Astrophotography near the Large Binocular Telescope
This photo is from a research trip to the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) on Mount Graham in Arizona. That's the glow of Fort Grant, AZ below.
Inane Comment
Most stars display strong nocturnal tendencies, so astrophysicists find themselves staying up rather late to spend time with them. This provided great opportunities for me to do some astrophotography.
Which is kind of why we were there in the first place.
Interesting Tidbit
Our research team (iLocater) was actually there to test our ability to couple light from one of the LBT's 8.4 meter (>27 feet) diameter mirrors into a 6 micron optical fiber optical fiber.
This type of fiber is called a "single mode" fiber, because it's so tiny (several times thinner than a human hair) that the light can only propagate along one path. This eliminates a major source of error in the signal, which is key to the performance of our high resolution spectrograph that will identify planets orbiting other stars (i.e. exoplanets).
Utilizing LBT's impressive adaptive optics system, we were able to couple around 20% of the light, more than any other group had achieved.
And also I took this picture, so it was a successful trip.
Thanks for dropping by! Photo taken on my Nikon D7000, previously posted on my website and store.
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Outstanding photo and super funny commentary as well. I like. Keep it up man.
😄
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it =] I find myself wishing the stars showed their shiny faces more often in my part of Indiana.
You might need to compromise a few power grids, then. Which, according to Ted Koppel, really isn't too difficult. I'm sure you can pull it off.
That would help... We'd still need to deal with the permacloud issue though. Maybe by moving Lake Michigan?
It's worth a shot. Lake Michigan might be one of those restless lakes just looking for a good excuse to get up and go, so we could start by just asking it nicely to move.