After photographing the Turret Arch (“Turret Arch at Night”), I walked about 300 feet to the North Window, where I set up my tripod and camera and began capturing 6 x 8-minute exposures of the northern sky as viewed from the window. Later, in Photoshop, I blended the 6 images together to get this star trail image of the stars as they moved over and through the North Window (actually, the stars were not moving … the movement is caused by the earth’s rotation):
The central star in the above image is Polaris, aka “The North Star”. When shooting long exposures, or blending together many images of shorter exposure, all the stars rotate around this central star. Fascinating!
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark 3 body
- Rokinon 14mm, f/2.8 manual lens
- Bogen 3221 tripod with ballhead
- ISO 200
- Aperture f/2.8
- Shutter 8 minutes
- Six images were blended together to achieve the image of star trails over/through the North Window