Friday, February 22, 2019

February 21, 2019 Questions of the Celestial North Pole and Polaris

I've been trying to capture rotation of stars around the celestial north pole.  I expected the stars to orbit around something close to Polaris  - as the earth rotates.  But I found a surprise.

Early morning sky - overlay of 250 images revealing the apparent star trajectories around the celestial north pole

Early morning sky (single frame)



Night Sky (requires imagination) with Polaris and Kochab labelled

While other stars are rotating aound some axis, the Polaris trajectory is flat. its flat because its only a small sector of the orbit and consequently  appears as a line.

No comments: