Announcement

ESOcast 50: Chile Chill 1

A day — or night — in the life of ESO’s telescopes

15 November 2012

This episode of the ESOcast introduces a new type of ESOcasts called “Chile Chill”. These ESOcasts offer a calm experience of the Chilean night sky and ESO’s observatory sites, undisturbed by facts or narration. In this episode we follow a typical night of observing for ESO’s telescopes. Set to instrumental music composed by John Stanford (nigelstanford.com), it includes panoramic shots of the night sky viewed from ESO’s sites in Chile, interspersed with shots of the stark surrounding landscape and the astronomical facilities that have been built there. The video shows dramatically how Chile has some of the best skies on our planet for astronomy and allows us to gaze at a spectacularly clear dark sky full of stars.

As the Sun sets and day fades into night, starlight rains down on the ESO telescopes and their domes slide open in preparation for a night of observing. The ESOcast shows breathtaking celestial views rising from the horizon as the Milky Way and its powdering of stars slowly move overhead. At the same time the ceaseless activity of the telescopes is shown as they flick from position to position, hunting down and exploring new targets.

The episode also includes a journey through patches of deep space, past scatterings of stars and galaxies, hinting at the immense scale and distances involved in astronomical observing. It draws to a close as the Sun peeks over the horizon, signalling the end of a long night of exploration.

The video is viewable here.

More Information

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