Staring into the Kepler Field - a photo on Flickriver

When two friends and I first arrived at the summit of Mauna Kea last night, we stopped at the summit ridge by Gemini. I stepped out of the truck and saw a laser shooting from Keck above us and into the Milky Way. Overcome with excitement, we jumped back into the vehicle and raced over to Keck to get a better angle.

As soon as we got there, I realized the laser was pointed into the region of the sky known as the Kepler field. NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been watching that area since 2009 in search of planets orbiting other stars. The spacecraft has detected thousands of exoplanet candidates, but ground-based telescopes are necessary to perform follow-up observations and check for false detections. Keck is using its laser in order to track the turbulence in the atmosphere, and it cancels out the blurring effects of the turbulence in real-time by warping the telescope mirror hundreds of times per second. The end result is much sharper, more detailed images.

Taken in: United States / Hawaii (show map)

Taken on: July 31, 2013

Tags:

keck

subaru

laser

guide star

mauna kea

astronomy

observatory

milky way

kepler

field

tokina

16-28

16-28mm « less

Sets appears in: • Mauna Kea • Favorite Night Photos

Groups appears in: • Observatories • We love Mauna Kea more » • Hawaii Photographs • Hawaii Paradise • Landscape Astrophotography • Astronomical Observatories • Into the Night Photography « less

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, f/2.8, 30 sec, 16mm, ISO 6400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens:	16-28mm
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	30
Focal Length:	16mm
ISO:	6400
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Windows
Show full info

Stats: 13,801 views / 8 comments

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder