David Campbellthe observatory’s Principal Technical officerfinally got around to removing the camera this fall.
Inside, he discovered thelongest-exposure imageever captured, showing eight years' worth of solar paths across the sky.
As a Fine Art student, Valkenborgh was interested in using old technologies to capture images.
“Days in the Sun” by Regina Valkenborgh (Photo: Regina Valkenborgh /University of Hertfordshire)
She experimented with pinhole cameras, using the technique known ascamera obscura.
Her beer-can camera is an extreme example of this technique.
The image of the outside world is inverted and projected into the darkened space.
The highest arc is the Summer Solstice; the lowest, the Winter Solstice.
Some days likely left little impression upon the paper due to cloudy weather.
Passing people or trees are not visible, only the sun’s bright light.
It is possible that the paper recorded a full 2,953 trails of the sun, according the the University’sstatement.
Valkenborgh’s camera was never meant to have an eight-year exposure.
Luckily, the moveable observatory carrying it returned to the exact same orientation every day.
In doing so, the camera made history itself for its unlikely (and unplanned) survival.
This is the view today from where the camera was mounted.
