Finding the Celestial South Pole

in #life2 years ago

star trail 1.jpg

The celestial south pole is the point where the stars are rotating around

I recently posted about the 500 rule to get sharp milky way photos and avoid star trails. This time I want to do exactly that, create star trails to reveal the celestial south pole.

Maybe I should start by explaining what exactly the south or north celestial poles are. Essentially it's the axis that the earth rotates around. If you are able to find them and draw a line down to the horizon it's also how you find the geographical north or south. In the Northern Hemisphere like you guys in the UK and the U.S.A it's really easy to find by locating the northern star also known as Polaris. Polaris is exactly where the celestial north pole is and from there you draw a line down to the horizon to find north. It's the same concept in the southern hemisphere although it's a bit more tricky to find. In the south we use the southern cross to locate it as there is no star that represents the celestial south pole. If you set your camera to a long exposure or take lots of photos in sequence and stitch them together in post processing you can see exactly where these poles are. My mission was to photograph the earth's rotation and at the same time create awesome looking star trails.