Monday, April 17, 2017

COLORFUL STAR SCINTILLATIONS Taken by Tom Wagner on April 16, 2017 @ Waterloo, Iowa



Decades ago I discovered that by wiggling my binoculars while looking at a scintillating star I could easily see the colors of the rainbow flash by in rapid succession in the streak the star was making.

Tonight – for the second time actually - I recorded with my camera what I see with binoculars. Sirius was about 7 degrees above the SW horizon.

To record the colorful scintillations I extended my zoom to 250 mm, opened the lens wide open (f 3.5), cranked up the ISO to 12800 and aimed at the bright star Sirius. I opened the shutter on B and wiggled the camera slightly. The exposure turned out to be two seconds.

The colors are really spectacular!

Camera used: Pentax K-5 IIS

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