Slacked a bit on the posts last week and still have to do one on 48 hours at some point soon.  Things have just been pretty busy and mental at the mo.

In the meantime…  behold this very impressive timelapse footage of the night sky, shot around the Very Large Telescope in the Atacama, Chile.  Gorgeous.

This is totally freakin’ cool…

Amateur astronomer Nick Risinger travelled across the globe to capture the night sky on a special camera rig and create this 5000 megapixel, 360-degree interactive view of the Milky Way and more than 20 million stars.

Composed of 37,440 images, this giant image provides a high level of detail to our night sky and for me, gives another alarming call to how bad light pollution is getting at night.

Anyhow, to check out the interactive awesomeness, go to https://skysurvey.org/

This beautifully shot time-lapse video of the Milky Way galaxy shot a top of El Teide, Spain’s highest mountain.  With it’s high altittude (3718m) and lack of moisture, the images this guy has gotten are pretty damn amazing.

A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April () and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.

Be sure to check it out.