a journey through time and space

This is a video of VLT (Very Large Telescope) HD Timelapse Footage, taken on location by Stephane Guisard and Jose Francisco Salgado.

I found my way to this glorious piece of video via the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site, although this is the longer version of the one featured on that site.

Here’s some accompanying text explaining how this video was achieved:

The frames have been digitally rotated so that it is the stars that stay (approximately) steady, and the Earth that moves beneath them. The video dramatically shows the actual rotation of the Earth, called diurnal motion, in a clear and moving way, as if the camera were floating free in space.

The telescopes featured in the video are the Very Large Telescopes (VLT) in Chile, a group of four of the largest optical telescopes deployed anywhere in the world.