Paranal is a 2600 meter-high mountain in Chile, and the location of the very large Very Large Telescope telescope*, an 8-meter monster that is one of the largest in the world. It creates amazing pictures of the heavens, as you might expect.
But you don’t always need a telescope to see jaw-dropping beauty. The folks at the European Southern Observatory just released some really nice shots taken outside the dome. Here’s one of the setting Sun:
The blue flash is the even more rare cousin of the unusual green flash. Basically, the light from the setting Sun is bent by the Earth’s air. But the Earth is curved, so the closer an object is to the horizon, the more air it must pass through. Also, different colors of light are bent differently by air; the shorter wavelengths (violet, blue, green) are bent more then longer (yellow, orange, red), and these effects add up to generate a transient but very pretty flash of color. The circumstances needed for a flash are particular, so they don’t happen terribly often.
The ESO released other images, including a green flash and spectacular shots of the gegenschein and zodiacal light: sunlight reflected back to us from dust particles in space. These are phenomenally difficult to see or photograph, so the pictures are particularly noteworthy and very, very pretty.
Someday I’d like to get to a site so dark I could see that for my own self. Wow.
Pictures like this are so cool: they remind us that there are things out there you’ve probably never even heard of, yet are incredibly beautiful and just waiting to be seen. All you have to do is want to know about them.
*No, that’s not a typo, it’s a lame joke about the lame name of that incredible ’scope.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:02 am
This photo was the reason why I asked you about the planes of the milky way and the solar system because I saw this image and I wondered if the two of them line up on the sky.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I was convinced that I once saw a “Green Flash” over the ocean in Australia. At the last moment of sunset, there was a brief (1/4s?) flash – a thin green line all along the visible horizon.
But this article, and the Wikipedia page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash] make me think again?
Anybody have an idea what I actually saw?
May 5th, 2008 at 10:21 am
[...] Courtesy: Bad Astronomy Blog [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I only saw the green flash once, and by the time I could dig out my little camera, it was gone (of course, I don’t think I’d have been able to take all that great of a shot of it since it was just a little point and shoot camera, but at least I’d know what it was).
Aside from that, the picture on the bottom is absolutely astounding. There’s a LOT of stuff up there, isn’t there?
May 5th, 2008 at 10:27 am
very large Very Large Telescope telescope*
Did you ever work for Little Ceasar’s Pizza?
Seriously, those are incredible images. The Milky Way at night picture is probably a good representation of what our ancestors saw all the time when civilization was lit only by fire. No wonder they thought gods resided up there.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I have been looking for the Green Flash on ocean sunsets at every opportunity I had without any success. But while camping in the outback in Australia, far away from any towns, I have seen the Milky Way unobstructed in all it’s glory, there’s few things more awe-inspiring to be seen on this planet.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:34 am
The next telescope is the extremely large telescope (20m diameter)
and to follow Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (60 to 100m)
I think ESO needs name picking assistance!
May 5th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I’ve seen the Green Flash several times on the Prairies.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Go visit Chaco Canyon. It’s not that long a drive from here, and it’s far enough away from everything to get some pretty amazing astronomy. Plus it’s a neat place to visit in its own right.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Why? What is wrong with wysiwyg?
To be fair, I doubt it’d have been possible to get funding for Hubble if it had been named the Myopic Telescope*.
*no, I don’t actually remember if it was myopic or hyperopic.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I’m sure Phil (*ahem* “Dr. Plait”) has seen the Milky Way before, but here he’s talking about something much fainter- sunlight reflected off of the interplanetary dust present all through the plane of the Solar System, aka the “zodiacal light”. I’ve never seen that before, even at Mauna Kea. Is it even possible to see it with the naked eye, i.e. without a long exposure image from a camera?
May 5th, 2008 at 11:34 am
The Gegenschein was initially discovered from naked-eye observations. I think I’ve managed to see it a grand total of once. But then my latest views of the zodiacal light nearer the sun from dark sites prompted me to wonder whether it’s always that bright, so clearly my perspective has become skewed from suburbia. To see the Gegenschein, not only must the sky be really dark, but it has to fall well away from the plane of the Milky Way or it gets lost in the glow. New moons around the equinoxes are pretty good.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:54 am
The green flash and the Aurora Borealis are high on my current list of phenomena to hunt for. We did have a wonderful 22 degree solar halo here in Santiago a couple of weeks back: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonstraveladventures/2448043033/
I was amazed at the fact that nobody else in the streets seemed to care much about this phenomenal display!
