Take Five!

Or should I call this post “Me and My Camera Having a Night Out”? When we went to France for Easter I was very keen to take some night shots with my new tripod and infra-red remote control. Our house is way out, deep in the dairy countryside of Normandy, where there is very little light pollution at night, so we can often see “the whole universe” and have sometimes had such a clear sky that the blurry, white streak across the sky we call “The Milky Way”, has been clearly visible. It is truly awe-inspiring. You just stand there and feel very insignificant.

I was not lucky enough to see The Milky Way this time, but the sky was relatively clear with masses of stars, so I pointed my camera at a few constellations. I tried different settings, timings and positions, pacing up and down the country lane waiting for the camera to do its work, and trying not to walk into the tripod in the dark; one, two, three, and even five minutes of exposure time. I expected to capture more stars with increasing exposure, but I also experienced one rather unexpected effect (apart from the slight light pollution in the top corners, coming from a couple of villages miles away).

At first I was disappointed with the fuzzy shots, in particular the five-minute shots; that was until I realised I had captured the image of five minutes! Look at the picture in detail and see if you can figure out what the Dickins I am talking about. You might need to click on it to enlarge it, to see the pattern more clearly. This is what five minutes look like.

What five minutes? See the lines, which actually are innumerable stars, stretching in a circular pattern? No, I did not move the camera, the stars did not move, but the earth spun around its axis for five minutes!

My camera was pointing roughly to the North, the earth spun one way, making the stars seemingly draw lines the other way. If you look really closely you might possibly see that there is a centre point towards the bottom around which everything seems to have turned. That is where our earth’s North-South axis is pointing, the North Celestial Pole.

What a dizzying thought! I had captured an image of five minutes. I had truly taken five.

For more Easter pictures (part 2), go to my photo blog, Camera Digitalis.