The VLT's laser beam creates a "false star" for adaptive optics calibration. (ESO/Y. Beletsky)
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Located high in the mountains of Chile’s Atacama Desert, the enormous telescopes of the European Southern Observatory have been providing astronomers with unprecedented views of the night sky for 50 years. ESO’s suite of telescopes take advantage of the cold, clear air over the Atacama, which is one of the driest places on Earth. But as clear as it is, there is still some turbulence and variations to contend with — especially when peering billions of light-years out into the Universe.
So how do they do it?
Thanks to adaptive optics and advanced laser calibration, ESO can negate the effects of atmospheric turbulence, bringing the distant Universe into focus. It’s an impressive orchestration of innovation and engineering and the ESO team has put together a video to show us how it’s done.
We all love the images (and the science) so here’s a look behind the scenes!
Launch of the Soyuz TMA-04M rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on May 15, 2012 (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
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After a six-week delay, the crew of Expedition 31 successfully launched aboard a Soyuz TMA-04M rocket on Tuesday, May 15 at 0301 GMT (11:01 p.m. EDT May 14) from Russia’s historic Baikonur Cosmodrome, located in the steppes of Kazakhstan.
The rocket will deliver NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin to the International Space Station. After a two-day journey, their Soyuz capsule will dock with the ISS at 11:38 p.m. CDT on Wednesday.
The launch was aired live by NASA HD TV. The full launch can be viewed below:
The crew was originally slated to launch on March 30, but problems with a pressure test forced a delay until a new Soyuz rocket could be brought into service. In the meantime ISS crew members Don Pettit, ESA astronaut Andre Kuipers and cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko have had the station to themselves since April 27.
The three new crew members will remain on Space Station until mid-September, serving as flight engineers under Expedition 31 commander Oleg Kononenko until July 1, when the current crew will depart and Padalka will assume command, marking the beginning of Expedition 32.
For more news on Expedition 31, visit NASA’s ISS website here. Also, you can follow NASA astronaut Joe Acaba on Twitter @AstroAcaba.
Members of the media photograph the Soyuz TMA-04M rocket launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Conan says "I'm a big fan of science and technology." (Air quotes his.)
I wanted to know, so I decided to ask him. And thanks to “Team Coco” and Google Plus, I was able to — last night at 9:30 p.m. Central/7:30 p.m. Pacific, to be exact.
On Monday afternoon, Team Coco — that is, the Google Plus page for comedian and late-night TV host Conan O’Brien — posted a video contest where five lucky “Plussers” would be able to participate in Conan’s first-ever live Google Hangout. All you needed to do was record and post a video question on your Google Plus page, and tag #AskConan on the post.
I figured I’d give it a shot, and recorded a quick webcam video wherein I asked Mr. O’Brian what his feelings were on the future of space exploration. Because, honestly, that’s what we all want to know.
The next morning I had a response from Team Coco… they liked the video and wanted me on the Hangout. So I got to participate, and ask Conan himself — er, myself — um… I got to ask Conan himself, myself!
There were five of us all together on the Hangout, along with Aaron, the moderator, and of course the comedic maestro, Conan O’Brien. After some time prepping to make sure everyone’s lighting and sound were ok and the internet connections were reliable, and basically chatting among ourselves and getting to know each other, we finally went live on Google. The result is above, for better or worse… hey, it was live! Enjoy.
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As far as the answer to the question goes, you can find that around the 16-minute mark. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but let’s just say that a late-night TV host has certain…priorities…to keep in mind, and above all, Conan is ultimately a businessman.
A funny, funny businessman with an endless supply of gag props.
So check out the video, follow Team Coco on Google Plus and, if you’re a fan of Hangouts be sure to catch Universe Today’s own Space Hangout every Thursday (which I am also a participant in) on our fearless editor Fraser Cain’s feed here.
And next time you see a video contest in your Plus feed, enter it! You never know who you’ll end up hanging out with.
Talk about the shot of a lifetime! A Canadian airline passenger waiting on the tarmac at JFK this morning got an incredible view of the shuttle Enterprise landing! Just…wow.
Painstakingly assembled from over 150,000 digital photos taken over the course of eight months, this stunning time-lapse video of aurora-filled Arctic skies is the latest creation by photo/video artist Ole C. Salomonsen. Take a moment, turn up the sound, sit back and enjoy the show!
This is Ole’s second video project. The footage was shot on location in parts of Norway, Finland and Sweden from September 2011 to April 2012, and shows the glorious effects that the Sun’s increasing activity has had on our planet’s upper atmosphere.
The video is a merge of two parts; the first part contains some more wild and aggressive auroras, as well as a few Milky Way sequences, hence either auroras are moving fast because they are or they are fast due to motion of the Milky Way / stars. Still, some of the straight-up shots are very close to real-time speed — although auroras mostly are slower, she can also be FAST!
The second part has some more slow and majestic auroras, where I have focused more on composition and foreground. The music should give you a clear indication of where you are.
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The music was provided by Norwegian composer Kai-Anders Ryan.
Ole’s “hectic” aurora season is coming to a close now that the Sun is rising above the horizon in the Arctic Circle, and he figured that it was a good time to release the video. It will also be available on 4K Digital Cinema on request.
“Hope you like the video, and that you by watching it are able to understand my fascination and awe for this beautiful celestial phenomenon,” says Ole.
