How did this work?

[DibblyDobbler]

A lady I am 'friends' with on FB posted this up.

Her text - 'Got bored watching films onboard my flight from Hongkong to Manchester last night so decided to do a spot of Astrophotography Canon 6D f3.5 13seconds'

- so handheld for 13s, out the window of a jet doing 650ish mph... but the stars are (reasonably) sharp?

Confused! by Mike Smith, on Flickr

[RobDickinson]

yep, high iso, braced against stuff its possible

[DibblyDobbler]

I think what is foxing me is that normally you’d try and get a dead still camera on a tripod to do this rather than one moving at 650mph!!

Physics I guess but still seems odd ...

[RobDickinson]

Well the plane wing and stars are a little motion blurred..

The wing is obviously static in the frame of reference.

The stars are billions of miles away and moving at 650mph amounts to basically fk all astronomically. Earth moves at about 67,000 mph around the sun ...

[Simpo Two]

You can do braced for 13s easily enough. But I'm surprised the aircraft was so stable.

[StevieBee]

650mph? Really?

I thought 550mph was about the norm these days?

[Simpo Two]

StevieBee said:

650mph? Really?

I thought 550mph was about the norm these days?

Could be ground speed with a strong tailwind.

[Colin RedGriff]

Even when you are stood on the ground - relative to the stars you are actually moving due to the rotation of the earth, If you are on the equator you are actually travelling at about 1000mph, in the UK we are moving at about 600mph

The earth itself is also moving through space

[singlecoil]

So as the plane was moving west it was counteracting the Earth's eastward spin.

[DibblyDobbler]

StevieBee said:

650mph? Really?

I thought 550mph was about the norm these days?

I made that bit up - just a guess

[DibblyDobbler]

Colin RedGriff said:

Even when you are stood on the ground - relative to the stars you are actually moving due to the rotation of the earth, If you are on the equator you are actually travelling at about 1000mph, in the UK we are moving at about 600mph

The earth itself is also moving through space

Yes - I think you are right Colin the motion of the plane has to be balanced against the motion of the earth itself... so no real mystery I supposed but just struck me as odd

[RobDickinson]

Earth rotating ( at 15 degrees an hour) is the fact behind the '500 rule' for shutter speeds.

But actual moving in in a straight line like the plane is really doesnt add up to anything (as said earth goes around the sun at 18,00mph..)

[Speed addicted]

I had the same idea while unable to sleep on a flight to Singapore recently.

This is a 4 sec exposure, using iso 12800.
I found I needed to cover the rest of the window with a blanket or I got weird reflections, and it was very hard to keep still. I experimented with longer exposures first but they didn't work as well.

[RD718]

Don't know but it looks incredible!