Spectacular time lapse shows the Very Large Telescope in action
We've already seen some of the amazing pictures captured by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) array, but who would have thought that simply watching the telescopes at work would be so freakin' amazing?
Perched high on the top of a mountain in the Chilean desert, even without the telescope the night sky up there is truly amazing. At first I assumed that they had superimposed images of the sky captured by the telescope as a backdrop to the footage of the scopes as they moved, but silly me, that's really is what you see from the ground when you're up there far away from any contaminating artificial light.
The yellow streak you see fired into the sky a few times isn't the astronomers trying to zap aliens on some distant planet, it's a laser used to calibrate the telescope for distortions caused by the Earth's atmosphere. It sees how the straight laser beam is affected, and then applies corresponding corrections to the collected image.
The time lapse footage is choreographed to music in a way that reminds me of Koyaanisqatsi. For the best effect, be sure to click on the 720p HD version, and crank up the music. The good stuff starts at 1.27.
