Photo #1167 – 01.25.12

Star Trails and the Milky Way

The Earth sure is one fast rotator!  At the equator, the Earth rotates at a speed greater than 1000 miles per hour…although this speed decreases to practically 0 miles per hour at the poles.  It is this fast rotation that allowed me to open the camera shutter for 12 minutes on a clear, summer night and capture the streaks of starry light in the photo above.  This long exposure also allowed me to capture a section of the Milky Way galaxy as a couple bands of cloud-like fogginess behind the star trails.