This is a one minute video, created from over 1,000 photos taken during a 9 hour window (9PM to 6 AM).
Interesting facts:
If you look closely, you will notice that one star doesn't appear to move at all. This is the North Star (aka, "Polaris"). It's not the brightest star in the sky (it ranks around 50th), nor will it always be the "North Star" (a topic for another time). If you are lost and want to find North, you can use the North Star. And if you can't find the North Star, look for the Big Dipper. The 2x "right-most" stars form a line that point directly to it.
You can see the telescope tracking something in the sky (this was the "Iris Nebula" photo I recently posted). "Tracking" is how I can take long (5-10 minute) exposures of a galaxy or nebula without the photo being completely blurred out by the Earth's rotation. A secondary camera looks at how fast the stars are moving and then tells the mount how fast it needs to rotate the telescope.
The telescope does a "meridian flip" halfway through. This is so that the telescope doesn't run into the pier while tracking an object as it crosses the "meridian" (an imaginary line in the sky that separates East from West).
The camera battery died toward the end, but was replaced, so there is a small gap right before the Big Dipper appears. Then, I chose to photograph the Orion Nebula (so the telescope moves, drastically, at the very end).
Interesting facts:
If you look closely, you will notice that one star doesn't appear to move at all. This is the North Star (aka, "Polaris"). It's not the brightest star in the sky (it ranks around 50th), nor will it always be the "North Star" (a topic for another time). If you are lost and want to find North, you can use the North Star. And if you can't find the North Star, look for the Big Dipper. The 2x "right-most" stars form a line that point directly to it.
You can see the telescope tracking something in the sky (this was the "Iris Nebula" photo I recently posted). "Tracking" is how I can take long (5-10 minute) exposures of a galaxy or nebula without the photo being completely blurred out by the Earth's rotation. A secondary camera looks at how fast the stars are moving and then tells the mount how fast it needs to rotate the telescope.
The telescope does a "meridian flip" halfway through. This is so that the telescope doesn't run into the pier while tracking an object as it crosses the "meridian" (an imaginary line in the sky that separates East from West).
The camera battery died toward the end, but was replaced, so there is a small gap right before the Big Dipper appears. Then, I chose to photograph the Orion Nebula (so the telescope moves, drastically, at the very end).