time-lapse, part 8: night sky

while i was in spain, i decided to make a time-lapse video of the (apparent) movement of a star-constellation in the night sky.

unfortunately i couldn’t include the northern star this time, showing that all the stars seem to rotate around it. i think i’ll do this in another video sometime.
given the preconditions (location and timeframe), the big dipper (ursa major, grosser wagen) [wikipedia: de en] was the perfect motive.


the movement of the big dipper in the night sky

date:
starting time:
interval:
total time:
shutter speed:

2006-07-25
23:00
30 seconds
3 hours
13 sec.

camera:
Sony Cybershot DSC-F828 & JG-RC2
video data:
mpeg4/xvid – one pass: quality – 15 fps – qual: 97% (get the codec | help)
video length:
24 sec.
speedup:
x 450 (1 second in the video equals 7,5 minutes in real-time)
file size:
8,5 MB


i also uploaded it to youtube.
(in the resized version, you can hardly see anything, though…)

while it seems like the night sky “rotates” pretty quickly, it’s actually the earth is rotating, changing our field of view, making it seem like the constellations themselves move. i’m sure most of you know this… just thought i’d mention it.

i was a little surprised at the high noise level that the f828 produced this time. i don’t think it was that warm…

if you prefer photos, here’s a set of pictures (30-minute-steps):

[view photos: the big dipper moving in the sky]

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