Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Amateur Photo Displays a Full Day's Worth of Celestial Splendor

Photographer shoots and assembles an entire day of skies


Time Lapse Chris Kotsiopoulos

Amateur photographer Chris Kotsiopoulos created this continuous image of the sky over Sounio, Greece, a town near his home. Late last December, he recorded the sun?s path across the sky during the day and an 11-hour star trail at night.

With his DSLR camera on a tripod, Kotsiopoulos snapped a photo every 15 minutes while the sun was in the sky. An astrosolar filter softened the sun?s glow, but he removed it for a more dramatic image when the sun was near its highest point. For the night image, he took 500 consecutive 90-second exposures. To make the little planet, Kotsiopoulos took 25 horizon shots during a 360-degree pan of the landscape. He stitched the image together using Photoshop, Startrails and PTGui image software, but Kotsiopoulos relied on some low-tech help, too: An alarm clock kept him awake for the nighttime part of the shoot.

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