Explanation:
Fix your camera to a tripod and you can record graceful
trails
traced by the stars as planet Earth
rotates on its axis.
If the tripod is set up at ESO's
La
Silla Observatory, high in the
Atacama desert
of Chile, your star trails would look
something like this.
Spanning about 4 hours on the night of January 24,
the image is
actually a composite of 250 consecutive 1-minute exposures,
looking toward the north.
The North Celestial Pole,
at the center of the star trail
arcs, is just below the horizon in this southern hemisphere perspective.
In the foreground, the polished 15-meter diameter dish antenna of the
Swedish-ESO Submillimeter Telescope
(now decommissioned)
shows star trails toward the south by reflection.
Sweeping around the South Celestial Pole,
the distorted arcs of those stars appear underneath the
southern horizon in the focusing dish's inverted view.
Right of the dish is the dome of the observatory's 3.6 meter
telescope, home to the planet hunting
HARPS spectrograph.
Circle:
Follow APOD on Google Plus
