Starship Asterisk*

It also creates a ghostly, semi-transparent figure of the photographer who was captured standing on the beach in only one of the exposures.

APOD Robot wrote: Star Trails and the Captain s Ghost

In the dreamlike scene, star trails arc over an old ship run aground on a beach near Gytheio [Guthrie?], Peloponnesus in southern Greece.

Could that be the captain's ghost haunting the beach, gazing forlornly at the decaying wreck, hovering over starlight reflected in still water?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Demetrius wrote:
<<Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki (Greek: Άγιος Δημήτριος της Θεσσαλονίκης) was a Christian martyr, who lived in the early 4th century. After the growth of his veneration as saint, the city of Thessaloniki suffered repeated attacks and sieges from the Slavic peoples who moved into the Balkans, and Demetrius was credited with many miraculous interventions to defend the city. Hence later traditions about Demetrius regard him as a soldier in the Roman army, and he came to be regarded as an important military martyr. Unsurprisingly, he was extremely popular in the Middle Ages, and along with Saint George, was the patron of the Crusades. A Sinai icon, of the Crusader period and painted by a French artist working in the Holy Land in the second half of the 12th century, shows what then became the most common depiction. Demetrius, bearded and on a dark horse, rides together with St George, unbearded and on a white horse. Both are dressed as cavalrymen. Also, while St. George is often shown spearing a dragon, St. Demetrius is depicted spearing the gladiator Lyaeos, who according to story was responsible for killing many Christians. In traditional hagiography, Demetrius did not directly kill Lyaeos, but rather through his prayers the gladiator was defeated by Demtrius' disciple, Nestor.

In Russian, he is called Димитрий Солунский ('Dimitri of Saloniki') and was a patron saint of the ruling Rurikid family from the late 11th century on. Izyaslav I of Kiev (whose Christian name was Dimitry) founded the first East Slavic monastery dedicated to this saint. The name Dimitry is in common use. The Serbian Orthodox Church reveres St. Demetrius as Mitar, having a feast of Mitrovdan on 8 November, which is a public holiday in the Republika Srpska part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is known in Lebanon as Mar Dimitri or Mitri for short, which is a common name among Christian Lebanese.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Bulgarian people revere St. Demetrius on 26 October as Димитровден (Dimitrovden).>>

ScrappyLaptop wrote:That's a lot of exposure & stacking, though...I'm assuming the camera tops out at 90 sec?

biddie67 wrote:Beautiful photo - I love the hulking old ship looming up against the sky. The water is so still - amazing!

90 consecutive images is quite a challenge to coordinate back into one final picture. The photographer must have walked into the picture and stood still for several minutes (when some lighting was on) then walked back out again. He could then edit out the bottom parts of frames with any resulting blurs created when he was actually moving around.

ScrappyLaptop wrote:BTW, nice possible meteor trail caught at about 550w x 100h pels (0,0=top left)

judy wrote:the universe is way, way, way bigger than the earth. bigger than star trails in the night sky over a picturesque boat. this has been a tough year for apod. i want to see and be astounded by the big, big universe. i want to be enlightened and excited by the universe. no more rust buckets! please!!

Madhu wrote:Love the use of stacking technique. Great idea. :D

2386 wrote:Why is the North Pole so close to the horizon in this photo?
Isn't Greece a little further than the Equator?