Star Trails

My wife and I went to North Spokane on Friday to see if we could see the Northern Lights and like many people we did not see them. I figured I would make the most of my time waiting so I experimented with the Bulb setting on my camera and a remote lock trigger. I started by photographing the Big Dipper for 5 minutes and this is the photo that resulted. (click for larger preview)

Then I opened the raw image in Lightroom and brightened it up, more stars showed up (I love shooting raw!)

Following that, I decided to use the North Star as my guide point and did two 30 minute shots with the shutter open pointed due north. Here is the first one.  The North Star is the brightest one in the center of the images.

And here is the second one, I love how the colors really show up in the different stars and planets!

I am amazed at how the earth rotates around the North Star and the precision of the planets and stars.  They were created beautifully!