At the end of April, I shared pictures of the desert in bloom in this post. I also mentioned that the flowers in the higher elevations hadn’t reached their peak and that should happen in a couple of weeks. We had returned home because I had jury duty and we had some doctor appointments. Three weeks after that trip we left home to return to the Mojave Desert.

Supernova vs. Super Bloom

The day before we left a supernova (a star which explodes) was discovered was discovered in the Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101). The event occurred on May 18th. We can see the event now, but since the supernova is about 21 million light years away, the event actually happened 21 million years ago. It took that long for the light to reach us.

So I brought my largest telescope with us to record it.

Below is the supernova (the red arrow points to it) that I captured on May 20 and 21 (I stacked several hours of 60 second exposures into a final picture.

Great Weather and no People!

For the full two weeks we were camping, daytime highs were in the 70s and 80s. We saw a few people, but we didn’t talk to a single person except ourselves. This includes Memorial Day weekend. Perfect!

Oh yeah, Flowers