El Tiede: The Mountain. A timelapse of shots taken from the El Tiede mountain, known for being an excellent site for astrological observations. Includes a timelapse of the Milky Way, as seen through a sandstorm coming off from the Sahara Desert. (SLYT)
posted by flibbertigibbet
on Apr 16, 2011 -
15 comments
This may just be the most peaceful, beautiful 5-1/2 minutes of your entire day: An audio slideshow look at some of the winning images, guided by one of the judges, of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich's 2010 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. Interested in "giving it a go"? Here are some
guides to photographing different aspects of the night sky.
posted by spock
on Sep 11, 2010 -
24 comments
"
The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage," said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Yet "more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the U.S. population and
one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the
Milky Way." In these areas, people are effectively living in
perennial moonlight. They rarely realize it because they still experience the sky to be brighter under a full moon than under new moon conditions. "
Reducing the number of lights on at night could help conserve energy, protect wildlife and benefit human health," astronomer Malcolm Smith of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. One study found an increased risk of breast cancer for women living in areas with the most light pollution (
abstract). Some communities are
embracing their dark skies, such as
the New Zealand community of Tekapo, possibly home to first "
Starlight Reserve," waiting on UNESCO's official approval. Not sure where to look
in the vast night sky?
Follow some guidelines, or
check the view in Chile,
Queensland, Australia, or
Texas.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 13, 2009 -
74 comments
Five years and 800,000 images went into producing a 4 gigapixel
mosaic image of the galactic plane, which when printed out is 180 feet long. But it has been made browser-sized by
GLIMPSE, the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire, the research group which, along with
MIPSGAL, created the image:
A Glimpse of the Milky Way.
posted by Kronos_to_Earth
on Jun 5, 2008 -
14 comments
It's like Google Maps...for space. Wikisky is a draggable, zoomable, web-based star map. And if you click on a star or other object, it brings up a page with all the information you could want on it, including recent articles and astrophotos that contain that object. And it does lots more. Go explore.
posted by Jimbob
on Mar 22, 2007 -
25 comments
Chasing Venus Transits of Venus occur every 130 years or so when Venus can be observed passing across the face of the sun.
Chasing Venus is an online exhibition by Smithsonian Institution Libraries that tells the story of how the transit has been observed since the 17th century, with
early observations in England, illustrated accounts of
expeditions by 18th century astronomers to various parts of the world, and
early uses of photography to record observations in the 19th century. Includes links to
animations of transits reconstructed from Victorian photographs, and
details of a lecture series on Thursdays in April and May (first one April 8). The first transit since 1882 is this year.
posted by carter
on Apr 4, 2004 -
5 comments
The Best of Hubble Its mission will end in 2010. Four years later it will re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. Many astronomers are calling for Hubble to be
refurbished and its mission extended to 2020.
Here are some of it's best pictures.
posted by reverendX
on Dec 10, 2003 -
14 comments
Breathtaking Hubble picture of the Sombrero Galaxy (also identified as M104). The Hubble Heritage team took the original images during May and June of this year using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and multiple color filters. They then stitched 6 images together to make the final composite image.
posted by Irontom
on Oct 10, 2003 -
39 comments
A very well designed site on the
Analemma. Don't be scared off by the math, as there are excellent diagrams and quicktime movies on this difficult to visualize phenomena. Difficult, but not impossible, to photograph (probably less than 10 photos are in existence)
Ulrich Bienert came close, and has a gallery and some tips if you're so inclined.
posted by quercus
on Aug 6, 2002 -
12 comments
Reflections on a Mote of Dust "We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."
Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"
posted by crasspastor
on Sep 11, 2001 -
15 comments
The World at Night. This amazing
image (warning 500K) is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites over regions of the world at night. You can clearly see the Nile river, Hong Kong, Hawaii and probably, if you look close enough, the town you are in right now. From
Astronomy Picture of the Day
posted by lagado
on Nov 27, 2000 -
18 comments
This reminded me of one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. Once on vacation in Eastern Oregon, there was a total eclipse of the moon, just like this one. And some people nearby were taking photographs of it.
Flash photographs. The round-trip time to the moon at the speed of light is 3 seconds and I wouldn't even want to calculate the attenuation caused by 320,000 miles of range.
Sometimes it seems as if some people are completely and totally clueless about what they're doing.
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Jul 25, 2000 -
12 comments
