North Celestial Tree
Image Credit &
Copyright:
Jerónimo
Losada
If you climbed this magnificent tree, it looks like you could
reach out and touch the North Celestial Pole
at the center of all the star trail arcs.
The well-composed image was recorded over a period of
nearly 2 hours as a series of 30 second long, consecutive exposures
on the night of October 5.
The exposures were made with a digital camera fixed to a tripod near
Almaden de la Plata, province of Seville, in southern Spain,
planet Earth.
Of course, the graceful star trails
reflect the Earth's daily rotation around its axis.
By extension, the axis of rotation
leads to the center of the concentric arcs
in the night sky.
Convenient for northern hemisphere
night sky photographers and celestial navigators alike, the
bright star Polaris
is very close to the North Celestial
Pole and so makes the short bright trail in the central gap
between the leafy branches.