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This panoramic view was captured during an observing run of the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco Telescope (left) located at Cerro Tololo Observatory in the Chilean Andes. This telescope (funded by NSF 's NOIRLab) has helped astronomers to prove the acceleration of the cosmic expansion in 1998 by looking at distant supernovae!
💡Now, the Blanco telescope is studying the population of thousand of galaxies in the Universe and especially how dark energy is influencing them. For that mission, it is equipped with an astonishingly resolved CCD camera of 570 megapixels! A single 90 seconds photograph, that covers a region of the sky as wide as 8 full moons, can reveal up to 150,000 galaxies! This high-end imaging instrument is called #DECam - Dark Energy Camera - and was used during 758 nights between 2013 and 2019 as part of the Dark Energy Survey.
I took this photo in August 2018, when the survey was still being completed.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
📷 Canon Rebel T5i + Sigma Art 18-35mm f/1.8 lens + Star Adventurer Mini tracking mount
→ 9 stitched pictures taken in landscape mode
→ Single 30 seconds exposure
→ ISO 3200
→ 18 mm
→ f/1.8
Softwares: Dxo Optics pro 9 for noise reduction / Lightroom for all the edits / Microsoft ICE for the final stitching.
The ACEAP 2019 team first saw this lovely crescent moon with brilliant earthshine as we headed down from the ALMA technical building to the residencia for dinner. I rushed up to my room for my camera & tripod. I thought that I'd missed the moment, but I couldn't head home without an image of the Moon from a world upside down. Dust near the horizon dimmed the earthshine. The Moon sank behind a featureless flat topped ridge, instead of a nearby volcano...
Without my tracker, only one set of earthshine exposures was clear. The Atacama has wonderful contrast between the foothills of the Andes and flat desert. With the HDR image put together, it captured the flatness of the desert and color of the dust. This almost monochromatic image captures the moment; I can almost smell the dust. This rendering is lightened a bit to show well on phone screens, if you print the full resolution image you will probably want to adjust the exposure.
Sony a6300 with Nikkor 180mm f/2.8 shot at 5.6 with a 1.4x teleconverter. Crescent data exposed 1/50 sec at ISO 1600. 88 frames 1.5x drizzle stacked in Autostakkert 3. Earthshine and ridgeline data exposed 30 sec at ISO 200 with 5 images stacked. Final HDR composite and crop in photoshop.
Astrophotographers, get yourself to the Atacama in Chile. With no forests to burn, humidity of 3% and 0.3 arc second seeing, the Atacama is second only to the Antarctic and low earth orbit for imaging possibilities. Chile has warm welcoming people, great food, and lots to see and do when you are not looking up. Thanks again to AUI, the NSF, and their partners in giving me this opportunity. For more about this trip, more images, and press articles see: astronomy.robpettengill.org/ACEAP-2019.html or #ACEAP2019 on social media.
#ACEAP2019 #AstroAmbassadors #NSFfunded
Next week, come visit us @HHDays HUSKER HARVEST DAYS #HHD19!
Find @NE_CRRI onsite w/@UNL_IANR -- sharing w/farmers our #NSFfunded #plantsci research, including a phenotyping robot!
#Agrobotics: Coming soon to a field near you?
-@NebraskaEPSCoR onTwitter, Sept. 6, 2019