APOD: The View from Chajnantor (2011 Nov 23)

[APOD Robot]

The View from Chajnantor

Explanation: From an altitude of over 5,000 meters, the night sky view from Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes is breathtaking in more ways than one. The dark site's rarefied atmosphere, at about 50 percent sea level pressure, is also extremely dry. That makes it ideal for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) designed to explore the universe at wavelengths over 1,000 times longer than visible light. Near the center of the the panoramic scene, ALMA's 7 and 12 meter wide dish antennas are illuminated by a young Moon nestled in the arc of the Milky Way. ALMA's antenna configurations are intended to achieve a resolution comparable to space telescopes by operating as an interferometer. At left, a meteor's streak and the Milky Way's satellite galaxies, the Large (bottom) and Small Magellanic Clouds grace the night.

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[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Explanation: From an altitude of over 5,000 meters, the night sky view from Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes is breathtaking in more ways than one. The dark site's rarefied atmosphere, at about 50 percent sea level pressure, is also extremely dry. That makes it ideal for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) designed to explore the universe at wavelengths over 1,000 times longer than visible light. Near the center of the the panoramic scene, ALMA's 7 and 12 meter wide dish antennas are illuminated by a young Moon nestled in the arc of the Milky Way. ALMA's antenna configurations are intended to achieve a resolution comparable to space telescopes by operating as an interferometer. At left, a meteor's streak and the Milky Way's satellite galaxies, the Large (bottom) and Small Magellanic Clouds grace the night.

[Sandstone]

Question for those APOD followers from the southern hemisphere:
I've never been down that far south, and have often wondered just what the Magellenic clouds look like to the unaided eye. I've seen photos, of course, but can anyone describe what it's like to actually look up and see them?
Thanks,
Sandstone

[alter-ego]

Question for those APOD followers from the southern hemisphere:
I've never been down that far south, and have often wondered just what the Magellenic clouds look like to the unaided eye. I've seen photos, of course, but can anyone describe what it's like to actually look up and see them?
Thanks,
Sandstone

I'm not from the southern hemisphere, but as viewed from ~13° further south (north of Melbourne, AU), and subsequently further from the horizon , the MCs were brighter and more detailed in a moonless, higher contrast sky. My recollection is something more akin to http://www.amazingsky.ca/DeepSky/Galaxi ... ShvN-X2-LB

[starstruck]

What an amazing looking place! There's a quite unearthly quality in this photograph; could almost be an artist's impression of a Martian-based settlement of the future. Looks like there are two more meteor streaks too, both following the same direction. Impressive how a photo including the brightness of the moon can still show so much detail in the sky. A super picture! More great views to be found on the 'panoramic scene..' link.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[luigi]

Question for those APOD followers from the southern hemisphere:
I've never been down that far south, and have often wondered just what the Magellenic clouds look like to the unaided eye. I've seen photos, of course, but can anyone describe what it's like to actually look up and see them?
Thanks,
Sandstone

I live at 35 degrees south so the Magellan Clouds are a familiar sight.

From the city both clouds are washed out in sky glow, we can see the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades and a hint of Omega Centauri but no Milky Way or Magellan Clouds.

From a rural place the clouds look like two small fuzzy clouds in the sky, two distictive patches of fog in the middle of the dark sky. Both clouds are easy to recognize, the Large Magellan cloud is thin and large, the Small Magellan Cloud is like a small oval and is just next to 47 tucanae that can be seen as a fuzzy star with the naked eye.

From a very dark location far away from any lights the clouds are bright, the Tarantula Nebula can be seen as a small patch of light just next to the Large Magellan Cloud and the different structure of both clouds can be seen with the naked eye.

I've tried to make a photo that will look exactly as what you can see with the naked eye, it's really difficult as the camera and human eyes are totally different things, here's one of my results:



The LMC seen from the cliffs. This matches in some way what I could see with my eyes in both brightness and size. There was a 50% moon towards the right. Without the moon the view is better but this is a good average I think.

[orin stepanek]

I love today's APOD; and I'd love to have it for a background! I'll have to crop off quite a bit to make it fit my screen!

[jimbo48]

If you scroll to the extreme right edge you will be rewarded with a nice bonus in this photo ...
the far distant Andromeda galaxy just above the plane of our Milky Way!

[Chris Peterson]

I've never been down that far south, and have often wondered just what the Magellenic clouds look like to the unaided eye. I've seen photos, of course, but can anyone describe what it's like to actually look up and see them?

They look like little isolated patches of the Milky Way- colorless, featureless, faint blobs that only show up under dark skies. To my eyes, they appear perhaps twice as bright as the Andromeda galaxy does.

[nova_mdc]

Hmm. Interestingly, "Today's featured picture" on Wikipedia is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:360-d ... y_edit.jpg.

Is it just me, or are these night sky panoramics all starting to look the same?

[Kate]

Wonderful panorama.
I can't imagine the logistics of building these complicated installations in such desolate places.

There was a 50% moon towards the right. Without the moon the view is better but this is a good average I think.

Thank you luigi! I've wondered the same thing and this is beautiful.

[luigi]

Is the meteor a real meteor? There are three vertical marks on that part of the image, one bright and two fuzzier. What are those?

[rguyg]

that's 3 Meteor's (which is more than 1)

[Chris Peterson]

Is the meteor a real meteor? There are three vertical marks on that part of the image, one bright and two fuzzier. What are those?

I see two definite meteors (the dim streaks), and one bright streak that has a light profile that more closely resembles a satellite flare (e.g. Iridium) than a meteor, but certainly could be a meteor. At this resolution, with the data available, there's no way to tell from the image alone. A satellite flare can often be tracked down by looking at what was in that location at that time, but it's more effort than I care to engage in just at the moment.

