描述
Polaris has been used effectively as our current North Star for navigation on Earth for thousands of years. Did you know that our North Star is the star that sits directly above Earth's North Pole? If you stare long enough, the whole sky appears to turn counter-clockwise around this single point. But if you ZOOM into the bright star above the building, you'll notice that our current North Star, known as Polaris, isn't exactly at the center of the star trails/circles. Although it is slightly off-center, we still call it our North Star. It is the brightest and the closest star to the Celestial North Pole and its imperfection is insignificant to its purpose. I think that's beautiful.
I took 3 trips to the UC San Diego campus during the month of March in 2021. In each trip, I practiced for hours how to capture star trails but with a challenging foreground: Geisel Library. I took advantage that the campus was dark, still, and peaceful late at night (only the Talking Tree could be heard singing or reciting a poem in the distance). A perfect night for Finding Light in the Dark.
This composite image was created by capturing 1,005 images in the lapse of 3 hours. Figuring out how to correctly put it all together took me months! I believe the results are worth it and I hope you do so too.
The file is in PNG format and has a resolution of 10,534 x 6,950 pixels.
Image captured in March 2021 by Gregory Jauregui.