Here’s another one to file under “things you find in the desert that you didn’t expect to see”! Welcome to Camp Iron Mountain! This desert camp was established in April of 1942 and ultimately closed in March of 1944, and served as the US Desert Training Center under General Patton. The soldiers who trained here went on to fight in the North Africa theater against Nazi Germany during World War II. Today there’s not much left of the camp except two chapel altars; one a Catholic and the other a Protestant – the one pictured here is the Catholic one.
My friend Mark visited the site years and years ago and we’d talked about going by there multiple times, but never made it happen until this past June. One of my goals for the trip was go get a good shot with the big dipper, and specifically the dust around it. The sky, however, had other plans. What you’re seeing here is not aurora, but rather airglow. Both times I attempted capturing this portion of the sky, the airglow in that region was so intense you couldn’t see anything but green “waves” in the air. I decided to just go with it because I thought it looked fairly unique! Definitely unlike anything I’ve ever captured.
Well this concludes my series on the night sky in the Mojave Desert. Next week we’ll transition back to the light and the beautiful autumn brilliance of the Smokies!
See you then!
–Dan Thompson