New views of the night sky from Gemini

[TomK]

I only learned of this new site tonight. I don't know how well it works during the day, but at night it provides beautiful time-lapse movies of the night sky from Mauna Kea.

https://www.gemini.edu/sciops/telescopes...licks.html

The movies are actually more for observatory use to check sky conditions, but it is in the public domain so available to all.

[Missey]

Thank you for sharing TomK. Splendid sky view!

"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence."......Journal, 18 October 1855 - Henry D. Thoreau

[TomK]

No problem at all, Missey, I'm glad you enjoyed the images! In case you aren't aware, there is also the CFHT Cloudcam page which is really nice:

http://cfht.hawaii.edu/en/gallery/cloudcams/

It faces east from Mauna Kea so you see the rising sky; at night the bright light at the bottom right is Hilo. It only operates between sunset and sunrise so don't bother during the day, but it has links to time-lapse movies from previous nights. Just above the image, to the right, is a button which allows you to turn on or off an overlay which shows you the constellations and planets you might be viewing. It's pretty cool!

[birdmove]

Thanks, Tom! I bookmarked both sights. Very cool.

Jon in Keaau/HPP

[TomK]

The Gemini site also has an archive. It's not big at this point and I suspect it was private for quite a while for testing, but there are now a bunch of time-lapse movies available.

https://www.gemini.edu/sciops/telescopes...tlong.html

For those that were here for the spectacular lightning storm on September 14th this year, these are worth a watch!

https://www.gemini.edu/sciops/telescopes...4-Hilo.mp4

https://www.gemini.edu/sciops/telescopes...-North.mp4

[TomK]

For those interested, I'd recommend visiting

https://www.gemini.edu/sciops/telescopes...licks.html

for the few hours after sunset in the next few days. The moon isn't up and the weather is improving, so in the bottom right time-lapse movie, you get a great view of the Galactic center setting in the west.

[TomK]

I saved one of the time-lapse movies from tonight. The Galactic center setting in the west. The telescope at the bottom left is UKIRT.

https://goo.gl/pCpJrb

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

With the galactic center visible on a clear night, let's hope we can celebrate Galactic Tick day under clear Hawaiian skies tonight:

Earth and our solar system circle the center of the Milky Way galaxy every 225 million (earth) years.
One centi-arcsecond of this rotation is called a Galactic Tick. It happens every 633.7 days, or 1.7361 years. One of those ticks takes place tonight, September 29th, 2016.

Galactic Tick Day is set aside to acknowledge our Sun's motion, our progress around the home galaxy, and to celebrate humanity's knowledge of this motion.
http://galactictick.com/

“We’ve got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other’s only hope,” James Baldwin to Margaret Mead in the book A Rap On Race