It was gusty around here for a few days last week, and after the wind stopped on Saturday I noticed that the sky was exceptionally clear. So, on a whim, I decided to head out and try my luck at a star trails picture.

However, I didn’t feel like making the long trek out to Anza Borrega, so I compromised instead on Lake Henshaw, which is less dark than Anza but also about an hour closer. I knew this would mean a fair amount of light pollution on a long-exposure shot, so I decided to work with that by deliberately putting some light in the frame. The result is a picture that looks as if it were taken at sunrise. In reality, the yellow glow—from Warner Springs, about ten miles away—is only barely visible to the naked eye. But if you leave your shutter open for three hours, it turns into something very bright indeed.

I’m not sure if I’ll try this again. It has to be done in winter, when the nights are long, and for a really good shot I’d probably have to trek out to Joshua Tree or Death Valley. And even at that, there are limits to what I can get. There’s a lot of noise in this picture, due to my camera’s small, mid-quality sensor. A six-hour exposure would make the noise even worse, and would also require me to spend six hours in my car while the camera is working. I’m not sure that’s worth it.

Still, I’m glad I did this. I like the spot I found, and the orange glow from the light pollution is actually kind of entertaining.

December 29, 2018 — Lake Henshaw, California

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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