Tuesday, May 25, 2010

May 14 - North Star (METoC Day 1)


It's time to stop procrastinating and start posting photos from the Moderately Epic Tour of California (downgraded from Massively Epic because we returned to Vegas a day early).

Day 1 saw us drive up US-95 towards Tonopah. We cut across to Mono Lake and continued North towards Tahoe. We had trouble finding a good camp site before sunset. Finally, at around 9pm, we lucked upon a spot right next to the west fork of the Carson River.

By this point, I hadn't taken a single photo all day. I decided to bust out a long exposure Polaris star trail attempt. This one was actually my first try. It could definitely benefit from a full frame body, but I'm pretty happy with it. It was shot at ISO1600 at f/5.6 for around 20 minutes.

2 comments:

  1. How does that occur? That circular effect? Very cool!

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  2. Basically, because of the Earth's rotation, all of the stars appear to "rotate" around the north star (Polaris). If you take a long enough exposure, you get star trails that show where the stars "move" as the night progresses. Of course, they aren't really moving, but rather the Earth is spinning.

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