[luigi]

Is the meteor a real meteor? There are three vertical marks on that part of the image, one bright and two fuzzier. What are those?

I see two definite meteors (the dim streaks), and one bright streak that has a light profile that more closely resembles a satellite flare (e.g. Iridium) than a meteor, but certainly could be a meteor. At this resolution, with the data available, there's no way to tell from the image alone. A satellite flare can often be tracked down by looking at what was in that location at that time, but it's more effort than I care to engage in just at the moment.

Are you sure those streaks are meteors? If you say so then fine because you really know about meteor trails.
They are parallel to each other and that's strange, if you get 3 meteors what are the chances the 3 of them are parallel? I think it's possible but not very probable. That makes me think those 3 things can be some sort of lens artifact or flare.
If I remember correctly there was another APOD some time ago with 4 parallel streaks, and people analyzed the chances of 4 iridium flares or so. I'm thinking there's some form of lens artifact or flare that's quite common in night photos and could have produced those streaks and these streaks too.

[Chris Peterson]

Are you sure those streaks are meteors? If you say so then fine because you really know about meteor trails.
They are parallel to each other and that's strange, if you get 3 meteors what are the chances the 3 of them are parallel? I think it's possible but not very probable. That makes me think those 3 things can be some sort of lens artifact or flare.

Of course, I can't be 100% sure. But in every detail, they look to me like meteors. Regrettably, the image does not include date and time information outside the stripped EXIF (I would not accept any image for APOD publication that does not include such information, and I'd consider a law that imagers who fail to include such information in their published images be drawn and quartered...) so I don't know if a shower was active. If so, seeing parallel meteors would be common and expected. But even without an active shower, it isn't uncommon.

This does not appear to be any sort of optical artifact. I'd say that if we are not seeing meteors, we are seeing satellite flares. These streaks are in the sky, not the camera.

If I remember correctly there was another APOD some time ago with 4 parallel streaks, and people analyzed the chances of 4 iridium flares or so. I'm thinking there's some form of lens artifact or flare that's quite common in night photos and could have produced those streaks and these streaks too.

The streaks in that image were produced by flaring satellites, but not Iridiums, and certainly not artifacts. IIRC, there were no meteors at all.

[luigi]

Thank you Chris, it would be really nice to have a larger version and the date/time the image was made to be sure about those streaks.
If those meteors were from a meteor shower then the radiant would be about above the Magellan Clouds. If my knowledge is right there's no moderate shower with a radiant in that location. I'm familiar with meteor showers for the south hemisphere and they are really very modest. From the location we can discard the Orionids, Taurids (N&S), Puppis-Velids, Geminids, Eta-Aquarids,etc.

[Wolf Kotenberg]

In this APOD a reference if made to a space telescope. How much longer is the HUBBLE telescope expected to live ?

[Chris Peterson]

In this APOD a reference if made to a space telescope. How much longer is the HUBBLE telescope expected to live ?

Its orbit could decay in as little as seven or eight more years- although it is unlikely the Sun will be active enough for that to happen. With a fairly quiet Sun, it might not decay for another 20 years. It is almost certain that there will be no more service missions, so barring some sort of major budget restriction, the telescope will probably continue to operate until a major subsystem fails- most likely something involving the gyros, which are required for pointing and tracking (and which have had numerous problems in the past), the power system, the primary imager...

With good luck, we could have another ten years or more of operation. With bad luck, it could fail tomorrow.

[saturn2]

Altitude 5000 meter
Chile
Cold air, clean sky
Above the beautiful Universe
Infinite, real, amazing...

[neufer]

The View from Chajnantor

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[Beyond]

Hey! A pre-StarTrek Wesley in a black shirt -standing by- the singer. Last i saw of him, i think he was about to find out how to travel without a space-ship, like the "Traveler" from Tau-Alpha (something) does.

[neufer]

Hey! A pre-StarTrek Wesley in a black shirt -standing by- the singer. Last i saw of him, i think he was about to find out how to travel without a space-ship, like the "Traveler" from Tau-Alpha (something) does.

[size=150]Wil Wheaton Wesley Crusher[/size]

---

<<Richard William "Wil" Wheaton III (born July 29, 1972) is an American actor and writer.

Wheaton made his acting debut in the 1981 TV film A Long Way Home, and his first cinema role was as Martin Brisby in the 1982 animated film The Secret of NIMH. He had a minor role in the 1984 movie The Last Starfighter. He first gained widespread attention in 1986 as Gordie Lachance in Stand by Me, the film adaptation of Stephen King's The Body.

From 1987 to 1990, he appeared in the role of Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation throughout its first four seasons. Although his Star Trek character, and by extension Wheaton himself, was disliked by a vocal group of Trekkies during TNG's first run, he commented about his critics in an interview for WebTalk Radio:

"Later, I determined that the people who were really, really cruel – like the Usenet weenies – really are a statistically insignificant number of people. And I know, just over the years from people who've e-mailed me at my web site and people who I've talked to since I started going to Star Trek conventions again in the last five years, that there are so many more people who really enjoyed everything about the show, including my performance, including the character."

Wheaton's Law: "Don't Be a Dick!"

Wheaton's Law Revised is an expansion by comics artist and writer Bill Willingham,
which states: "Don't be a dick, but it's okay to play one on TV.">>

[Ann]

Thanks for posting that video, Art. I saw the movie "Stand by me" on TV one evening, and I was mesmerized by it. I liked Will Wheaton's Gordie, but I was totally captivated by River Phoenix' Chris. I resolved to find out a bit more about this amazing young actor the next morning. But the next morning I read in my local paper that River Phoenix had died of an overdose that very night, perhaps while I was watching the movie.

Ann