These are the movements of the stars within one hour seen from the Mauna Kea volcano on the island of Hawaii. I used to think it's super difficult to take such pictures. A couple of weeks ago in California I ran into a photographer who took pictures like these. He explained it to me in two sentences. In fact, there is absolutely nothing to it. You point at the sky and take either one super long exposure (if your camera can do that), or take a bunch of shorter ones and blend them together in photoshop. That's all. Of course it helps to have a great night sky.In this picture here one could get the illusion of seeing whole circles, but that's not the case. For that I would have to wait till earth rotated 360 degrees. And as we all know, that would take 24 hours. So since I only captured one hour, we only see 15 degrees, is that right? So far with my astro knowledge.
The zig-zagging lights on the mountain are the light traces of cars going to the summit of the mountain where the Mauna Kea Observatories are located. I went up there before taking this picture. Man..that was an experience. The lack of oxygen made me feel super dizzy. It's located 14,000 feet above sea level.
