File:Taming the sky (potw2212a).jpg
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Summary
[edit]DescriptionTaming the sky (potw2212a).jpg |
English: Powerful laser beams leave Unit Telescope 4 at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), located in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Their destination? An upper layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, about 90 kilometres from the ground, rich in sodium atoms.The colour of the lasers is tuned to excite these atoms, making them shine brightly, like stars. Astronomers then use these artificial stars to calculate the blurring effect that Earth’s turbulent atmosphere creates on the light from astronomical objects. A deformable mirror uses this information to correct this blur in real time with a technique known as adaptive optics, which leads to much sharper observations.This telescope, also known as Yepun, is the only one at the VLT equipped with a Laser Guide Star Facility. Each beam is 30 centimetres wide and packs 22 watts of power. For safety reasons, the system is equipped with cameras monitoring the part of the sky occupied by the lasers, so that when an airplane flying by is detected approaching this area, the lasers are promptly switched off. |
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Date | Taken in 2022 | ||
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Author | ESO/A. Ghizzi Panizza (www.albertoghizzipanizza.com) | ||
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Licensing
[edit]This media was created by the European Southern Observatory (ESO).
Their website states: "Unless specifically noted, the images, videos, and music distributed on the public ESO website, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, pictures of the week, blog posts and captions, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible." To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available. | |
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
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current | 13:48, 20 August 2023 | 6,048 × 4,024 (6.88 MB) | OptimusPrimeBot (talk | contribs) | #Spacemedia - Upload of https://cdn.eso.org/images/large/potw2212a.jpg via Commons:Spacemedia |
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Metadata
This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.
Author | Alberto Ghizzi Panizza |
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Copyright holder |
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Credit/Provider | ESO/A. Ghizzi Panizza (www.albertoghizzipanizza.com) |
Source | European Southern Observatory |
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Date and time of data generation | 06:00, 21 March 2022 |
Software used | NIKON Z 6 Ver.01.01 |
File change date and time | 03:00, 15 January 2021 |
Serial number of camera | 6004150 |
Lens used | NIKKOR Z 35mm f/1.8 S |
Date and time of digitizing | 23:01, 28 April 2019 |
Rating (out of 5) | 0 |
Date metadata was last modified | 04:00, 15 January 2021 |
Unique ID of original document | B35201C95AB4A4530DA6EC32C56663AA |
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Contact information |
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2 Garching bei München, None, D-85748 Germany |
IIM version | 4 |