May 5th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I thought I’d seen the zodiacal light before, from a nicely dark site just outside my city in NZ, but reading your comments here have made me think twice. Is it really that hard to see? The faint band of light I saw definitely rang along the ecliptic.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Also going on in Chile is an amazing volcanic eruption. Saw this stunning picture linked from Fark earlier:
http://www.lun.com/modulos/catalogo/paginas/2008/05/04/LUCPRDI02LU0405.htm?tipoPantalla=1260
I presume the big ’scope is on more secure foundations
May 5th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Oh, so THAT’S the zoadical light? Interesting. I first read about it in a book (I very highly recommend “The Northern Lights” by Lucy Jago), but I had no clue what it was.
May 5th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
baley
The next telescope is the extremely large telescope (20m diameter)
and to follow Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (60 to 100m)
Then the Big Large Telescope (AKA BLT) and the Ridiculously Large Telescope?
J/P=?
May 5th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
overstroming says: “Also going on in Chile is an amazing volcanic eruption. Saw this stunning picture linked from Fark”
Wow! They must have had Peter Jackson do the effects for this eruption!
- Jack
May 5th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Thanks for the heads-up on these releases Phil. I was very fortunate to spend a couple of days at Paranal last year. Just before sunset many of the astronomers and engineers came up out of the control building on to the observation deck beside the telescope for a 15 minute break to watch the Sun set over the Pacific. What a sight. Alas no green (or blue) flash that evening but still truly memorable.
These pictures have inspired me to dig out those I took and put them up on my blog tonight.
This was matched a few hours later by going back up on to the deck to view the night sky – stunning. They had the laser running for the adaptive optics on one of the VLT units which added to the effect. A wonderful night of naked eye observing.
By the way the next James Bond film has just finished shooting some scenes at Paranal, not of the telescope units but of the Residence. It appears as the archetypal Bond baddie lair. Can’t wait to see what it looks like on the big screen.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Hubble’s primary is neither myopic nor hyperopic. It’s perfectly in focus with the instruments. It just has the most exquisite spherical aberration that money can buy.
May 5th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Phil, you wrote the location of the very large Very Large Telescope telescope*, an 8-meter monster that is one of the largest in the world.
There are actually 4 of those 8.2m monsters + 4 smaller 1.8m telescopes. So far, they can be joined in twos or threes to make interferometric observations with a base-line of up to 200m. That is what makes it the “Very Large Telescope”.
Check-out ESO’s Paranal observatory
At least it is not called the Superconducting Super Scope….
May 6th, 2008 at 8:35 am
You can. The zodiacal light is brightest close to the Sun, and from a dark site the bright parts are actually not too hard to see shortly after it gets genuinely dark. It’s much bigger than most people realize — it looks a little like a large wedge of twilight sticking up into the sky along the ecliptic — so it can be hard to recognize for what it really is.
The light rapidly gets fainter farther from the Sun, and soon becomes invisible or at best very faint. The photo in BA’s article shows the “gegenschein”, which is a slight brightening of the zodiacal light directly opposite the Sun. It’s very faint indeed and you won’t see it unless it’s very dark (no Moon, no nearby city lights). Even bright constellations in the area can interfere. I’ve had my best luck in early fall and late winter (northern hemisphere) when the anti-solar point is fairly high up, and the background sky is pretty empty.
Crux Australis: Congratulations! Zodiacal light actually goes all the way around the ecliptic, but it’s so faint that most people never see it like that. I’ve only seen it once, and I’ve been to plenty of dark sites. If you are ever fortunate enough to see the whole thing, not just the bits closest to the Sun, it’s pretty amazing: very faint, but similar in width to the Milky Way, and spanning the entire sky. It’s one of the largest distinct “objects” you can see, in fact.
May 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am
In reference to the gegenschein picture…
Okay, I’m a neophyte when it comes to astronomy. If you were at a really dark site, could you see that many stars with the naked eye, or is it just due to a long exposure time with a good camera? Can you actually see galaxies without the aid of binoculars or a telescope? Unfortunately for me, I live in Colorado Springs which has to have some of the worst light pollution ever.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
That picture is indeed a long-duration exposure. But if you get into a really good dark sky, you will be AMAZED at how much you can see! The easiest galaxy to see is, of course, the Milky Way. The view towards the galactic center is truly awe-inspiring. If you go to the southern hemisphere, you will be treated to the sight of the Magellanic Clouds, which are satellites of our own galaxy. And I believe you can see Andromeda with the naked eye, assuming a sufficiently dark sky, although I’ve never seen it myself.