
Astronomy Picture of the Day (timelapse with Earth rotating) - lostbit
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110601.html
======
eding
Flying over the north pole at night, my United 777 once flew perfectly anti-
rotation for a while, and then non-rotation when over the axis-pole. the moon
and stars never moved for over an hour - as the pilot pointed out.

------
zephjc
Hold onto the grass so you don't fall off! :)

------
ck2
Strange how some of those segments made me a little queasy.

------
narag
Beautiful. Our galaxy is pretty. I wish it could be seen a little more like
this with the naked eye.

------
wedesoft
Nice idea. But they only used 2D translation and rotation. Ideally they would
have used a homography (projective transformation). Unless other effects are
ruling the image (radial distortion, atmospheric diffraction) this should lead
to a better result.

------
dimmuborgir
The camera is turning at an angular speed of 7.2 × 10^-5 rad/s which is the
speed of Earth's rotation.

~~~
jannes
I'm confused. This is a timelapse video. So shouldn't the camera appear to be
turning a little bit faster than that?

~~~
lostbit
The idea of the video was to remove Earth rotation from the view. This removal
was digitally made.

One of the original videos used in this compilation - with the traditional
"sky is moving" feeling - is this one: <http://vimeo.com/22439234>. It's the
best, in my opinion.

~~~
jannes
Thats why I said the camera "appears" to be turning, because it isn't actually
turning. Sorry, I may have phrased that badly.

But thank you for the link. It's a great video.

------
JoeAltmaier
What was the deal with that laser? What could they possibly be aiming at?

~~~
pjama
Read about [Adaptive Optics](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_optics>)
-- The telescope watches the laser beam and corrects for atmospheric
distortions.

------
maeon3
Excellent new look that reminds us that the Stars are not spinning. A reminder
that we need to get off this spinning rock asap.

~~~
borism
_Excellent new look that reminds us that the Stars are not spinning._

Yes they are.

 _A reminder that we need to get off this spinning rock asap._

Why?

~~~
run4yourlives
Because it is just one of trillions of spinning rocks, subject to the same
concerns than any particular grain of sand on any given beach would be.

If we want our species to survive, we need to be more than occupiers of a
single grain of sand.

As to the first point, I think the poster was meaning that the stars' movement
is not the main cause of the nightly patterns across the sky, the earth's
movement is.

