Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Using 19th Century Technology to Time Travel to the Stars

This spiral galaxy image was taken on glass photographic plate is one in a series of photos taken over decades. From the Harvard Plate collection. Image courtesy American Museum of Natural History.

In the late 19th century, astronomers developed the technique of capturing telescopic images of stars and galaxies on glass photographic plates. This allowed them to study the night sky in detail. Over 500,000 glass plate images taken from 1885 to 1992 are part of the Plate Stacks Collection of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), and is is the largest of its kind in the world.

“The images captured on these plates remain incredibly valuable to science, representing a century of data on stars and galaxies that can never be replaced,” writes astronomer Michael Shara, who is Curator in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who discussed the plates and their significance in a new episode of AMNH’s video series, “Shelf Life.”

These plates provide a chance to travel back in time, to see how stars and galaxies appeared over the past 130 years, allowing astronomers to do what’s called “time domain astronomy”: studying the changes and variability of objects over time. These include stars, galaxies, and jets from stars or galactic nuclei.

But viewing these plates is difficult. The glass plates can still be viewed on a rather archaic plate viewer—a device that’s like an X-ray light box in a doctor’s office. But those aren’t readily available, and Harvard is hesitant about shipping the 100-plus-year-old glass plates around the world. If astronomers travel to Cambridge to dig through the archives, they can spend hours poring over logbooks or just looking for the right plate. Plus, there’s not an easy way to compare these plates to today’s digital imagery.

AMNH is helping CfA to digitize the glass plates, which is discussed in the video. There’s also a citizen science project called DASCH to help digitize the telescope logbooks record that hold vital information associated with a 100-year-long effort to record images of the sky. By transcribing logbook text to put those historical observations in context, volunteers can help to unlock hidden discoveries.

Find out more about DASCH here, and you can read the news release from last year about it here.

Find out more about AMNH’s digitization project here, where you can also see more episodes of “Shelf Life.”

Past episodes usually focus on the “squishy/hold-in-your-hand side of natural history collections,” said Kendra Snyder from AMNH’s communications department, adding that this latest episode about astronomy offers a different take on what people think is in museum collections.

Posted on by Jason Major

This Is The Asteroid That Didn’t Hit Us


All right, sure – there are a lot of asteroids that don’t hit us. And of course quite a few that do… Earth is impacted by around 100 tons of space debris every day (although that oft-stated estimate is still being researched.) But on March 10, 2015, a 12–28 meter asteroid dubbed 2015 ET cosmically “just missed us,” zipping past Earth at 0.3 lunar distances – 115,200 kilometers, or 71, 580 miles.*

The video above shows the passage of 2015 ET across the sky on the night of March 11–12, tracked on camera from the Crni Vrh Observatory in Slovenia. It’s a time-lapse video (the time is noted along the bottom) so the effect is really neat to watch the asteroid “racing along” in front of the stars… but then, it was traveling a relative 12.4 km/second!

UPDATE 3/14: As it turns out the object in the video above is not 2015 ET; it is a still-undesignated NEO. (My original source had noted this incorrectly as well.) Regardless, it was an almost equally close pass not 24 hours after 2015 ET’s! Double tap. (ht to Gerald in the comments.) UPDATE #2: The designation for the object above is now 2015 EO6.

Continue reading “This Is The Asteroid That Didn’t Hit Us”

Posted on by Jason Major

Watch the Aurora Shimmer and Dance in Real Time

I for one have never witnessed the northern lights in person, and like many people I experience them vicariously through the photography and videos of more well-traveled (or more polar-bound) individuals. Typically these are either single-shot photos or time-lapses made up of many somewhat long-exposure images. As beautiful as these are, they don’t accurately capture the true motion of this upper atmospheric phenomenon. But here we get a look at the aurora as it looks in real time, captured on camera by Jon Kerr from northern Finland. Check it out above or watch in full screen HD on YouTube.

The video was shot with a full-frame mirrorless Sony a7S. See more of Jon’s aurora videos on YouTube here.

Video credit: Jon Kerr. HT SunViewer on Twitter.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

5 Stunning Timelapse Videos Show the World at Night in Motion

A view of Mt. Kilimanjaro at night. Credit and copyright: Babak Tafreshi.

