Southern skies time lapse: Nocturnal

Bad Astronomy
By Phil Plait
Jul 28, 2012 4:15 PMNov 19, 2019 11:57 PM

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Oh my, another amazing time lapse of the night sky: Nocturnal, by photographer Colin Legg (whose work we've seen here before on the BABlog), shows southern skies wheeling and turning majestically overhead. [Note: For reasons I don't understand, the wrong video was linked here originally. It's fixed now, and I apologize for that.]

[embed width="610"]http://vimeo.com/45856570[/embed]

Yegads. Pay attention at the 30 second mark as the Southern Cross and Alpha and Beta Centauri rise above a mountain, then at 40 seconds when Comet Lovejoy rises dramatically over the horizon, and again at 49 seconds when a meteor zips across the sky, leaving a persistent train

that gets whipped and frothed by high-altitude winds. In fact, just pay attention to the whole thing. It's gorgeous. And I'm not alone: this video won the best animation category of the 2012 David Malin awards. Malin is one of the best astrophotographers who has ever lived, so this is a prestigious recognition indeed. And well-deserved.

Tip o' the lens cap to Colin Legg himself for letting me know about it.


Related Posts: - A meteor's lingering tale - One more Lovejoy time lapse… maybe the last - INSANELY cool picture of Comet Lovejoy - Time lapse: old rocks and old skies - Time lapse: Under the Namibian Sky

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