll be enough to see the color and then you can kind of adjust it up or down. Because another thing that people don't think about is they occur during a full moon. And the full moon's pretty bright, so, it actually casts a lot of light on the landscape, and you might actually have to adjust because the foreground is getting lit too well by the full moon, if that makes sense.
Dean Regas: And so, you've seen these both in Yosemite and Cumberland Falls both.
Jeff Pfaller: That's right. So, Yosemite, they happen April, May and June when the waterfalls are really going during the full moons of those months. Cumberland Falls, I believe they can happen year-round. And then if you've got a passport, you can go to Iguazu Falls. I believe they occur there as well. I mean, technically you can see them anywhere, as long as the angles are right, like if there's a rainstorm, you could see it when the moon shines through, just like a rainbow during the day. But that's I mean, as hard as rainbows are to see, that's even more tricky.
Because it's got to be at night and all the angles and know where to look. And it's just a harder value proposition. But there's lots of sites out there. If you just Google, you know, Yosemite moonbows or Cumberland Falls moonbows, people will post a schedule of when they'll show up. Because it is a specific time you know, it can be anywhere from like a 15-minute, I think, to an hour, hour-and-a-half window.
So, it's not like they show up all night. Like you kind of have to be in the right spot at the right time.
Dean Regas: Well, in "Dark Skies" your book of photographs and personal musings how did the idea for this project come about?
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah, the idea for a book set in national parks at night was kind of rattling around in my head for a while.
But I always I think like a lot of artists maybe struggled with, like, what's the perspective I can add to something? You know, there's lots of photo books of national parks and the outdoors and there's lots of dark sky photography. But when I got laid off during COVID, I had all this empty space in my life and that was the thing that kept pulling me into it.
And when I started, I really only thought dark sky photography or astrophotography was about, you know, the stars and the moon and that kind of thing. And those things are gorgeous. You know, it's a combination of meeting other photographers and hearing about the things that occur in public lands and my phone listening to me and recommending these kinds of rare events.
You know, lots of people have a picture of, say, like a moonbow or Firefall or a lightning storm, but I found myself in a position where I had pictures of all these different kinds of dark sky events, and that's when I felt like I had something unique to say in the book. Kind of felt like it came together.
Dean Regas: Looks like you spent a lot of time in Yosemite National Park. What drew you to this park?
Jeff Pfaller: Have you ever been there?
Dean Regas: Well, yeah, I know. It's awesome. I know, I keep thinking about it myself. I was there a few years ago. It does capture you, but what did it for you?
Jeff Pfaller: I mean, I think, yeah. Anybody who's been there knows, there are a couple things about Yosemite that kind of stick out to me. One is, you know, a lot of national parks or state parks, or really any public land, they're kind of built around a thing, right? You know, Joshua Tree, it's in the name. Saguaro. It's in the name. They've got a thing. Yosemite has six or seven of those things. Like you could build an entire park around El Capitan or Half Dome, or you know, the valley or its waterfalls. And then on top of that you've got these insane rare events like Horsetail Falls you know, two weeks out of the year it looks like lava's pouring off the mountain.
The moonbows that occur there. It's almost not fair how many different things they have going on.
Dean Regas: Well, and you mentioned Horsetail Falls.
[News clip]: Visitors are flocking to Yosemite National Park this week to witness the phenomenon known as Firefall.
Dean Regas: Must've been incredible to be able to see this you know, describe what that's like when the light lights up this waterfall. Like, what was it, or like the air, the people around it, the lighting.
Jeff Pfaller: Winter in Yosemite, there's less crowds there. So, I went to this, you know, more out-of-the-way spot. There were just a couple other photographers there, and it was a lot just a lot more laid back. You know, everybody was happy to move their tripods around so, everybody could get a shot, which, if you've ever been to a really busy photo spot, you know, that's a big thing for photographers is like moving your tripod.
So, just like a great group of people. And then as the time wore on, and it got closer to when it was going to happen, clouds blocked the sun, which is pretty common. You know, that's happened two-thirds of the nights that I've been there, if not more. And nobody's really saying anything. But the silence was kind of all saying what we were thinking was like, OK, it's not going to happen tonight either, because, you know, the sun's just not going to shine through.
And sun's kind of a requirement. But then, you know, right. 10 minutes before sunset, 15 minutes before sunset, where the really like, juicy, bright orange part is supposed to happen, the clouds went away and it went from nothing to everything in an instant. And it was like somebody had thrown a match into the waterfall and it was made of gas. Like this 2,000-foot waterfall just went up and everybody in the valley, you know, all 2,000 people or however many were there, they started cheering. Like Taylor Swift just came out and it was just a really cool experience to like see the contrast like that and. It felt special at the time, but I've been back five years in a row and probably have been there 25 nights to try and see it.
And I would say 1 out of every 3, you can see it even light up. Sometimes there's nothing. So, now, later, I've really come to appreciate how unique that experience was, because yeah, it hasn't happened like that for me since.
