Today's APOD spawned an interesting challenge!
It seems Daniel López, whom I personally don't know, was at the access road to the VTT on the 23rd of January and took a picture at the sky, facing West, pointing just above the astronomer-red light-glowing dome of Gregor telescope (the other German Solar Telescope at Tenerife).
I am not sure how the photo was taken, It could have been a camera on a tripod doing several short exposures that were aligned and averaged together later. But it could be also a camera on some sort of equatorial mounting. I would bet on the first, more portable option, because the amount of "smear" in the image does not seem quite uniform, presumably arising from the combination of images with some distortion (very common on wide-angle lenses). The center appears ok because it is distortion free, and thus not influenced by afine transformations that align images in common image processing software packages.
Anyway, apart from the beautiful picture, you see a wonderful sky.. And, us MONSters, immediately ask the question "where is MONS?", or "Where is(are) our observer(s)?", "Who was there at the time?"
Right after this, you spot Casa Solar, with light inside! You see the OGS dome open, the blinking (not in the picture) green led of the wireless internal communication emitter at the scope behind MONS..
With so much light poring out of Casa Solar, clearly our Observer is inside! "What is he doing inside Casa Solar, instead of taking advantage of a nice sky like this??"
Well, There is a very bright red light on the left of the picture, that I immediately recognize as the water-permeable window on top of the stairs that lead to the dome at MONS!, and you can also spot the MONS dome open!
It is very likely that our observer, Rémi, was caught on camera while going to Casa Solar to fetch something to eat, while the MONS telescope was acquiring data!!!
The Casa Solar has some blinds that should be kept down to prevent excessive light to come out! I cannot tell from this picture if the blinds were down or not, because the green led on the telescope behind MONS is not very bright and also overexposed in the picture. So it is very possible the blinds at Casa Solar were correctly lowered during the night, but still put out that light display (look at the light that creeps up the Gregor's tower).
The night of 23rd was one when José Gallego was there as well. If so, probably he was at the scope making sure guiding was going nicely!
The height at which Venus and the surrounding stars suggest the picture to have been taken around 22:00. This is a good time for observing the high B Star targets of Gemini, and kind of matches how the MONS dome is oriented (North) because the target is way up.. On the other hand, the FITs header in the files at Montreal ftp server suggest there was a gap of roughly15 minutes between targets HD14134 and HD42087, where Rémi could really have gone to fetch something to eat at the house!
If this is the case, The APOD picture should have been taken (not exclusively) between 21:54 and 22:10 !! :-)
As such, I want to congratulate all MONS observers in the field of view of the picture on having appeared indirectly in an APOD picture!!
:-)
It seems Daniel López, whom I personally don't know, was at the access road to the VTT on the 23rd of January and took a picture at the sky, facing West, pointing just above the astronomer-red light-glowing dome of Gregor telescope (the other German Solar Telescope at Tenerife).
I am not sure how the photo was taken, It could have been a camera on a tripod doing several short exposures that were aligned and averaged together later. But it could be also a camera on some sort of equatorial mounting. I would bet on the first, more portable option, because the amount of "smear" in the image does not seem quite uniform, presumably arising from the combination of images with some distortion (very common on wide-angle lenses). The center appears ok because it is distortion free, and thus not influenced by afine transformations that align images in common image processing software packages.
Anyway, apart from the beautiful picture, you see a wonderful sky.. And, us MONSters, immediately ask the question "where is MONS?", or "Where is(are) our observer(s)?", "Who was there at the time?"
Right after this, you spot Casa Solar, with light inside! You see the OGS dome open, the blinking (not in the picture) green led of the wireless internal communication emitter at the scope behind MONS..
With so much light poring out of Casa Solar, clearly our Observer is inside! "What is he doing inside Casa Solar, instead of taking advantage of a nice sky like this??"
Well, There is a very bright red light on the left of the picture, that I immediately recognize as the water-permeable window on top of the stairs that lead to the dome at MONS!, and you can also spot the MONS dome open!
It is very likely that our observer, Rémi, was caught on camera while going to Casa Solar to fetch something to eat, while the MONS telescope was acquiring data!!!
The Casa Solar has some blinds that should be kept down to prevent excessive light to come out! I cannot tell from this picture if the blinds were down or not, because the green led on the telescope behind MONS is not very bright and also overexposed in the picture. So it is very possible the blinds at Casa Solar were correctly lowered during the night, but still put out that light display (look at the light that creeps up the Gregor's tower).
The night of 23rd was one when José Gallego was there as well. If so, probably he was at the scope making sure guiding was going nicely!
The height at which Venus and the surrounding stars suggest the picture to have been taken around 22:00. This is a good time for observing the high B Star targets of Gemini, and kind of matches how the MONS dome is oriented (North) because the target is way up.. On the other hand, the FITs header in the files at Montreal ftp server suggest there was a gap of roughly15 minutes between targets HD14134 and HD42087, where Rémi could really have gone to fetch something to eat at the house!
If this is the case, The APOD picture should have been taken (not exclusively) between 21:54 and 22:10 !! :-)
As such, I want to congratulate all MONS observers in the field of view of the picture on having appeared indirectly in an APOD picture!!
:-)
