October 29, 2010
In the time it took you to read this, the Earth moved another thousand miles through space. You are not standing still. You never have been.
Star Trails and the Captain's Ghost
Birthday · October 29, 2010
A little universe, just for you
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APOD published October 29, 2010. Credit: Chris Kotsiopoulos. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Look closely at this surreal nightscape. In the dreamlike scene, star trails arc over an old ship run aground on a beach near Gytheio, Peloponnesus in southern Greece. Could that be the captain's ghost haunting the beach, gazing forlornly at the decaying wreck, hovering over starlight reflected in still water? Actually, the ephemeral shape is the photographer. Instead of a single long exposure to record the motion of the stars as the Earth rotates on its axis, the picture is composed of 90 consecutive images, each exposure 90 seconds long. Digitally stacking the individual exposures then reconstructs the star trails. It also creates a ghostly, semi-transparent figure of the photographer who was captured standing on the beach in only one of the exposures.
Image credit: Chris Kotsiopoulos