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No.102 · Backgrounds

Star Trails

A long-exposure night sky: hundreds of stars smear into concentric arcs around a celestial pole, and the pole follows your pointer.

The prompt

Written for the variant you picked above: Blue

Simulate a long photographic exposure. Scatter ~420 stars in polar coordinates (radius with a power-law bias, random angle, size, and a hue within ±35° of the palette). Every frame rotate the whole sky a fraction of a degree about a pole and stroke a short chord from each star's previous to new position, without clearing the canvas — only laying a 1.2% opacity night-colour veil so the oldest trails slowly fade. Pre-render ~160 steps at mount (700 for reduced motion) so arcs are already long on first paint. The pole eases toward the pointer within a small range. Cap DPR at 2 and pause offscreen. Selected variant — Blue: hue={215}: star colours spread ±35° around blue.

Notes

Interaction
Move the pointer and the celestial pole slides after it, bending the arcs.
Motion
Cumulative canvas drawing with a faint fade veil; no clearing between frames.
Accessibility
Decorative canvas; motion is extremely slow with no flashing; reduced motion shows only a pre-rendered still.
Responsive
Re-exposes on resize.

Featured

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301 components