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Tag: European Southern Observatory

The galactic shot

The dome of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the ESO’s Paranal observatory is hiding one of the most scientifically productive instrument of the world. Pointing it’s powerful beam in the sky, it feels like the astronomers are somehow trying to communicate with potential extraterrestrial forms of life. But no, this beam has another, very…
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The Lone Ear … Really?

What a boring image, right? Well, it’s colorful, it has the Milky Way and the dominant subject is astronomical instrument. The reflective plate is, in fact, the Swedish-ESO Submilimetre Telescope at the southern part of the large complex of La Silla Observatory. It suppossed to be antenna observing the Universe in sub-millimetre wavelenghts, which would…
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The celestial X

What is this odd view? Is it from this world? A photo montage? Well, not pretty much. This image shows view to the sky in January from both hemispheres. It ingeniously uses the compositions and timing to demonstrate different views in the Milky Way and the zodiacal light close to the Sun in the sky,…
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Venus and the swimming Moon

A year ago, 21 January 2015, I witnessed very unusual view to the darkening horizon before the first stars appeared above the La Silla observatory. Just a minutes after the sun set over the horizon of distant south Pacific, the crystal purity of the Atacama’s air allowed me to spot the very young Moon. This…
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Pure skies above the La Silla observatory

Many people are still asking themselves or others, if the view to the sky full of stars, with Milky Way and such dark starry foreground is real. Many people don’t even believe that the Milky Way is something easy to see. It’s too sad that by living in light polluted cities we completely broke the…
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Green flashing postcard from Paranal

It’s 26th January, 2015, and the Sun was slowly setting down over the cloudy horizon over the Atacama desert. Well, not that slowly to prepare the equipment, thus I only stood in front of the La Residencia of the Paranal Observatory and from my hand tried to capture the last moments of the Sun’s good-bye…
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Pink skies and the hidden galaxy

Well known ESO’s La Silla observatory lies just under a very colors-active sky. Due to “southatlantic anomaly” can be the upper atmosphere there more impacted by particles from the Sun and bring various colors of airglow there. Unfortunatelly, the colors are invisible to the human eyes, but sensitive camera can easily capture that. Besides the…
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