Comments | dopplertx: What's wrong with this picture? (or is it just me?)

dopplertx

What's wrong with this picture? (or is it just me?)

Dec 13, 2007 21:59

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Comments 3

litch December 14 2007, 04:18:49 UTC

the sky rotates around the polestar, if you let the image expose long enough all the tracks are circular around a single point (which in this example would be up around where the left green arrow is

decibel45 December 14 2007, 06:40:19 UTC

There was an APOD recently that showed the celestial equator, so you actually saw stars forming arcs in two different directions.

doh! dopplertx December 14 2007, 04:41:53 UTC

I failed to see the bigger picture here. I'm used to seeing pictures that feature long exposures of the starscape with the center of the arc beneath the topline of the photo. When I first glanced at this photo, my mind put that point beyond the lower-left of the image.

After several rounds of discussion on IRC, it dawned on me that I was looking at it all wrong. The center is actually above the image, and we're looking at the bottom of an arc.

Doh.