Clouds are astronomers’ worst enemies, but they’re really photogenic. I captured this glorious lunar halo back in 2017 at Paranal Observatory. Halos around the Sun or the Moon are caused by tiny ice crystals in cirrus at high altitude, which refract the light at an angle of 22 degrees. More precisely, light of different colours is refracted at slightly different angles, which is why you can see a circular rainbow along the inner rim of the halo. In this family portrait of Paranal you can see the four 8 m Unit Telescopes, the four smaller Auxiliary Telescopes, and the VST telescope in the background. The UT4 telescope is shooting it’s mighty 22 watts lasers, as part of a technical test to characterise a new adaptive optics module to correct the atmospheric turbulence. Canon 6D + Rokinon 14 mm at f/4, 30 secs, ISO200.
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Night Photography
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Astronomy is my other hobby. Really neat that you caught the sodium lasers projecting a faux star for the adaptive optics to work with. Neat shot!!
Thank you, David! Yes, it was nice to capture both the lasers and the halo. We have an all-sky camera outside, and when I saw it I though: "omg, I have to go out and capture this!!!!"
And I'm officially envious that you work there!