I had the idea for this photograph almost a year ago, but at the time it was too cloudy. I finally got back to my Uncle’s ranch in the Sierra foothills of California for an all too brief visit a couple of weeks ago, and the sky was clear! Most of the Big Dipper was below the horizon, so it took me a while to locate the North Star–especially since I was searching the wrong part of the sky to begin with Seeing my initial results, I thought I had some nice shots, but not what I was going for. Next time I would need to spend a lot more time taking many more exposures to get the star trails I wanted. Then yesterday I discovered this little free program called StarStax. It proved to be the answer to my original vision. Most people go for continuous star trails, but I think the broken trails here work nicely with the blades of the windmill.

Notice the UFO (actually, an airplane) that tracked from the lower left up through the middle of the windmill. Also the one coming up from the same area and turning upward. That one is probably a plane as well, but I didn’t notice it while I was shooting…..Hmmm.