Twinkle, twinkle, giant star: Siruis, the brightest star in the sky captured in psychedelic timelapse
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If you've ever wondered just how much a star twinkles, this image answers the question.
Taken from Pakistan by an amateur astronomer it reveals the effects of our atmosphere as its light gets refracted - causing its colour to change.
The image show Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky.
Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky (as seen from Earth), photographed as a timelapse from Pakistan
THE DOG STAR
Sirius, also known as the Dog Star or Sirius A, is the brightest star in Earth's night sky.
It means 'glowing' in Greek and is outshone only by several planets as well as the International Space Station.
Because Sirius is so bright, it was well-known to the ancients.
What came as a surprise to astronomers was the discovery of a companion star, Sirius B, in 1862.
The companion is so much dimmer than Sirius — 10,000 times, in fact — that it wasn't until 2005 that astronomers were able to estimate its mass.
It is highly visible in the Northern Hemisphere winter night sky because it has a high relative luminosity to other stars, and it's relatively close to Earth (8.6 light-years).
If the star were placed next to Earth's sun, Sirius would outshine it more than 20 times over.
Astronomer Roshaan Bukhari from Pakistan said he took the image to try and capture just how colours stars can appear.
'The twinkling of Sirius had always fascinated me and since I had a telescope, looking at the brilliant star through an eyepiece was even more remarkable,' he told MailOnline.
'The twinkling suddenly appeared to be more intense and I could faintly detect some slight but very rapid changes in colours of the blue/white star.
Bukhari used a 70mm telescope to capture the image, holding the camera with one hand and the eyepiece of the telescope in the other hand.
'I placed the camera near the telescope eyepiece and I could see Sirius in my camera viewfinder. It was of course out of focus for the camera's lens.
Sirius as we normally see it: Looking south over the Somerset sky, low and fast moving clouds reflect light pollution from street lighting, as the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius (the Dog Star) rises low above St. Michael's Tower on Glastonbury Tor
'I manually set Sirius in focus for the camera and held the eyepiece with the other hand and started to move the eyepiece in a circular manner,' he explained.
'The camera recorded whatever fell on it's sensors for 2 seconds. and when the shot was done, I checked to see what it had captured and this is the image it produced.'
He said he considered the image to be art.
'This image is the first experience I had with how our atmosphere plays around with star light in fascinating ways.
'Ask yourself how different is this from an abstract art painting and you would not find it to be very different at all.'
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