16 Lights on Brown Mountain Dec 11, 2014

The night of December 11, 2014 was cold and clear----perfect for a night hike and some staged light tests on Brown Mountain!  I hit the trail about dark, visited several known bare rock exposures with open views toward our BML Cam1, and hiked a 4-mile loop atop the mountain.  My light was a 520-lumen re-chargeable handheld spotlight that I've used on previous light tests.  The following image is a composite stack of 16 individual 30-second time exposure images taken at various times during the 4.5 hour hike by Cam1, which lies atop a house on Jonas Ridge 7 miles west of Brown Mountain.  This is the same image, with the same field of view, seen in all Cam1 images this year; i.e., the camera has not changed position all year.

16 Lights on Brown Mountain December 11, 2014

520-lumen rechargeable handheld spotlight used for Dec 11, 2014 Light Tests

 

Light from my handheld spotlight was captured at 16 different places on Brown Mountain by BML Cam1---these are the 16 spots of light on the mountain visible on the composite time-exposure image above.  With the leaves now off the trees, I was able to see the distant Jonas Ridge House lights where Cam1 is located at numerous places along the various trails I hiked that night.  Sure enough, Cam1 caught my spotlight at many places along the trails.  During the same hike back in August when the leaves were still on the trees, my light was only visible at Bear Rocks and along FS Rd 4099 with open views toward Cam1.  The birght lights at Lael's Rock and Bear Rocks seen in the image above are the same 520-lumen spotlight pointed directly toward Cam1 for a full 30-second time exposure.