Star Trails Before the Clouds Rolled In

I was all set to capture some neat startrails from the campsite, but the clouds rolled in and eventually blocked out the stars. Here is an image of the stars starting to trail, with the clouds sweeping in from the west. Captured with a Canon 550D and Tokina wide angle lens. The moon was almost full, but in the eastern sky, causing the reflection off the cliff.

Sirius Color and Mars, Too

The star Sirius is the brightest star in the winter night sky, and is very easy to spot. It is down and to the east of Orion's belt. It "twinkles" and changes colors even to the naked eye. Here are a couple of pictures taken with about a 4 second exposure, and also moving the camera a bit to get some star trail. Since it does change color as it "twinkles" you can see the blues, yellows, and reds in the trail itself.  Contrast this to Mars, the last image in this post, which is definitely orangish...

Sirius is in the constellation Canis Major (The Greater Dog). The star trail below is fitting, I believe.

You can really see the difference in color, compared to Mars, shown here.