Stauchy Blog

No, not Star Trek.  Being at the South Pole of the Earth can be quite a mind game sometimes.  The passing of days is a bit hard to imagine until you’ve experienced it.  There are a few things that help it sink in that we’re actually at the Pole of the Earth (i.e. the Earth is rotating around us, as opposed to us rotating around on the Earth).  One of these things is watching the start over a long period of time.  Unlike in the ”real world”, where stars journey overhead from one horizon to the other throughout the night, here the stars just continuously circle around our head.  Just by seeing where the stars are, you can figure out what time of day it is.  For instance, when I walk out to ARO in the afternoons, I see Jupiter (the brightest object in the sky) to my right.  The later in the afternoon it is, the further it is to my right.  So, I decided to get a visual representation of this via long-exposure photography.  Ideally, in a 24-hour exposure, each star would make a perfect circle.

Here’s my best Star Track picture, I’ll explain how I got to this point in this blog:

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