Capturing the sky

Unique photography on display at Red Rock Visitors Center

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If it's in the night sky, chances are good that John Hammes Mowbray has photographed it.

The native Las Vegan mixes his love of photography with a penchant for being wowed by stars, comets and other astronomy subjects.

Some of his work is on display at the Red Rock Canyon Conservation Area Visitors Center.

The display includes images of the moon, a lunar eclipse and an annual solar eclipse. They lead the eye to the largest piece, that of Comet Hale-Bopp seen shooting over the Spring Mountain Range on April 5, 1997. He used a Canon F-1 with a 50mm lens and 800-speed color film for the 30-second exposure.

"They're amazing pictures," said Sharon Shaw, a dressmaker from Dixon, Ill., who admired the display at the visitors center. "You have to be in the right place at the right time to capture something like that."

The information about Hale-Bopp is just as riveting as the picture. The comet races through space at 43,000 miles per hour. It will not pass by Earth again for another 2,400 years.

Earlier in the year, astronomy buffs were watching white dwarf star RS Ophiuchi brighten enough to be visible without a telescope, something it's done five times in the last 100 years. RS Ophiuchi is coupled with a much larger red giant star in a binary system. The two stars are so close that the white dwarf is actually inside the envelope of the red giant and explodes from within it roughly every 20 years.

Right now, many stargazers are trying to catch sight of fragments of Comet 73P Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, which has been breaking up since the mid 1990s. Pieces of it will pass closest to Earth Friday night into early morning Saturday, and will continue to be a factor in the sky into June.

It is events like those that capture Mowbray's fascination with the night sky.

He first became interested in star gazing as a Boy Scout. The occasion was his very first overnight camping trip at Calico Basin.

The scout leader pointed out the various constellations before everyone turned in, but a bright moon thwarted the ability to see much more than the brightest stars. Mowbray, however, woke up about 2 a.m. and crawled outside of his tent. The moon had dropped and the night sky was at its best, the Milky Way clearly visible.

"There were billions of stars, just incredible," he sad. "I felt like waking everyone else up so they could see everything, too."

Boy Scouts also got him into photography. He made a deal with his parents and had his own dark room where he developed his black and white pictures.

Today, Mowbray is married to Suzanne, a school teacher, and has a thriving law practice. He is still watching the stars, still using his camera to capture night sky wonders and still developing film in his own darkroom off his garage.

He owns eight telescopes of varying types. His largest is a 14-inch diameter Schmidt-Cassegrain. He attaches his camera to the scopes and takes time-lapse pictures. Sometimes the exposure is a few minutes long. Other times, it's less than a minute.

To avoid star trails, he can use a motor calibrated to move the scope in tandem with the earth's rotation. Often, the longer exposures reveal stars and solar systems barely visible to the naked eye.

Any images seen on his night-sky photos are really a look back into history, as the image we see took millions of light years to reach Earth.

Mowbray's passion led him to teach Astrology 105 at CCSN's Cheyenne campus.

"Astronomy can be a pretty tedious subject," said Robert Pippin, astronomer and planetarium manager at the college. "But the students, they love him. He makes it easy to understand."

Mowbray joined the Las Vegas Astronomy Club in 1993 and often attends their star parties.

Geary Keilman, president of the Las Vegas Astronomical Society, said Mowbray "has been very generous in donating several of his really terrific images for club events."

The Las Vegas Astronomy Society meets at 7:30 p.m on the first Thursday of the month at the planetarium at CCSN, 3200 E. Cheyenne Ave.

Mowbray also has had exhibits at the Nevada State Museum and the Lloyd George Courthouse. A gallery in Boulder City, Fire and Water, 555 Hotel Plaza, sells his work.

He said he hopes the Red Rock Visitors center display inspires people to pause, go outside and look at the night sky.

"With all the shows we have on the Strip, to think you can go out in your own backyard and observe the stars -- it's the best floor show in the world," he said.