Award-winning photographer Babak Tafreshi from The World At Night (TWAN) has been traveling the world to captures nightscapes in various locations. He has shared five beautiful timelapse videos of night sky landscapes “from locations that never been filmed like this before,” he said.

The first video, “Lake of Fire at Night” shows the gorgeous view of the Milky Way above Lagoa do Fogo, a volcanic crater lake in the Sao Miguel island of Portugal, Azores, on the Atlantic Ocean.

Kilimanjaro at Night

Here, travel to Mount Kilimanjaro and view it under the starry skies of Amboseli. You’ll see the Magellanic Clouds and fast-passing satelites, along with African wildlife.



Stars Above Himalayas

See the stars above the roof of the world. Mt Everest and other Himalayan peaks in the World Heritage Sagarmatha National Park of Nepal appear in this nightscape timelapse clip.


Santorini by Night

Santorini, Greece is lovely by day. And at night, the island is filled with lights, limiting the night sky view. But here you can see rare views of the starry sky above the island during a major blackout.


Magic Telescopes

The MAGIC telescopes, located near the mountain top of the Roque de los Muchachos on the Canary island of La Palma, are part of a highly sensitive gamma ray observatory, with giant 17 meter wide dishes. The multi-mirrored telescope pair observes gamma rays indirectly by detecting brief flashes of optical light, called Cherenkov light. See them here with the beautiful night sky above and clouds below.

See more of Tafreshi’s videos on Vimeo and more photos and information at his website.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

A Night-Sky Timelapse You Don’t Want to Miss

Still image from the timelapse, "Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen." Credit and copyright: Brad Goldpaint Photography.

It’s an old story: a couple leave their jobs, sell everything, and live in motorhome to capture footage and imagery of the night sky.

Wait… what?

This unique story is exactly what Brad and Marci Goldpaint did. They left their jobs and traveled throughout the western US in an RV to begin educating the public about the damaging effects of light pollution. They wanted to help reconnect people with the simple beauty of the night sky and have been teaching photography workshops and gathering footage for a new timelapse called “Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen.”

With breathtaking scenes and soaring music, this video “introduces you to the concept of movement and time that visually explores our night skies,” says Brad on Vimeo.

We’ve featured images and timelapses from Brad before, and he shared how the sudden loss of his mother caused him to reassess his goals and priorities. Since 2009 he’s been working on outdoor photography and has now dedicated his work to sharing images of the night sky with others.

For this timelapse, Brad said he “spent countless nights traversing in the dark, carrying heavy camera equipment, and braving the dark unseen.” He dealt with lightning storms, dangerous winds, and up-close encounters with bears and other wildlife. Sometimes, after spending days hiking to a remote location and with optimistic weather reports, Mother Nature showed up and ruined his opportunity to get the shot.

A few highlights: at about 2:00 there is an exploding meteor with a persistent train that is stunning. You’ll also see strange lights on Mount Rainier. Brad explained these lights are from people climbing the mountian at night in hopes of reaching the summit by sunrise the following day. The white lights you see are from their headlamps. “Can you imagine climbing up a mountain in the middle of the night?” he asks?

Another still from "Illusions of Light." Credit and copyright: Brad Goldpaint Photography.
Another still from “Illusions of Light.” Credit and copyright: Brad Goldpaint Photography.

For more about this film see their website.

Illusion of Lights: A Journey into the Unseen from Goldpaint Photography on Vimeo.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

What it Would Look Like if the Sun was Replaced with Other Stars?

How our horizon might look if Earth orbited the star Artcurus. Credit: TV Roskosmos.

How would our horizon look if Earth orbited around another star, such as Alfa-Centauri, Sirius, or Polaris? Roscosmos TV has released two new videos that replace our familiar Sun and Moon with other stars and planets. While these are completely fantastical — as Earth would have evolved very differently or not evolved at all in orbit around a giant or binary star — the videos are very well done and they give a new appreciation for the accustomed and comforting views we have. The Sun video is above; the Moon below:

Check out Roscosmos TV You Tube page — they have a great collection of videos, from launches to science to fantastical videos like the ones we featured here.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Leave Home: Hypnotic Milky Way Timelapse from New Zealand

Night sky view from New Zealand. Credit and copyright: Manoj Kesavan.

