Starship Asterisk*

A Galactic Corridor by Juan-Carlos Munoz-Mateos, on Flickr

The Milky Way rising behind the seeing monitor at Paranal Observatory. This monitor measures how the atmospheric turbulence blurs the shape of the stars (the so called “seeing”), and it’s an essential tool in Paranal to schedule observations. Some observations are very demanding and require very sta...

Moonset by Juan-Carlos Munoz-Mateos, on Flickr

The Coalsack nebula by Juan-Carlos Munoz-Mateos, on Flickr

Lunar halo over Paranal Observatory Copyright: Juan Carlos Munoz-Mateos Clouds are astronomers’ worst enemies, but they’re really photogenic. I captured this glorious lunar halo a couple of days ago at Paranal Observatory. Halos around the Sun or the Moon are caused by tiny ice crystals in cirrus at...

I agree with Chris on the overestimated role of supernovae in sterilizing planets. There are way too many unknowns regarding how far away a SN must be, how much radiation will reach the ground depending on the thickness and composition of a planet's atmosphere, etc. Something else that is not always...

This is a PR image to show the lasers around the trapezium. Indeed due to the small parallax you have to shift the pointing a bit so that the plumes nicely encircle the trapezium. I don't know off the top of my head the exact distance between UT4 and Guisard's telescope, but the edge of the platform...

I was just making a quick back-of-the-envelope estimate. I wasn't concerned about the precise distance because other variables like the actual altitude and thickness of the sodium layer at any given time also carry some uncertainty. I just wanted to show that Guisard's telescope was not 400m from UT...

Oh, I wasn't trying to hide my job as an ace-up-my-sleeve, I promise! :D In fact a few posts above I did describe a bit how the lasers are setup depending on the instrument you want to use; only realized now that I never mentioned explicitly that I work there! I was working on another telescope that...

Just to be clear, I wasn't involved in the actual taking of the picture, nor operating the lasers, etc

I never said that the picture was taken from VST. I work at Paranal Observatory, I know that Guisard's telescope is permanently installed at the north end of the platform. Hey, I was even there when that picture was taken :-) The lasers were aimed at M42, not M43. As others have explained, with a 80...

The width of the laser plumes is about ~40 arcsec, by eye, as they're roughly twice as large as the separation between stars B and D in the trapezium. The telescope used to take this picture is on the main telescope platform, at the very end towards the north, about 80 m or so from UT4. Assuming tha...

The picture was taken with a small telescope several dozen meters away from the UT4 telescope where the lasers are mounted. So there's indeed some small parallax. As for whether the beams are divergent or not, in this picture they are. At the telescope the laser launchers are separated by about 8 me...

Shooting 4 lasers at once by Juan-Carlos Munoz-Mateos, on Flickr

Sun halo at Paranal Observatory by Juan-Carlos Munoz-Mateos, on Flickr

Observing the Milky Way center https://500px.com/photo/162232813/observing-the-milky-way-center-by-juan-carlos-munoz-mateos Copyright: Juan Carlos Munoz-Mateos Observing the Milky Way center with UT4, one of the four 8 m telescopes at Paranal Observatory. The laser is used to create an artificial &...