This movie shows the whole night on Haleakala from an all sky camera we have installed next to Faulkes Telescope North. The camera takes images every 3 minutes and this is a 15 frame/smovie of the images taken on September 1 from 04:45 UT (just as the Sunsets) to 14:00 UT. The timestamp of each image is shown just below thedate in the top left corner. Below that is the exposure time, whichautomatically adjusts to the light level, meaning that we can also usethe camera during the day time.
Some features to note are: the brightness of the sky (the brightobject tracking across the sky is the Moon not the Sun!); FaulkesTelescope North in the top right corner, carrying on with its nightlyobservations; the clouds which quickly appear at 12:31 (note that FTNhas automatically closed); and last but not least, the Milky Way isvisible right at the end of the night, once the Moon has set.
We will be making the current image the camera has taken and a movieof the night to the current time available, every night. There are someglitches in the system which need to be worked out (like the purpleframes). Watch this space!
Thanks to Mark Elphick (FTN observatory manager) for installing the camera. Here is a new view of the night sky on the night of 7 Sept 2009. Sadly FTN spend most the night looking through the clouds!
