The forthcoming huge ELT telescope will have more advanced adaptive optics. Using 4 or 8 Laser beams to produce guide stars where the sky has no convenient ones.
If you like Astronomical puzzles, this one is fun:
https://www.eso.org/public/images/uhd_img1312pv2_cc/
What are we looking at here? I have turned it upside down to make things easier for us Northern Henisphere dwellers.
What is the Orange star on the left? What is the brightest near the top? When was the picture taken?
As an astronomer I know the Ecliptic runs through the Pleaides and Behiive clusters and near Regulus in Leo. I can see the Galactic Plane, or at least half of it.
And down the bottom is the Pink Carina Nebula and the dark Coalsack near the Southern Cross. Bottom right must be the faint Southern pole star Sigma Octantis.
Of course we are seeing the dome of the Chilean skies projected onto a circle with some distortions.
This is another co-ordinate transform of the whole sky:
You have seen this with the 2.7K Cosmic Microwave Background too, of course:
It is always a bit weird to try and figure out the distortions and singularities they each produce. Mathematicians can make the Event Horizon of a Black Hole go away entirely with a suitable co-ordinate transform.
All very clever.
If you like Astronomical puzzles, this one is fun:
https://www.eso.org/public/images/uhd_img1312pv2_cc/
What are we looking at here? I have turned it upside down to make things easier for us Northern Henisphere dwellers.
What is the Orange star on the left? What is the brightest near the top? When was the picture taken?
As an astronomer I know the Ecliptic runs through the Pleaides and Behiive clusters and near Regulus in Leo. I can see the Galactic Plane, or at least half of it.
And down the bottom is the Pink Carina Nebula and the dark Coalsack near the Southern Cross. Bottom right must be the faint Southern pole star Sigma Octantis.
Of course we are seeing the dome of the Chilean skies projected onto a circle with some distortions.
This is another co-ordinate transform of the whole sky:
You have seen this with the 2.7K Cosmic Microwave Background too, of course:
It is always a bit weird to try and figure out the distortions and singularities they each produce. Mathematicians can make the Event Horizon of a Black Hole go away entirely with a suitable co-ordinate transform.
All very clever.
I have been beavering away at this Astronomy puzzle... as is my wont.... 🙄
I decided to guess where the Ecliptic and Equatorial curves are and thus the North/South line. This is a bit rough and ready but vaguely correct I think:
This is called conformal mapping, and straight lines become circles when off-centre. That is orange Mars at bright opposition on the left, near Spica in Virgo.
The Ecliptic curve then goes below Leo, through the Beehive and Gemini the Twins and onto bright Jupiter and then into Taurus and the Pleiades!
I have worked out this alignment occurred around 1st April 2014. You might also guess the Atacama desert is about -25 degrees latitude.
The South Pole star must be somewhere near the Small Magellanic Cloud on a line to Carina Nebula. And it was taken early evening.
I worked out the date from the sky map from the UK.
https://in-the-sky.org/skymap.php
Surprising what the trained eye can see in the sky, I think you'll agree.
Horse trainers are like this too. They just look at a horse walking to know if it is any good. A skill I lack! 😡
I decided to guess where the Ecliptic and Equatorial curves are and thus the North/South line. This is a bit rough and ready but vaguely correct I think:
This is called conformal mapping, and straight lines become circles when off-centre. That is orange Mars at bright opposition on the left, near Spica in Virgo.
The Ecliptic curve then goes below Leo, through the Beehive and Gemini the Twins and onto bright Jupiter and then into Taurus and the Pleiades!
I have worked out this alignment occurred around 1st April 2014. You might also guess the Atacama desert is about -25 degrees latitude.
The South Pole star must be somewhere near the Small Magellanic Cloud on a line to Carina Nebula. And it was taken early evening.
I worked out the date from the sky map from the UK.
https://in-the-sky.org/skymap.php
Surprising what the trained eye can see in the sky, I think you'll agree.
Horse trainers are like this too. They just look at a horse walking to know if it is any good. A skill I lack! 😡
We were perusing my July copy of Astronomy Now in the watering hole yesterday. Everyone was impressed with glowing pictures of Nebulas and expensive telescopes.
I decided to quiz Pistol Pete on what he made of my poorly reproduced picture by Gordon Mackie in the reader's pics section, for which he won a massive 15 pound voucher, to be spent on exciting mail order products from the magazine...
I know. It's a bit foggy Turneresque due to my poor photography. It's better in the original. Technically 35mm f2.8 full frame Canon DSLR, 15 seconds and ISO 5000.
Very dark skies up in Loch More, Northern Scotland. Anyway Pete identified Orion correctly, but was stumped what the bright two stars left and right were.
As it goes, I can see the Rosette Nebula above the man's head at the top, which is on my list of things to snap.
It would have been the icing on the cake to include Procyon in the top left, which is an oft overlooked star, despite being in the Top Ten:
Pete then surprised me by spotting a group of stars I knew nothing about. The Teaspoon! Next to the Teapot of Sagittarius which is low in the South at this time of year:
I have snapped this one myself, but polluted by the wretched lights of Bembridge, IOW.
Every day a school day.
I decided to quiz Pistol Pete on what he made of my poorly reproduced picture by Gordon Mackie in the reader's pics section, for which he won a massive 15 pound voucher, to be spent on exciting mail order products from the magazine...
I know. It's a bit foggy Turneresque due to my poor photography. It's better in the original. Technically 35mm f2.8 full frame Canon DSLR, 15 seconds and ISO 5000.
Very dark skies up in Loch More, Northern Scotland. Anyway Pete identified Orion correctly, but was stumped what the bright two stars left and right were.
As it goes, I can see the Rosette Nebula above the man's head at the top, which is on my list of things to snap.
It would have been the icing on the cake to include Procyon in the top left, which is an oft overlooked star, despite being in the Top Ten:
Pete then surprised me by spotting a group of stars I knew nothing about. The Teaspoon! Next to the Teapot of Sagittarius which is low in the South at this time of year:
I have snapped this one myself, but polluted by the wretched lights of Bembridge, IOW.
Every day a school day.
According to the 'Astronomy Now' magazine referred to by Steve, the 'Hubble tension' may at last have been resolved!
https://astronomynow.com/2025/06/09/is-the-hubble-tension-resolved/
Followers of this thread will remember that the 'Hubble tension' refers to a long-standing disagreement over the universe’s expansion rate when local measurements (Type 1a supernovae etc.) are compared with early universe (CMB) measurements.
Now, refined distance measurements from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope may have resolved the disagreement, having resulted in expansion rates from local and early universe observations whose margins of error now overlap (full figures in above link).
If such results continue to hold up, it would mean the standard (Lambda-CDM) model of cosmology is no longer under threat.
https://astronomynow.com/2025/06/09/is-the-hubble-tension-resolved/
Followers of this thread will remember that the 'Hubble tension' refers to a long-standing disagreement over the universe’s expansion rate when local measurements (Type 1a supernovae etc.) are compared with early universe (CMB) measurements.
Now, refined distance measurements from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope may have resolved the disagreement, having resulted in expansion rates from local and early universe observations whose margins of error now overlap (full figures in above link).
If such results continue to hold up, it would mean the standard (Lambda-CDM) model of cosmology is no longer under threat.
It seems I missed some aerial fireworks last night!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0mygn38r4o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0mygn38r4o