I’m sure many of you have seen numerous mesmerizing photographs taken of star trails; an effect that happens when you leave the shutter open on your camera for so long , it records the movement of stars zipping by as Earth moves on its axis. But I would bet that most of you have never seen them stretching over 360 degrees of sky. A photographer named Vincent Brady not only did just that, but he created an animated GIF that combines all aspects of the sky into one image, sincerely capturing something actually befitting of an accolade given out far too frequently; “the universe as you’ve never seen it before.”
According to Brady, he used a four camera rig to capture the footage, each aimed at its own section of sky. “Since the Earth is rotating at a steady 1,040 mph I created a custom rig of 4 cameras with fish-eye lenses to capture the entire night-sky in motion,” he remarked, “Thus the images show the stars rotating around the north star as well as the effect of the southern pole as well and a 360 degree panorama of the scene on Earth.'” (sic) Once the rigs were mounted, they recorded each shot for about a minute, capturing up to 300 images over the course of a few hours, or until the batteries were depleted. Later on, he even developed his own software to carry out the tedious task of stitching all of the images he took together. Those that comprise the GIF were taken in Arches in Arches National Park (Delicate Arch, Utah, to be more specific). WATCH: THE UNIVERSE IN SLOW MOTION
See more of Brady’s impressive body of work here.