The world turns at Wattle Flat.
With the prospect of going firefighting at Hill End on the morrow there was smoke to the north, but with clear skies all night over Wattle Flat. I set up my Canon EOS 5D mkII, with the Samyang 14mm f/2.8 lens, to give a nice wide field of view on 7/3/23. I took 99 x 30 sec exposures every 4 mins, at ISO 800, for a total exposure time of 6.6 hours. I had done a 2.5 hour version previously, but wanted to expand that as I've done here.
The Moon was full to the north, brilliantly illuminating the foreground of my observatory and our house at Wattle Flat, whilst the camera was facing south.
The video starts with the gorgeous evening sky, with the purple hue a hangover of the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai in Tonga on 15th January 2022. I slowed the video at this point so you can appreciate that.
Then we see the beautiful night sky, and the Milky Way, visible despite the illumination from the Moon, rotating clockwise about the South Celestial Pole (SCP). It is very easy to locate the SCP, as all the stars appear to rotate about that point. Given my latitude is 33 degrees South, the SCP is pitched up at an angle of 33 degrees from the horizon.
Can you find Omega Centauri?
Note the wildlife hoping around, rabbits and kangaroos
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In the 2nd half of the video, I registered each image to the stars of the image closest to the central timestamp, using PixInsight. The software, aligned the stars in each image to match those of this central image. This way the stars are "frozen" in space. The animation therefore shows what is really going on. The stars are stationary, but the Earth is turning counterclockwise!! I should have fallen out of bed
As usual the GIF animation is of only fair quality. For a much higher resolution video version here is a DropBox link:
https://www.dropbox.com/.../AABb_cMCiBHpWl1Xnim6_iYsa...
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