The stars at night, Are big and bright, Deep in the heart of Texas.

Between work schedules and weather we have been having a devil of a time catching good photographs of classic West Texas sunsets and starry nights.  But this week that changed.  The wind laid down enough one day that the heavy dust cleared and left just enough light stuff floating around to give some pretty brilliant color to the sunset.

These two photographs were taken only seconds apart, just long enough for me to zoom in and reframe the shot.  But that was all the time I had, the light changed and the colors dimmed rapidly.

Three hours later on the same day the few fair weather clouds that provided drama to the sunset pics had all evaporated and the sky was left perfectly clear for a carpet of stars.

Have you ever seen so many stars?!  And I was even in one of the most lit up parts of the park.  This was taken from the employee parking lot behind the headquarters building in Panther Junction, looking across the top of the employee housing area.  Pommel and Panther peaks are the horizon silhouettes in the center and to the right.  Straight up from Pommel, the really bright spot is Sirius and the bottom half of Orion can be seen in the upper right hand corner.  What at first glance appears to be "fuzzy light" cutting diagonally across the frame, to the left of Sirius is the Milky Way.

A slight turn to the west and now all of Orion comes into view.  The red spot of light directly above Orion's belt is Betelgeuse.  Its funny, Orion is usually about the only thing you really see in the night sky most places.  But here it is almost obscured by the plethora of stars and galaxies that shine through when there is no ground light to keep them veiled in the depths of space.