Compressed Time at the Australia Telescope Compact Array

epaell writes "I've been playing a little bit with time-lapse and video editing over the last week while Duty Astronomer at the CSIRO's Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) near Narrabri in country New South Wales (Australia). Playing with video is all quite a new experience for me but I had fun putting this together and thought others may enjoy it. I've captured a number of videos of and around the telescope and attempted to highlight not only the instrument and the skies but also some of the wildlife we encounter on a daily basis while observing there. It also includes an obligatory video of cockatoos taking a hayride on one of the dishes and the frogs in the control room that are our constant companions during long observing sessions :-) I recommend switching from 360p to 1080p and setting on full-screen mode to get the full effect of the video."

Comments

cool

[epiphani]

Very nice work. Can you tell us about your gear and what you did to get it all coming out so nicely?

Re:cool

[toxygen01]

The description has been updated, so you can find it in the link. But just to make life easier:
Equipment: Canon 5D Mk II (for all video and time-lapse imagery);
Canon 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye (for wide-field shots);
Canon 75-300mm f/4-5.6 (for animal scenes and zoom shots);
Canon TC80N3 Timer Remote Control ... and a cheap broken tripod :-(

Software: Quicktime Pro (to generate video from stills); iMovie to edit and compile movie.

More things to see

[a_ghostwheel]

For those who like that kind of stuff, also check out this video - one of the best I've seen so far.

Re:More things to see

[Schwarzy]

This one is nice too: http://vimeo.com/23205323

Since two weeks, I saw very good videos of this kind.

Re:More things to see

[Verteiron]

Don't forget this one. Some of the best aurora footage I've ever seen.

Re:More things to see

[juventasone]

Right. I don't understand why this is on Slashdot. I've watched dozens of nature and astrophotography time lapses, and most are better than this one.

Re:More things to see

[psydad]

Also this one from the VLT in Chile - stunning stuff!! http://youtu.be/wFpeM3fxJoQ

Thank you

[Pharmboy]

Very, very nicely done work. Thank you for the break, and the demonstration of why art and science aren't always two different things.

Re:Thank you

[excelsior_gr]

They are pretty much the same thing: well done science is a piece of art.

Re:Slashdot: News for Nerds, stuff that matters

[Anonymous Coward]

get off my lawn

Needs more general relativity

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty! Why not show some of the array's results though, or at least a photo of the horrific GR that we know all you cosmologists cook up to scare the rest of us ;-)

Re:Needs more general relativity

[NixieBunny]

You wouldn't want to see the results! Generally speaking, radio telescopes produce graphs instead of pictures as their product. I work in submillimeter-wave spectroscopy, which produces a spectral plot labeled in Kelvins (Y axis) and km/second (X axis) with a spike in the middle indicating a detection. I've seen the results of an interferometry run (millimeter-wave VLBI), and it's enough to confuse me greatly. A bunch of graphs with axes labeled in units I've never heard of.

Re:Slashdot: News for Nerds, stuff that matters

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Yeah, he's right! We should go back to arguing about which smartphone OS is the best!

Kompressed Time

[Anonymous Coward]

I was hoping this would have to do with Final Fantasy VIII.

Very nice!

[davesque]

It's always great to see people undertaking personal projects like this and putting something really nice together!

Another video

[excelsior_gr]

This is in the same spirit, from VLT in Chile:
http://www.youtube.com/user/NikoBustos#p/a/u/1/wFpeM3fxJoQ

Re:Slashdot: News for Nerds, stuff that matters

[ColdWetDog]

Smartphones are for pansies. Programming Editors are for geeks.

Emacs rules! (And besides, it has an OS built in).

We did something similar at nearby Mt. Hamilton

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything here was shot with a Nikon D7000 that my sister's ex- loaned to me and a friend for a weekend. Most of the shots are actually with a 50mm lens, except of course when we're obviously using a wide-angle (11-16 mm) lens. The morning shot we had to shoot twice because some stupid termite or something parked itself right on the lens for half of the shot, but it worked out well because there wasn't any fog rolling around in the first one, plus we redid the angle to catch the planes taxiing for SJC.

A Day in the Life of Mt. Hamilton

This doesn't happen much on /.

[axlr8or]

Finally something nice and.. Thanks!

What's that bird?

[aGuyNamedJoe]

I've never seen a bird rolling around on the ground playing with something before. What kind of bird is that?

Is that the same kind of bird as the group that's grooming each other later in the video?

Oh -- and am I correct that the lights streaking across the night view at various points are aircraft, and not meteors?

Re:What's that bird?

[Anonymous Coward]

The grey bird rolling around is an Apostle bird (Struthidea cinerea).

Re:What's that bird?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're right, those streaks of light must be aircraft. On a time-lapse video like that, meteors wouldn't show up for more than a single frame.

Re:Because it's from AUSTRALIA!

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You fucked off the Aussies and they modded you down!

Dog help me

[Reed Solomon]

Man, I read that as Australia Tesseract Array. Which would be pretty damn cool.

"The Dish"

[ihaveamo]

If you want to see a great nerdy movie about australian space telescopes (Specifically, Parkes), make sure you see "The Dish". One of the great australian movies, IMHO. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/

It's a true storey about the "Fun" that was had when a small group of Aussies and the Parkes telescope became pivotal in the apollo 11 moon mission.

close ups of animals with a wide angle lens

[Anonymous Coward]

cuuuute......very cuuuuute

Cool video

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool video.

I actually have had a chance to do a bit of work with CSIRO as part of my university studies (not in astronomy; in their ICT Centre), and they are a great organisation that all Australians should be proud to support!

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

If everyone can get their Youtube crap promoted on Slashdot this way, then let me have a go at it. Here's my laptop ranking video, using GPU score as rank factor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT5qsaHqYCM

This is why I read slashdot

[drgregoryhouse]

For articles like this. Thanks.

Nice.

[vegiVamp]

Nicely done. This wonderful universe we live in keeps amazing me with it's beauty.

When I saw the cackatoos ride the dish, just for a moment I got the impression that they now full well what's going on there and are tagging along to see what happens, too.

Well done

[bryan1945]

Very nice! I got a laugh out of the bird wrestling with the leaf/twig, and the frog at the end was suitably freaky. A nice blend of real-time and time-lapse work. And good choice of music. I look forward to seeing more of your work.
Good luck!