My Orc in ESO. In the background are the two towers found at his desert home in Al'Akir.
Incidentally, what an absolute power move by Ann Savage. Imagine you're a grad student, you walk in to the control room of a brand new, state of the art telescope, the pride of both the UK and Australian astronomical communities, and you find the commissioning astronomer and the author of the telescope control system discussing what word to use to publicise the capabilities of the new telescope. You listen for a moment and then tell them they should use your name!
3/n
The AAT's Ann plate inspired similar stunts during the commissioning of later telescopes. One particularly noteworthy example is the @esoastronomy's Very Large Telescope (VLT) Unit Telescope 1 writing its own name in 1998.
By this point writing with starlight by moving the telescope was no longer an impressive feat. What was relatively new, however, was active optics systems as used by the VLT's huge 8 metre diameter primary mirror. This is a system of actuators which push on the back of the mirror, exactly compensating for gravitational flexure as the telescope moves, and so allowing a relatively thin mirror to be used without the images becoming distorted.
That same system could be (ab)used to intentionally distort the mirror in carefully chosen ways, causing the images of stars to be distorted into the shape of the letters V, then L, then T.
4/n
podfeet
boosted
From blurry to breathtaking: Comparing three views of the Carina Nebula. La Silla, Hubble, and James Webb show this cosmic landscape in ever greater clarity, illustrating how advances in telescope technology are transforming our vision of the universe and revealing its hidden structures.
#CarinaNebula#Nebulae#Nebula#Astronomy#Science#Space #Astrodon#NASA#ESA#ESO#Hubble#Webb#JWST#LaSilla#SpaceTelescopes#Observatories
From blurry to breathtaking: Comparing three views of the Carina Nebula. La Silla, Hubble, and James Webb show this cosmic landscape in ever greater clarity, illustrating how advances in telescope technology are transforming our vision of the universe and revealing its hidden structures.
#CarinaNebula#Nebulae#Nebula#Astronomy#Science#Space #Astrodon#NASA#ESA#ESO#Hubble#Webb#JWST#LaSilla#SpaceTelescopes#Observatories
alcinnz
boosted
Cracking little piece on how work mindset is perverting hobby time.
This is exactly why I am always falling out with the #eso crowd who want everything to be meta, whereas if I feel like tanking dungeons naked because it's funny I will
Cracking little piece on how work mindset is perverting hobby time.
This is exactly why I am always falling out with the #eso crowd who want everything to be meta, whereas if I feel like tanking dungeons naked because it's funny I will
Dane 🇮🇪 ☮️🕉️⚛️☸️
boosted
This is my second migration on Mastodon, so I think an Introduction might be in order. I'm moving in to this account (that had lived independently, to test some of Mathstodon features) after astrodon.social is being sunset. Hope that Astrodon as a concept still lives!
I currently work in Systems Engineering for radio telescopes (in particular, the ALMA radio interferometer). I’ve also worked in software development and management for the SKAO observatory, and for the archive department at ESO. Of course, I'm also very interested in math (specially that having to do with system theory), so I'll try to get a bit stronger there.
Glad to see you all around!
#Introduction#SystemsEngineering#SystemTheory#RadioTelescopes#ALMA#AtacamaLargeMillimeterArray#AtacamaLargeMillimeterSubmillimeterArray #SKAO#SquareKilometreArrayObservatory#ESO#EuropeanSouthernObservatory #Astrodon
This is my second migration on Mastodon, so I think an Introduction might be in order. I'm moving in to this account (that had lived independently, to test some of Mathstodon features) after astrodon.social is being sunset. Hope that Astrodon as a concept still lives!
I currently work in Systems Engineering for radio telescopes (in particular, the ALMA radio interferometer). I’ve also worked in software development and management for the SKAO observatory, and for the archive department at ESO. Of course, I'm also very interested in math (specially that having to do with system theory), so I'll try to get a bit stronger there.
Glad to see you all around!
#Introduction#SystemsEngineering#SystemTheory#RadioTelescopes#ALMA#AtacamaLargeMillimeterArray#AtacamaLargeMillimeterSubmillimeterArray #SKAO#SquareKilometreArrayObservatory#ESO#EuropeanSouthernObservatory #Astrodon