Astronomer's Paradise

Make sure to watch this full-screen with the sound on!

Atacama Starry Nights: Episode I

Astronomer's Paradise is the first episode of a Atacama Starry Nights timelapse movie series.

(on National Geographic http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/02/21/new-time-lapse-gives-rare-glimpse-at-atacamas-starry-nights/ and on Nikon Rumours! http://nikonrumors.com/2012/02/27/guest-post-astronomers-paradise-time-lapse-video.aspx/)

Cerro Paranal is an astronomers paradise with its stunningly dark, steady and transparent sky. Located in the barren Atacama Desert of Chile it is home to some of the world's leading telescopes.

Operated by the European Southern Observatory (www.eso.org) the Very Large Telescope (VLT) is located on the Paranal mountain, composed of four 8 m telescopes which can combine their light to make a giant telescope by interferometry.

Four smaller auxiliary telescopes, each 1.8 m in aperture, are important elements of the VLT interferometer.

Walking on the desert near Paranal between the scattered stones and boulders on the pale red dust, feels like being on Mars but under the Earth sky.

Paranal was selected for cutting edge astronomical observations also because of the sky transparency and steady atmospheric condition which let astronomers peer into tiny details in the deep cosmos using giant telescopes.

This film is made with footage from the November 2011 TWAN imaging expedition to Paranal assigned by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). We photographed 14 nights in a row from usually 05:30 pm to 08:00 a.m.

All video rights reserved by Christoph Malin (www.christophmalin.com) and Babak Tafreshi (btafreshi@twanight.org) of The World at Night (TWAN) program (www.twanight.org/tafreshi).
The inside vista-observatory video is contributed by Stephane Guisard (www.astrosurf.com/sguisard).

Music by
Carbon Based Lifeforms – Arecibo
Extract from the album [ Twentythree ]
Written & produced by Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Segerstad
Published by Ultimae
www.carbonbasedlifeforms.net
www.ultimae.com

Equipment used by Christoph on assignment:

- 2 Nikon D3s
- 1 Nikon D700
- 1 Nikon D7000
- 2 AFS 12-24/2.8, 1 AFS 24-70/2.8, 1 AF 16/2.8 Fisheye, 1 AF DX 10/2.8 Fisheye
- Dynamic Perception Stage Zero Dolly with MX2
- Astrotrac AT320 X-AG and Merlin with MX2

Transitions done with Apple Aperture (see http://vimeo.com/35998334). Edited and rendered with Final Cut Pro 10, Motion and Compressor. About 35000 TimeLapse images processed, 7500 used for this part of "Astronomers Paradise".

I hope we could at least capture the magic of this very special place a bit - this is how the night sky looks like, if people care about light pollution. And we need more people to do that.

With best regards,
Christoph Malin

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