Gallery of the Gemini North Telescope

I know we normally like to see pictures taken by telescopes, but here’s cool set of pictures of telescopes. Okay, it’s actually several pictures of one telescope, the Gemini North telescope, located atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano. The timelapse photographs were all taken during a single night of telescope operations.

All the images were taken from within the telescope dome using a circular format fisheye lens and 50 second exposures to try and approximate what you’d see if you were standing inside the dome. The photo I’m highlighting here was taken during early morning twilight, but there are great pictures of night, with the moon, and the Milky Way. You can also see some photographs of the laser guide star that helps calibrate its adaptive optics system.