Your universe as seen from your home planet
Amazing :
What makes this time lapse particularly amazing–because we’ve all seen plenty of time lapse videos of the night sky–is the four telescopes in the foreground. Watching these instruments work against a black background would be endlessly fascinating on its own. Unfortunately you won’t be able to pay them too much attention. Because damn, what a sky.
Watch it on full screen if you can.
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Awe.
Very cool. Here in the mountains of Colorado, on certain nights, we can see vague outlines of the galaxies so vividly shown in this vid. It never fails to stun a visitor from a major city just how bright an unpolluted moonless sky can be.
I admit, I am a geek. Watching the video again, just to track the telescope housing’s movement, I noticed a quirk I have seen here at altitude (on those unfortunately increasing days where I am awake well before sunrise). Watch the sequence that begins at 4:48. To me it appears that there are really high clouds, likely noctilucent. If so, the ‘brightening” of the sky at 5:10 is likely due to the sunlight refracting and illuminating those very high ice particles.
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This interests me for a number of reasons, but primarily for your consideration, note how once this refraction is negated by the earth’s rotation, the sky darkens just before dawn.
I wonder how they decide to assign themselves research tasks? Perhaps, aside from following research in each individual’s particular area of study, It would seem to me that as a group they might focus on a single aspect for best effect.
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Most detailed map of universe unveiled
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