Mark McCaughrean @markmccaughrean@mastodon.social
Public

Lux mysteriosa ✨

Outside with the cat one last time this evening & I noticed Antares (ɑ Sco) sneaking across the horizon just above the communication towers with their red lights on the Königstuhl.

It was twinkling, so I wondered if I could capture its changing colours, as I usually do with Sirius in wintertime.

I could & I did, by panning slowly across the scene in a 10 sec exposure. The result turned out rather lovely in an abstract kind of way.

An abstract view of the late dusk sky caused by panning the camera across the scene during a long exposure. The sky above is deep blue, with the ground below darker. Hints of trees can be seen below, from the ends of the pan. There are also orange lights from houses and buildings below. Above there are several horizontal red lines from the lights on communication towers – one is blinking slowly on and off, creating incomplete trails. Then above that is the star Antares, which is fairly faint close the horizon, but you can see its brightness and colour changing due to atmospheric turbulence. There is another fainter star trail above it. There are a number of small point-like white dots presumably from airplanes with flashing lights.
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