Tracing Star Twinkling
Scintillation and telescope jitter are recast into a beautiful image. A telephoto lens was wiggled slightly to capture a 5-s exposure of the star Sirius on 4 January 2012. As the star‘s twinkling image skated around the focal plane, it traced graceful, colorful arcs. Twinkling is the rapid fluctuation in brightness and color of a star due to changes in the density of air pockets.
—David K. Lynch, Thule Scientific