A day of lights

What happens if you take the same photo at two different latitudes? Here is an example: both images were taken around the winter solstice and show the Sun’s motion in the sky over 24h. The one on the left (December 26, 2021) was taken from the Italian Concordia Station (Lat -75°.06’) and you can see that the Sun never sets. The photo on the right (December 20, 2016), instead, was taken in Italy from Tuscany (Lat.+42°.46’) and also shows the twilights and the night star trail around the North Celestial Pole. At Italian latitude the Sun always sets simply because we are far from the Polar Circle.

Both shots were merged using Photoshop’s Photomerge function and, once the panoramas were completed,  the Photoshop filter Distort/Polar Coordinates was used for the spherical projection.

Data for the shoot made in Italy: Image resulting from the sum of 1,181 shots. You can see the Sun along its daily path, the two twilights and the rotation of the stars around the North Celestial Pole.

The star trail is the sum of three different star trails for a total of 7h20 minutes merged together with Photoshop.

Equipment used: Canon EOS 5DMK3, EF14/2.8 for the daytime part and Tamron 15-30 f/2.8 for the star trails and the twilight panoramas.

Authors:

©PNRA/IPEV, Alessandro Liberatore Ph.D Candidate National Institute for Astrophysics (left image)

Dr. Marco Meniero (right image)