File:VLT Laser Guide Star.jpg
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Summary
[edit]DescriptionVLT Laser Guide Star.jpg |
English: A glowing laser shines forth from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. Piercing the dark Chilean skies, its mission is to help astronomers explore the far reaches of the cosmos. ESO Photo Ambassador Gerhard Hüdepohl was on hand to capture the moment in a stunning portrait of modern science in action.
We have all gazed up at the night sky and seen the stars gently twinkle as the Earth’s turbulent atmosphere causes their light to shimmer. This is undoubtedly a beautiful sight, but it causes problems for astronomers, who want the crispest possible views. To help them achieve this, professional stargazers use something that sounds as though it has come from science fiction: a laser guide star that creates an artificial star 90 km above the surface of the Earth. The method by which it achieves this is nothing short of remarkable. The laser energises sodium atoms high in the Earth’s mesosphere, causing them to glow and creating a bright dot that to observers on the ground appears to be a man-made star. Observations of how this “star” twinkles are fed into the Very Large Telescope’s adaptive optics system, controlling a deformable mirror in the telescope to restore the image of the star to a sharp point. By doing this, the system also compensates for the distorting effect of the atmosphere in the region around the artificial star. The end result is an exceptionally crisp view of the sky, allowing ESO astronomers to make stunning observations of the Universe, almost as though the VLT were above the atmosphere in space. |
Date | (released) |
Source | http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1144a/ |
Author | ESO/G. Hüdepohl (www.atacamaphoto.com) |
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 | 12:33, 2 November 2011 | 4,082 × 2,835 (4.41 MB) | Jmencisom (talk | contribs) |
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Online copyright statement | |
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Credit/Provider | ESO/G. Hüdepohl (www.atacamaphoto.com) |
Source | European Southern Observatory |
Usage terms |
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Date and time of data generation | 10:00, 31 October 2011 |
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Contact information | gh@atacamaphoto.com
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2 Garching bei München, , D-85748 Germany |