Did you know that stars can fight with each other out there in space? Thanks to this magnificent image captured by European Southern Observatory (ESO), we can see what it looks like. Located 650 light-years from Earth, these two stars were captured by ESO’s Very Large Telescope in a dramatic cosmic fight.
The world’s largest digital camera is definitely not designed for shooting selfies
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It’s not often that one has to wipe down, cover up and head into a clean room to check out a camera. For the guys at Gizmodo, though, when visiting the SLAC National Accelerator Lab at Stanford University, it’s a requirement. And it’s easy to understand why. This 3.2 gigapixel camera is destined to sit inside a telescope in the Andean foothills of Chile to survey the skies.
This is the best photo of a planet’s birth so far
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Photos of distant planets are fascinating, right? But how often do we get to see a photo of a planet as it’s just being formed? Scientists at the Max Planck Institute have recently captured a planet as it was forming around a young star. The photo is incredibly detailed and it’s the best photo of a planet’s birth taken so far.
This is what the setting moon looks like through telescopic lens
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Some photographers use lens compression to make the Moon look huge (this photo by Eric Paré came to my mind). But with a giant telescopic lens, photographer Daniel López made something spectacular. He filmed a short video of the moon setting behind Mount Teide, a volcano in the Canary Islands. And it seems so huge and fast, that you’ll feel like watching a scene from Star Wars.
Gaia space telescope captured this breathtaking star map of the Milkyway Galaxy
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The European Space Agency (ESA) just released the second star map taken by Gaia space agency’s one-billion-pixel camera. It contains 1.7 billion stars in our galaxy and is the richest star catalog to date according to the agency.
Sample footage with weirdest lens ever: Laowa 24mm f/14 telescopic macro lens
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After releasing the world’s widest 1:1 macro lens, Venus Optics have announced another pretty unusual lens. Their Laowa 24mm f/14 telescopic macro lens looks quite weird, to say the least. It’s designed not to disturb “shy” subjects, and it was presented at Photokina in 2016. So, it features an almost 2 feet long telescope with makes this lens officially the strangest one I’ve ever seen.
The lens is not officially out yet, but Venus Optics has released three sample videos to show off the lens’ capabilities. Looks strange, but it does a pretty good job.
The Dragonfly Telescope Uses Ten Canon 400mm f/2.8 Lenses to Detect Faint Galaxies
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While telescopes do a great job gathering light and obtaining images of ridiculously distant objects, even the largest and most advanced units are assumed to be unable to detect certain faint structures due scattered light which may be hiding them.
An awkward looking, multi-lens array was built to solve the problem – the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. Using ten of Canon’s finest 400mm lenses, the Dragonfly’s design significantly reduces scattered light and internal reflections within the optics, allowing ultra-low surface brightness astronomy at visible wavelengths.
