The authors of the time lapse movie are Stéphane Guisard, Valère Leroy and Jean Pajus. It is fun to see the PARSEC laser pointing to different directions of the universe over the night. I wonder what the night sky would look like in Hawaii, where there are several guide star lasers.

This is a time lapse movie made from individual images taken with a Canon 20Da camera and a 8mm lens. This accelerated movie shows a complete night at Paranal Observatory starting at sunset and finishing at dawn. That night, the Laser Guide Star Facility was in use and its yellow sodium Laser beam left its footprint on our movie. The laser beam creates a Laser Guide Star in the high atmosphere, 90 km above us. This 'bright' artificial star helps the adaptive optics system located in the main telescope, to measure and correct the distorsions of the images produced by the atmosphere, in real time and several hundreds of times per second.

The bright part of the Milky Way, containing the galactic center, is disappearing to the west on the left hand side of the movie. The Andromeda galaxy is visible also, as a diffused and elongated spot crossing the sky just above the domes. One can also see the Pleiades and "upside down" Orion constellation rising (remember this movie is done from the Southern hemisphere) together with the other half of our Milky Way . Finally the moon lightens the morning sky just before sunrise.

The hottest buzz right now in technology blogosphere is that Mitsubishi unveils Laser TV at a Consumer Electronics Show 2008 in Las Vegas.

Photo from PopSci

January 2008 issue of Nature Photonics has a technology focus on fiber lasers. Some recent research highlights are presented, like report of millijoule femtosecond fiber laser from Jena University. Several people from companies (SPI Lasers, IPG Photonics, Koheras) are invited to write their perspective on fiber lasers. Prof.

China's first lunar orbiter, Chang'e 1, begins switching on its science instruments today. The spacecraft should help determine the thickness of the lunar soil and shed new light on the Moon's internal composition, which could help in understanding its origins. via: New Scientist

The Technium is a book Kevin Kelly is thinking and writing aloud. On edge.org, there is an article Kevin Kelly talks about this future book and thoughts inside.

This is a seminar given by Andrew Walkingshaw. The transcript can be found here.

Phil (MAKE magazine) etched his Powerbook a year ago and thought it would be fun to do others and later spent an entire weekend etching hundreds of devices. Limor (Adafruit) thinks it's a good idea to do open source businesses. By open source business, they mean they are publishing how to use the high powered laser system, set up, techniques, business practices and templates.