Flagstaff Arizona from Mars Hill

This submission was taken on the south side of Mars Hill overlooking the City of Flagstaff, Arizona. Mars Hill is noted as the location of the Lowell Observatory complex where the Planet Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (with all due disrespect to the IAU).

We climbed the hill early to make sure we would be in position at the moment of the solstice and encountered a stiff breeze with temperatures below 15 degrees F (-10 C). Fortunately, the batteries held out for the entire hour on-site (they did better than I did; I am recovering nicely from the frost-nipped fingertips). Since I hadn't done any night photography with this camera, I started out with 0.5 second exposure series and increased in steps to 3.2 seconds by the time the the moment of the solstice arrived. This last series were the shots I used to assemble the panorama. The moon was at 86% full and nearly overhead so there was sufficient illumination of the terrain so it could be seen in addition to the bright city lights.

The colored city lights giving the snow a pink fringe, the moon's illumination of the hillside and mountains, and the bright city lights rendered a nice warm (NOT!) 'Winter Holiday' visual effect.

USA-Canada / USA-Arizona

Lat: 35° 11' 53.42" N
Long: 112° 40' 45.79" W

Elevation: 2181

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: High. Pinpoints the exact spot.

Canon XTi (400D) DSLR, Peleng 8mm Fisheye Lens, Velbon VGB-3 Tripod, Apple Macintosh 1.5 GHz Powerbook G4 (Aluminum), PTGui, Photoshop CS2, Cubic Converter, Cubic Connector.