February 22-23, 2025 Death Valley National Park, California

 79 and sunny.

We went to the Dark Sky Festival Exploration Fair, a bunch of booths on the patio behind the visitors center. A prototype of the Eels robot that is being developed to explore the subsurface ocean of Saturn's moon Enceladus. A guy demonstrating roasting a marshmallow with a solar disc, and a prototype of the helicopter that went to mars with the Perseverance rover. We also looked at the sun through a telescope and could see sunspots. 

The explanation of the Eels.  We drove the southern part of the valley to back pack in and meet up with the Judy's. This is the salt pan on the floor of Death Valley. 

A view of the Confidence hills on our backpack.  Judy D's tent and Judy and John enjoying a beer in the shade. 

Judy P in her tent. John slept on a tarp and I in this tent. I was in and out of the tent much of the night trying to photograph the core of the milky way. 

Dinner prep. Judy and Judy made dehydrated dinners on their stoves. John and I had burritos we carried in. Sunset from dinner. 

Rocket trails from the Space X  rocket launch in Southern California. 

Rocket trail with Venus. My attempt at photographing stars and light painting my tent. Need less painting next time. Death Valley is a Dark Sky Park. The stars are AMAZING. 

These two shots should be the core of the milky way, but the moon came up at the same time, and washed out the core. 

The same view in the morning. When we got back we went to a couple more lectures at the Dark Sky Festival. Wind and frost driven activity in another dry place-Mars. Mars's atmosphere is mostly 

CO2, so when it freezes it makes dry ice. The second on was Killer Dust from unexpected Places. It compared dust from Mars, the moon and earth. Very interesting. 

The view just above the campground of Furnace Creek in nestled in these hills. The Judy's will spend the last two nights of their backpack at the Inn. We will be n our RV. It was a sunset plus tonight.