Heavenly Gaze (Steve_Peters)

Contains: Star trails

Heavenly Gaze

This is a star trails image comprising 358 individual shots of 40 seconds each, which were combined in Photoshop to produce the trails. It was captured at Metolius Balancing Rocks in central Oregon over the course of four hours, starting at 11 p.m. To give you some size perspective, the rock slab that's balancing on top of the pedestal is about 10 feet in length and 3 feet thick, I'd guess. The camera with its wide-angle lens was positioned literally 6 feet from that gargantuan formation, on what seemed like a 45-degree slope of slippery scree. (The super wide-angle lens makes it seem farther away than it really was.) I set the camera on "autopilot" and got the hell outta there until four hours later when I went back to collect it.

The different natural colors of the stars are exaggerated here, of course, for artistic effect.

And I have to add this. To me, that balanced rock looks like the chiseled head of a human from long ago -- maybe an early astronomer like Eratosthenes or Galileo gazing face-up at the heavens above. That's the top of his head on the left, his mouth is wide open in awe and his beard is on the right. The pedestal is his torso. I can't unsee this, but it works for me!

Please note: The following tables are updated every 24 hours.

Distribution of astrophotographers

This table shows the number of distinct astrophotographers who have been assigned and IOTD/TP award compared to the total number of images awarded.
	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

Distribution of subject types

This table shows the distribution of awards per subject type, compared to the popularity of images of that subject type.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

Distribution of data sources

This table shows the distribution of awards per data source, compared to the popularity of images acquired from that data source.
	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

The “AstroBin Image of the Day and Top Picks”, or IOTD/TP, is a long-running system to promote beautiful, interesting, peculiar, or otherwise amazing astrophotographs, with a focus on technical excellence. Learn more.

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

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Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
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