Telescopes from Telescopes

February 1, 2017 1:17 PM

"Here I give you photos of telescopes taking pictures of space taken by telescopes in space taking pictures of Earth."
posted by bondcliff (26 comments total)

I approve of this post and it is relevant to my interests.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:29 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

A picture of the telescope taking a picture of the telescope taking a picture of the telescope please.
posted by lagomorphius at 1:38 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

I suppose there's no Jodrell Bank because Jodrell Bank is permanently obscured by clouds.
posted by mushhushshu at 1:41 PM on February 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

I used to sell and service Panasonic copiers. Once, on one of Panasonic's first-generation digital copiers, we had a particularly frustrating issue where a copier kept jamming at the customer's location, but when we brought it in to the shop and ran thousands of copies through it, we could never get it to jam. Brought it back to the customer's location, ran thousands more, and never got it to jam. Went back and forth like this a couple times until finally we got an engineering team from Japan out to have a look. While it was copying, I walked across the room to the Coke vending machine and bought a can, and as soon as I pressed my selection, bam! the copier jammed. We thought, huh. So we cleared the copier, restarted it, and while it was running, I bought another Coke. Bam! copier jam.

The Panasonic guys each took turns buying a Coke and making the copier jam, laughing the whole time. One guy bought a Coke, another took a picture of him buying a Coke, another took a picture of him taking a picture, and on and on until all six guys were taking pictures of guys taking pictures.
posted by xedrik at 2:00 PM on February 1, 2017 [15 favorites]

Hey, I walked the entire length of one of those mountain ridges many times during my thesis! (I did not need the caption to pick it out.)

A picture of the telescope taking a picture of the telescope taking a picture of the telescope please.

Typical astronomical images have exposure times of a few minutes. I have taken numerous images with bright streaks across them, which are either spacecraft or asteroids, and the spacecraft are often easy to pick out because the lines wobble or change brightness due to rapidly changing glint (rocks don't do that). Now if only I had thought to take a picture of the telescope while it was tracking a satellite that was also looking down...
posted by puffyn at 2:14 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Are we not still doing "Yo Dawg?"
posted by Cookiebastard at 2:15 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]

I'll never forget the day my dad gave me his old binoculars and I brought them back to my NYC apartment... time for some amateur vouyeur-ing!

I have never seen so many telescopes in so many apartment windows, with so little access to views of the sky.

:shudder:
posted by Mchelly at 2:26 PM on February 1, 2017

So it's parabolic mirrors all the way down?
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:30 PM on February 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

This is the astronomical equivalent of sitting in the chair at the barber shop.
posted by cmfletcher at 3:06 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Okay, very nice. (I'm not above bragging - I've used every single one of those in the last year, except for LIGO, which is not an electromagnetic wavelength instrument - although I'm a co-author on the LIGO follow-up paper with 1500+ of my best friends.)

But behold! Here is a picture of a robot on the surface of another planet, taken by a robot orbiting that planet.

And if that's not enough, here is a different photo of that robot in the process of landing on Mars, taken by the other robot in orbit. That was an astonishing feat of predictive orbital mechanics - the imaging sequence was uploaded long, long before orbital insertion actually happened.
posted by RedOrGreen at 3:36 PM on February 1, 2017 [11 favorites]

I suppose there's no Jodrell Bank because Jodrell Bank is permanently obscured by clouds.

You've got to get the right moment when the Doctor is dangling off of it.
posted by Artw at 3:44 PM on February 1, 2017 [2 favorites]

i am looking at these photos with my ipod via facetime on my ipad that is looking at my computer which is displaying these images
posted by poffin boffin at 3:52 PM on February 1, 2017 [5 favorites]

xedrik: "One guy bought a Coke, another took a picture of him buying a Coke, another took a picture of him taking a picture, and on and on until all six guys were taking pictures of guys taking pictures."

But what was wrong with the copier?
posted by Mitheral at 5:05 PM on February 1, 2017 [10 favorites]

xedrik: "One guy bought a Coke, another took a picture of him buying a Coke, another took a picture of him taking a picture, and on and on until all six guys were taking pictures of guys taking pictures."