Dean Regas: I know, isn't that like a little bit of adversity makes it even more special in a lot of ways, like with eclipses, and you've seen a lot of eclipses in the national parks too. Do any of those stand out to you?
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah, I mean the eclipses I've got a lot of fond memories of those and it's mostly because of who I see them with. So, it's basically like the kids know they're getting out of school if there's an eclipse, because we're going to go see it. And I mean, if you've ever seen that, that's as close as you can get to being on another planet.
It's easy to see why early humans completely freaked out when they happen. Like, I know what's going on, and it's really unsettling because you get the 360-degree sunrise and the crickets start chirping at 3 in the afternoon and it gets cold. It's kind of like a full sensory experience to be in the totality of an eclipse.
And similar to the Firefall event I just described, it happens pretty quickly. Like the difference between 99% coverage and 100% coverage is not to use a bad pun, but it's like night and day. The visual of it is just completely arresting. I've actually never seen a picture that I feel like does it justice.
I mean, it's like there's a diamond flower in the sky. Like the center of it is this jet black hole. And then around it, there's like these diamond petals that have, you know, prismatic light reflecting off of them. It's yeah, it's like nothing else. It might be my favorite, favorite thing.
Dean Regas: Well, you've seen so many rare astronomical events. What keeps you coming back and what do you have looking forward to in the future?
Jeff Pfaller: Right now, the thing that I think keeps bringing me back is experiencing them with other people. So, bringing other people in and seeing, you know, them be moved to tears by something that's happening. I had somebody coming with me who proposed to his girlfriend while one of these events was happening.
So, I think sharing it with other people is what's really bringing me back right now. As far as like, what's next I'd like to do something that allows me to sleep. That's the tough thing about being an astrophotographer. I mean, I feel like photographers already don't sleep because they're chasing sunrise and sunset and now, I've decided to stay up all night too, which maybe wasn't a great move. But yeah, I'm kind of just waiting for the thing that pulls at me like the dark sky book.
Dean Regas: So, you mentioned using fancier cameras. Do you have any tips for people that might just have their phones?
Jeff Pfaller: Honestly, iPhones take great nighttime photography. Specifically, aurora, you know, I've got an iPhone. And I'm always jealous of my friends that have Apple devices because the night mode is just so much better at capturing those kinds of things. So, it's pretty simple. You know, just Google how to access night mode in your phone. It's usually just a couple taps, and then I think the phone will correct a lot, but as long as you're holding it pretty still, it kind of takes care of the rest.
So, yeah, I would say if you've got a phone and you're just taking nighttime photography shots with it, usually I tell people the best camera's the one that you've got on you. You know, you're not going to be like printing something at a magazine or, you know, maybe printing something that's super large on your wall. But in terms of like having something for social media or capturing your own memory, like it'll be great. And just learn how to access that night mode and then start experimenting with it and see what you get. And I think you'll probably be surprised at the results.
Dean Regas: Well, Jeff, this has been a lot of fun chatting today. Thanks so much for taking the time.
Jeff Pfaller: Yeah, thank you for having me. It was great.
Dean Regas: I think it seems like a good time to talk about the Northern Lights. Maybe you've been seeing photos of them online taken by professional astronomers, but also, your family members, neighbors, pretty much anyone with a newer phone camera. Have you seen these incredible streams of pink and green and white on social media and you think, wow. And then a half-second later, oh man, I really missed it. It's the only event that can even be in the same category as a total solar eclipse, but from the Midwest and mid-latitudes, I have to admit something. They don't look as good as they do in the pictures. Our phones can do long exposures and can capture way more light than our eyes do in real time.
So, outside, under the stars, the Northern Lights didn't look as good as those pictures your neighbor took. I posted some pictures. I took one with a long exposure and one that was more realistic, subtle. I would characterize the Northern Lights. So, if you missed seeing auroras in 2024 or 2025, don't feel so, bad they were cooler than an occultation of a star. Absolutely.
[Field Audio from Moon Occultation]: Hey. Just disappeared. Wow, that was it is just like, boom. You weren't watching, you'd missed it. That was it.
Dean Regas: For most of the country, you missed a rare event that was just barely visible to the naked eye, and maybe you simply missed getting a picture that was much more dynamic than real life. But with the sun still being active, we're still in Northern Lights season. You never know. Maybe we'll see them tonight.
Looking up with Dean Regas is a production of Cincinnati Public Radio. Kevin Reynolds and I created the podcast in 2017. Ella Rowen and Carlos Lopez Cornu produce and edit our show and stand up and cheer whenever I say keep looking up and the episode is over.
Jenell Walton is our Vice President of Content, and Ronny Salerno is our digital platforms manager. Our theme song is, “Possible Light” by Ziv Moran. Our social media coordinator is Hannah Pflum, and our cover art is by Nicole Tiffany. I'm Dean Regas, keep looking up!
