It was a cold night, at about 8000 feet, in Old Station, right near Lassen Volcanic National Park. The stars were out in great form, crisp against the black sky. And I? I was rotating a screw a quarter turn every 8 seconds. This image was taken on 35mm film with a “barn door tracker” — a camera mount designed to rotate the camera in sync with the sky. The trees look a bit blurry because we were letting the earth rotate under it while keeping the sky crisp.

The Milky-way (our home galaxy) is visible vertically through the center of the frame, and Andromeda (our nearest neighbor galaxy) is fuzzily visible about 1/4 from the right hand side of the image.

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