But what was wrong with the copier?

It preferred Pepsi
posted by littlesq at 6:23 PM on February 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

I really hope the coke/copier interaction is explained soon. I have some really serious scientific contributions to humanity to finish and, instead, I'm looking for circuit diagrams of 1st-gen Panasonic copiers to see if I can find evidence of a feed motor timing problem that could be caused by a small voltage drop.

Please tell us what was wrong with the copier!
posted by nfalkner at 6:52 PM on February 1, 2017 [6 favorites]

tangentially related: Pictures of asians taking pictures of food.
posted by numaner at 8:19 PM on February 1, 2017

Came for the telescopes, stayed for the tips to add depth to photos.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 10:46 PM on February 1, 2017

I suppose there's no Jodrell Bank because Jodrell Bank is permanently obscured by clouds.

I bought a telescope last week and obviously now the weather forecast is just unbroken clouds until like May.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:03 AM on February 2, 2017

I bought a telescope last week and obviously now the weather forecast is just unbroken clouds until like May.

Just wait until you try astrophotography or landscape astro. There is no more surefire way to call for rain or overcast skies than to spend several hours getting ready to go sit out in the cold all night and daring to aim a camera at the sky. It seems like 9/10 times that I do this I either get rained out, blown out or I'm left with a thick blanket of clouds.

Each one of the few good night sky shots I have made are actually the results of about half a dozen aborted missions where I spent considerable time planning and preparing for... going back to bed annoyed.

And this is the reason why I now carry my camera, tripod and a bag packed with cold night time photography support gear everywhere. And I mean everywhere. This kit includes a small camp stove, hand warmers (for the camera, not my hands!) and an assortment of tea, coffee, snacks, several water canteens and vacuum flasks and spare cold weather layers.

If I wasn't already nuts and living in a town full of weirdos I might be worried that people thought I was crazy.
posted by loquacious at 3:06 AM on February 2, 2017 [3 favorites]

So we cleared the copier, restarted it, and while it was running, I bought another Coke. Bam! copier jam.

I'm not naming names, but I used to work in Tokyo for the largest newspaper in the world. And when every computer in the office was running, and someone bought a Coke from the vending machine down the hall, the circuit breaker would trip.

We finally figured it out because it didn't happen on days when someone was absent (didn't matter whom).
posted by oheso at 4:20 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Damnit man. Finish the story about the coke and copier
posted by chasles at 4:43 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

So did anyone else know what other telescope was featured in the book/movie Contact? Which kind of reminded me that they need a picture of this telescope from space.
posted by TedW at 5:31 AM on February 2, 2017

Contact used Arecibo and the VLA.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:20 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Not much of a story. Turns out that, despite assurances that the copier was on a dedicated circuit, it was not, and each time the Coke machine cycled, it sent a bunch of noise up the branch that freaked out the copier. Put the copier on a transformer-based isolation filter until they could correct the wiring, and made quality power filters a part of every install from that point on.
posted by xedrik at 7:29 AM on February 2, 2017 [5 favorites]

> Contact used Arecibo and the VLA.

And not just the telescopes - all the control room sequences at the VLA and Arecibo also used the real facilities in part. They also used the real visiting scientist quarters at Arecibo (the ones back then) for some scenes at the site, so after that there was a chance that you'd be assigned the room that Jodie Foster stayed in!

(Now, of course, there's no money at the NSF and they're closing everything down.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:24 AM on February 2, 2017

So we cleared the copier, restarted it, and while it was running, I bought another Coke. Bam! copier jam.

A buddy of mine was an engineer at a company that made analytical instrumentation, they were working on a prototype with a robotic arm to load and unload samples. It worked fine all day, but it would choke some time during the night. Finally, they setup a camera...and caught the night watchman arm wrestling with it.
Oh, and I really like these pics of telescopes.
posted by 445supermag at 11:52 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]