Winter Night at Pic du Midi (APOD 25 Jan 2008)

[Case]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080125.html

Very nice image from what seems like a rough and isolated location. By lift to work, and skiing home... what a job!

Also, the Pic du Midi website has some very nice 3D anaglyphs of the location. Bring out your red/cyan glasses!

[orin stepanek]

I was impressed with the layout of the facility. It must have beem quite a job building the place. Awsome.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pic_du_Midi_de_Bigorre
Orin

[gscall20]

This is a well done, beautiful shot. However, the caption says "looking south". Based on my limited backyard experience, Orion rises just a little south of East, which I believe to be more a more accurate description of the direction.

[Case]

a little south of East

I believe you're right. It seems to be aimed at azimuth 120°, i.e. the 4 o'clock position.

[Indigo_Sunrise]

While today's image is a beautiful one, I'm wondering if it seems odd to anyone else that there is so much light coming from those windows? There is an awful lot of light pollution evident in the image already, and I'm curious why the measures aren't taken to limit any further light pollution.

Or maybe it's just the way I'm 'interpreting' the image......

[BMAONE23]

What I found interesting is, in the center of the image, just BELOW the horizon (mountain tops), there appears to be a star shining in the distance, in front of the mountains.

[iamlucky13]

This is a well done, beautiful shot. However, the caption says "looking south". Based on my limited backyard experience, Orion rises just a little south of East, which I believe to be more a more accurate description of the direction.

The image data says it was taken with a 10mm lens on a Canon digital SLR camera. That setup will view an area 107 degrees wide.

However, the wikipedia link has a latitude and longitude. You can put that in Google maps, and if you look around (it's about 1/2 mile off target), you can find the observatory and see that it faces front wall is aligned roughly ESE.

What I found interesting is, in the center of the image, just BELOW the horizon (mountain tops), there appears to be a star shining in the distance, in front of the mountains.

Airplanes? There's two similarly toned lights near each other. They may be planes taking off from the same airport. In which case, they must be facing almost exactly at the camera, as there is almost no motion blur.

[auroradude]

This is a beautiful shot. I get vertigo just looking at it. The facility sure looks built to withstand some fierce weather..

One thing to note is the lack of color in the stars and especially the lack of color in the Orion Nebula. I wonder if the camera rendered it thus or if some type of color correction software did it.

The "mystery light" could be an airplane's landing lights headed towards the photographer but it could also be another light on another distant ridge, It might even be red for all I can tell, given the rendering of M42.

[BMAONE23]

If I'm not mistaken, I believe that the one just above the horizon is Sirius.
Could the Stars have been imaged separately and then added in. The three there do align with Sirius, v2 CMa, and B CMa, with respect to their association with Orion's orientation.

edit:
on closer inspection, v2 CMa would be in a different location than the light source below the horizon so that is likely a terrestrial light source.

[GammaJet]

Can someone explain a little bit how exactly this small telescope helped the Apollo mission to land in the Moon?

One of the APOD pictures' comment I've read in the past stated that not even with the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers are able to see details in the Moon surface.

[npsguy]

Can someone explain a little bit how exactly this small telescope helped the Apollo mission to land in the Moon?.

In one of the posts above 'orin stepanek' posted a link to this place's Wikipedia article. From that article is the following:

• A 106-centimetre (42-inch) telescope was installed in 1963 funded by NASA, and was used to take detailed photographs of the surface of the Moon in preparation for the Apollo missions.

Their English website at http://www.picdumidi.com/web/74-visit-t ... hp?lang=en says the same thing.

I suspect that scientists used the images to determine what 'looked' to be the least roughest area to land on the moon. They may have also used the images to create the LOLA simulator which was to simulate what orbiting and landing on the moon was like.


More info on LOLA is here. http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/info;jsessioni ... 73&orgid=1

Sounds like it would have been fun to play with.

One other note, there was an APOD pic of the moon from Pic du Midi from 2002 at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020419.html

[GammaJet]

Thank you for the reference. So with a bigger device like the Hubble do you think is possible to see a "flag sized object in the moon"?

[BMAONE23]

I do not believe that the Hubble could resolve an image smaller than approx 50' per pixel at that distance. Now after the servicing, if it can truely see 90 times better (deeper/farther/more magnified) who knows???

[npsguy]

Thank you for the reference. So with a bigger device like the Hubble do you think is possible to see a "flag sized object in the moon"?

Depends on the size of the flag

[neufer]

a little south of East

I believe you're right. It seems to be aimed at azimuth 120°, i.e. the 4 o'clock position.

http://bagn.obs-mip.fr/webcam/
--------------------------------------------
The distant snow free dry slot just below the left "airplane(?) light"
is apparent in webcam pictures as being just "a little south of East"
http://bagn.obs-mip.fr/webcam/index-grand.php
or at azimuth ~100° assuming the right edge of the "Est" frame is at azimuth 120°

The center of the apod shot, hence, is almost due East:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0801/Ci ... sallez.jpg
--------------------------------------------
Check back later and see if the "airplane(?) lights" have moved.

[iamlucky13]

I do not believe that the Hubble could resolve an image smaller than approx 50' per pixel at that distance. Now after the servicing, if it can truely see 90 times better (deeper/farther/more magnified) who knows???

Not more magnified. That can't be accomplished without a larger mirror due to the nature of optics. The new sensors will be more sensitive, however, allowing fainter or more distant structures to be observed. The 90 times is over the original equipment at the time of launch. Those cameras have already been upgraded at least once since then.

There's a lot of history in that one telescope.

[BMAONE23]

too bad,
I thought my etch-a-sketch was 90 times clearer than the original Hubble Optics package