Message from Sirius

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This picture was taken by professor Jimmy Westlake of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The bright star is Sirius trailing the sky for about 2 hours. He writes:

"Something amazing happened last night, January 18, 2009. As I was shooting a star trail picture of the sky's brightest star, Sirius, it flashed out a message on the film!

How's your International Morse code? Everyone in the world, regardless of their nationality or language, should understand this message. Okay, I won't make you look it up. I'll tell you what Sirius was trying to tell us at the end of the text :)

This is actually a series of 28 separate exposures on one piece of film. The 'dots' are 30-second exposures; the 'dashes' are 3-minute exposures. Gaps between symbols are 1-minute long; gaps separating complete letters and numbers are 5-minutes long. The total duration of the exposure was just under two hours: 117.5 minutes long. The 'shutter' creating the gaps was my shivering, gloved hand held over the lens in the 0ºF Colorado air. Every few minutes, I had to turn on a blow dryer to keep the frost from forming on the lens (and me!). I tried one the night before, but it didn't turn out well, so I tried it again last night with success. The photo was made with film rather than my digital camera because of the long exposure required. I used a Nikon FE-2 camera with a Nikkor 35 mm fl wide angle lens at f5.6 on Kodak Max 400 film. The exposure began at 10:00 PM MST and ended at 11:57:30 PM MST on 01/18/2009 in Stagecoach, Colorado. Give up? Apparently, the Universe is announcing the arrival of the International Year of Astronomy 2009! The message reads:

.. -.-- .- ..--- ----- ----- -- "

Credit:

Jimmy Westlake (www.jwestlake.com)