Photographer Manoj Kesavan has been working on this timelapse since mid-2013 and the results are stunning and spellbinding. ‘Leave Home’ was shot from many locations in Palmerston North, New Zealand in 2013 then continued in 2014 from Taupo and Auckland. Early in the timelapse you’ll see daytime views of the New Zealand landscape but midway, the night views kick in. Hang on while watching some of the spinning Milky Way shots, and the wave scenes might leave you hypnotized! All in all, this is a gorgeous look at the land, sea and skies of New Zealand.

The images were shot with Canon 20D, Canon 7D & 60D with various Canon & Sigma Lenses and batch processed with Lightroom 5. Motion control was achieved by Dynamic Perception stage one dolly & Emotimo TB3 Black.

See more of Kesavan’s work on Flickr and Facebook.

L E A V E H O M E – A NEW ZEALAND TIMELAPSE PROJECT from Manoj Kesavan on Vimeo.

Posted on by David Gonzales

Bringing You There: Intense Sound of Delta IV Heavy Orion EFT-1 Launch

NASA’s first Orion spacecraft blasts off at 7:05 a.m. atop United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy Booster at Space Launch Complex 37 (SLC-37) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Dec. 5, 2014. Launch pad remote camera view. Credit: Ken Kremer - kenkremer.com

Have you ever wondered what 51 million horsepower sounds like from 3 miles away? This past Friday, a Delta IV Heavy launched Orion spacecraft on the EFT-1 Test flight. The rocket weighed 1.6 million pounds at liftoff, produced close to 2 million pounds of thrust and consumed propellants at a rate of about 3 tons per second. Videographers David Gonzales and Kyle Johnson shot this film using 2 video cameras and a dedicated stereo high quality recorder to capture the ascent and thunder for Universe Today.

As the Delta IV Heavy ascended, the hydrogen and oxygen fuel combined to form water vapor which condensed into a cloud that evolved and took shape after liftoff.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Lovely New Timelapse: Chasing Starlight in the Canadian Rockies

Star trails over Lake Minnewanka in Alberta, Canada. Credit and copyright: Jack-Fusco.

Ready for an adventure? One of our favorite photographers, Jack Fusco, created this stunning travel video for Travel Alberta and viewing it might be enough to make you start packing your bags.

“There’s a certain feeling that you get from standing under a truly dark sky for the first time,” Jack wrote. “Although it’s hard describe the exact feeling of awe that’s felt, it’s an experience that doesn’t leave you. In fact, it’s something that can change you. It can make you forget about sleeping when the sun has set and instead readies you for an adventure. This timelapse is about capturing the adventure of chasing star filled skies and the feeling you get from experiencing it. I hope it inspires people to find their own adventure chasing the stars.”

See some of his beautiful still images from his photo-shoot below:

Chasing Starlight was shot using a Nikon D800E & a Nikon D810 equipped with Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 lenses. See more of Jack’s wonderful work at his website, Instagram, or Jack Fusco Photography.

Aurora over Peyto Lake in Alberta, Canada. Credit and copyright: Jack Fusco.
Aurora over Peyto Lake in Alberta, Canada. Credit and copyright: Jack Fusco.
Posted on by Jason Major

This Short Film is a Stunning Preview of Human Space Exploration

One day – and it really is only matter of time – humans will set foot on the surfaces of other far-flung worlds in our Solar System, leaving the Earth and Moon far behind to wander the valleys of Mars, trek across the ice of Europa, and perhaps even soar through the skies of Titan like winged creatures from ancient legends. But until then we must rely on the exploration of our robotic emissaries and our own boundless imagination and curiosity to picture what such voyages would be like. Here in “Wanderers,” video artist Erik Wernquist has used both resources in abundance to visualize fascinating off-world adventures yet to be undertaken by generations to come.
Continue reading “This Short Film is a Stunning Preview of Human Space Exploration”