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KINGS CANYON NATIONAL PARK — Ansel Adams' "High Country Crags and Moon, Sunrise" first appeared in print in 1979 as it debuted for an exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
It certainly wasn't a new photo, though. The breathtaking black-and-white photo that shows the moon hovering over the rocky topography of Kings Canyon National Park was believed to have been taken sometime in 1935; however, the legendary photographer never really kept detailed notes about when he shot his photos as much as he did about how he shot them.
A new report now gives better clarity as to when the photo was taken, using the subjects of the photo. Donald Olson, an astronomer and professor emeritus of physics at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, says the photo was taken at 6:47 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Aug. 6, 1936, a year after it is listed as being taken.
His findings are published in the latest issue of Sky & Telescope magazine.
The painstaking work to determine the photo's date began when Stanford University put the photo on display for an exhibit at its Cantor Arts Center. Kim Beil, an art historian who teaches at the university, explained that she found herself "drawn" to the photograph and wanted to know more about it, in an article she wrote for New York Times that was published in March,
She reached out to climbing experts who used the image to help her conclude that Adams stood near Horn Peak, a location close to the boundary between Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks, when he took the photo. Yet there was nothing in Adams' other work that could help her figure out exactly when it happened.
That's when she reached out to Olson for help, as he is known as a "celestial sleuth."
Beil hiked to the area in September 2022 and sent "reference photos" back to Olson so he and physicist Ava Pope could get to work. They first determined Adams' exact GPS coordinates and then calculated the moon's altitude and angle through the constellations visible in the fieldwork, Texas State officials wrote in a news release Tuesday.
They then used astronomical software to match records as to when the moon could have been in the "correct phase and position" as it is displayed in Adams' photo, given the range it was likely taken. This narrowed their search down to dates in 1923, 1929, 1933 and 1936. The tilt of the moon's north pole in the photo narrowed the search further, either to Aug. 9, 1933, or Aug. 6, 1936.
That's where more precise records helped the team determine the exact day. According to the university, Olson searched Sierra Club records to find that Adams would have been in the area in 1933, but he left the trip nearly a week before the photo could have been taken because of the birth of his son. Records also show that he was in San Francisco the day the moon could have been in the same position that it is in the photo.
The club's itinerary for a 1936 trip, on the other hand, indicates that he would have been in the right area at the exact time the moon entered the position seen in the photo.
This finding gives the photo a little more significance all these years later.
Beil wrote that 1936 was a "pivotal year" in Adams' life and for the creation of Kings Canyon National Park. First, he was offered a major gallery opportunity months before he had taken the photo; second, he lobbied Congress to designate the Kings Canyon area a national park that year. It became a national park four years later.
She added that she still has one last burning question. Why did Adams wait 43 years to print and display the negative he captured in 1936?
"Something in that time had shifted the way he saw this picture ... Against this symphony of geologic time, the span of 43 years is a mere grace note," she wrote in March. "But for Adams, it was more than half his life."
However, unlike the location and date the photo was taken, it's a mystery that will likely never be solved.
