Star Trails Observed While Camping Near Yosemite

Lee Vining Canyon - a small cutout in the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada that covers the long, windy 12 miles from Yosemite's Tioga Pass enterance to Mono Lake and surroundings - is dotted with too many camp sites to count. The Aspen campground is one of the larger and more popular, which has something to do with its lower altitude, leaving this place is dry and open when sites higher up the mountain are buried in the snow. This can happen in the fall and spring, sometimes as late as June.

As the Earth rotates, the stars appear to slowly move across the night sky. This pattern can't be seen with the naked eye because the movement is too slow to notice. Over a 20 minute period, our planet moved far enough to leave the streaks in this photo, the slow rotation being recorded by the camera's CMOS chip.

Unforunately, this is from a D60 - a camera from the stone age - and the magenta cloud on the right edge of the frame is an artifact of the chip heating up over the course of the exposure. For more information about this type of photography, see "How to Shoot Star Trails," which covers the technique and aesthetics of a unique style of night photography for digital and film cameras.