Is this amazing footage of a fireball over San Antonio on April 2?
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On April 2, 2012, at around 11:50 am CDT, dozens of people in and around San Antonio, Texas witnessed a bright object streaking across the daytime sky. Most likely a fireball — a particularly large, bright meteor — the object was visible across a very large area. It even made the local WOAI4 NBC news, which sent reporters out to interview eye-witnesses, contacted a NASA meteor expert, and ultimately featured a video of the amazingly bright fireball as it blazed through the sky. Very dramatic.
Except… the video isn’t of a fireball at all.
For the record, there was a meteor spotted over San Antonio on April 2… it was reported on the Lunar Meteorite Hunters site as well as in local papers. The eyewitnesses in the WOAI video were indeed describing what they saw, as well as they could. But the “footage” that was revealed later in the video wasn’t of a meteor; rather, it was something much more terrestrial.
It appears to be an airplane contrail, illuminated by sunlight.
Unfortunately this didn’t stop the segment from airing on TV, or from being picked up by syndicated news over a week later to appear on several online news sites.
At first glance the video does appear to show something fiery descending from the sky, leaving a long, bright trail in its wake. But that’s exactly how contrails can look when lit up by low-angle sunlight. It’s not necessarily a common sight to most people, but it’s common enough that those who have seen it would recognize that the video was, for lack of a better term, inaccurate. And inaccuracies can all-too-easily spread into a fire of misinformation — especially when concerning “things from the sky”.
Sunlit contrail in Germany masquerading as a fiery meteor (Mick West)
Experienced pilot Mick West describes the phenomenon on his blog ContrailScience.com:
“This is a remarkably common news story: It’s just after sunset, someone looks towards the west and they see the short contrail of a jet plane illuminated by the sun. It looks red, like fire. They zoom in with their video camera. They don’t know what it is, thinking it’s a fireball, a meteor, or some kind of UFO, so they alert the local media. The local media published it, and occasionally the story grows.”
Even though the April 2 fireball wasn’t seen at sunset or sunrise, the video footage wasn’t from the actual event. This means not only is it not of a meteor it’s not even from the right time of day. One has to wonder where in fact it was actually shot from, and by whom.
I don’t know if the contrail footage was sent in to the news channel intentionally, or if it was just an error due to lack of research. Regardless, it’s a good example of why facts and sources need to be checked!
Luckily there are those who know a contrail from a meteor, and thanks to the miracle of modern social networking such information discrepancies can be rectified in short order.
To honor the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s amazing 1,000 days in science-filled orbit, the LRO team at Goddard Space Flight Center has created a wonderful video tour of the lunar surface like you’ve never seen it before!
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“Tour of the Moon” takes viewers to several breathtaking locations on the Moon, including Orientale Basin, Shackleton crater, Tycho crater, Aristarchus Plateau, Mare Serenitatis, Compton-Belkovich volcano, Tsiolkovsky crater and more. The fully narrated video is above, and clips from each of the stops on the tour are available in many other formats here.
In addition, another video highlighting the dramatic evolution of the Moon was released today… you can view the full narrated version in 2D and stereoscopic 3D here.
iPad owners can also download the NASA Viz app to see this and other NASA stories, updated twice a week.
In a 2008 interview by TIME magazine, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked what he thought the “most astounding fact” about the Universe was. Never at a loss for words, the famed scientist gave his equally astounding answer. His response is in the video above, set to images and music by Max Schlickenmeyer.
It’s the best three minutes and thirty-three seconds you’ll spend all day.
A waning gibbous moon. Rises after sunset, high in the sky after midnight, visible to the southwest after sunrise. (NASA/GSFC)
As the Moon orbits Earth, it rotates at such a rate as to keep the same face aiming our way… but not exactly the same face, as shown in this excellent video from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (lovingly annotated by the Bad Astronomer himself, Dr. Phil Plait.)
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The Moon has a slight wobble to its axial rotation, and over the course of a month its orientation shifts slightly — an effect called libration. Think of it like a top or gyroscope spinning on a table; it doesn’t spin perfectly vertically, but rather sways a bit while it spins. Libration is that sway.
In addition to that movement, the Moon also moves closer to and further from the Earth over the course of a year due to its elliptical orbit. This makes it appear to change size slightly.
Except for the Moon’s phases, such effects aren’t immediately obvious from one night to the next. But when assembled into a high-resolution video using images and laser altimetry data maps from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the monthly motions of the Moon become incredibly clear!
This video shows all the views of the Moon for the entire year of 2012.
Thanks to Phil Plait of Discover Magazine’s Bad Astronomy blog for adding the music and descriptions to the GSFC’s amazing video. What a marvelous night for a Moon dance!
See the current Moon phase and the original video on the Goddard Space Flight Center’s “Dial-A-Moon” page here.
Video: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Visualization Studio. Notations by Phil Plait. Music by Kevin MacLeod/incomptech.com.
Is this the best video footage ever of photos taken from the International Space Station? ISS astronaut and Expedition 29 commander Mike Fossum seems to think so.
If anyone would know what a good ISS video is, he would! So watch, and decide for yourself.
Video uploaded by YouTube user bitmeizer. Made from sequences of still photographs taken by Expedition 29 crew members, the time-lapse videos have been digitally smoothed out and a soundtrack added, along with some transition effects.
