Star trails over Cyprus

If you have never seen a patterned shot like this before one can be forgiven for asking "what am I seeing?" No, it is not a giant kaleidoscope nor big Ferris wheel but rather hundreds of bright stars in the black sky. As our planet revolves around its north south polar axis, then so looking from our planet, the stars move around the Stella NS axis too. As Cyprus is in the Northern Hemisphere, all the stars seem to revolve around our northern star: Polaris, which is aligned to our North Pole . Polaris is indeed in the centre of this circle. In practice, this shot is made up of 150 separate twenty second exposure photos of the stars, all on an unmoved tripod pointing to the star Polaris. The 150 photos are then layered on top of each other (stacked) resulting in actually seeing here the circular motion of our stars. The foreground is part of the very rocky and dried clay coastline.
Enjoy full screen on black.

Thanks to Steve Paxton for his invaluable help in me capturing and creating this.