Astro
movie : A night at Paranal Observatory
"Zodiacal
Light and Milky Way"
© Stéphane Guisard,
Valère Leroy and Jean Pajus
This is a time lapse movie made from
individual images
taken on a tripod with a Canon 20Da camera and a 15mm lens. This
accelerated movie
shows the beginning of a September night at Paranal Observatory
starting at
sunset and finishing just after the Milky Way disappears. The zodiacal
light is the bright zone of light in the center of the movie,
above the horizon. It is produced by the retro-reflection of the
sunlight on cosmic dust particle presents in the Solar system. Because
most of this cosmic material is located in the plane of the Solar
system, the zodiacal light appears along the ecliptic. It is very often
masked by light pollution or light diffused by atmospheric pollution;
seing it is therefore very often taken as a sign of good sky. On
this movie made from Paranal observatory, however, we can see that the
zodiacal light can be as bright as the Milky Way and can become itself
a kind of 'light pollution' to the astronomer.
The following animated gif is only a
very rough preview
of the movie. We highly recommend you to download the full movie. It is
available in different formats and sizes for Windows, Macintosh and
even ipod
users by clicking on one of the following download links :
1280x720.wmv (24Mb) 720x480.wmv (10Mb) 720x480.mov (11Mb) 320x240.mp4 (1.7Mb) 320x216.mp4 (2.2Mb) 720x480.avi (12Mb)
