Photos of the stars

On the 6th of March, 2002, I took two photos of the stars at night, above Modbury (North-East of Adelaide, South Australia), using a very long exposure.  They were taken on ordinary (ASA 100) 35 mm film, with a Praktica MTL3 clockwork SLR camera, using a normal 48 mm wide angle lens.  Then I made scans of the prints on a domestic flatbed scanner, to put them on the website.

I've tweaked the gamma (the linearity of the luminosity) darkening the pictures to make it a bit easier to see (they were a bit washed out), but the colours are the same as the photos depict them.  While stars do have different colours, I don't know if this is an accurate representation of them (the film was very old, and I don't know if it was properly developed).  These photos weren't really photos taken to seek some sort of artistic expression, but more of an interest in trying out a long exposure, and seeing what the stars really did look like over a period of time.

Shot 24 was aimed straight up, and was exposed for about an hour; and shot 25 was aimed in a more southerly direction at about 45 degrees from vertical, and exposed for about 2 or 3 hours.  If you look at the bottom left of the second shot, you can see the trails of some of the stars forming a circle.  This is the south pole, and the stars appear to be rotating around it.  Actually, it's the Earth that's rotating around that point.