When the MAVIS instrument ( https://mavis-ao.org/ ) is installed on this telescope in a few years' time we'll be installing splitters to divide each of these laser beams into two, increasing the total number to 8.
@AskPippa Since I feel partly responsible, and I’m guessing that you’re familiar with #science and #scicomm in the #YYZ area, here’s a happy photo with Professor of #Chemistry at the University of #Toronto Dwayne Miller after he related several “happy stories” to my wife and I at Little Anthony’s. 🍝🍷
One involved his grandmother’s pet moose, and another a #laser breakthrough that will revolutionize surgical technology! Happy to connect you if you’re interested in following-up on this.
This is fantastic news! And, amazingly, we can get 267Mbps from 80 times the distance between Earth and Moon just with a laser through the emptiness of space. I do have to wonder how far we can get this to go.
Could we, one day, watch “The Last Days on Mars” on … Mars? NASA recently beamed messages via laser across a distance of nearly 16 million kilometers as part of its Deep Space Optical Communications experiment. This could open the door to sending scientific information and high-definition imagery and streaming video to and from Mars without significant delay. Science Alert has more: https://flip.it/8XZweF #Science#Space#Mars#Laser#NASA
Working on a project to build a laser, first step of the evening was to cut a jumper trace so I can solder bridge the other path. This is on the driver board, which is responsible for taking power from the batteries and precisely controlling output to hold the diode at a constant brightness level (there is a feedback loop). #electronics#laser
I bet you've never seen a Jack-o'-lantern like this one! This is a spectroscopic mask: it only lets through light coming from certain astronomical objects, carefully aligned with those slits you see there. That light is then split into its constituent colours, from which we can work out the composition of said objects.
I cleaned the #k40#laser and #lasercut#disenchantment Lucy for #halloween and placed him inside our "new" outdoor light (vintage 1965 lantern with a DIY bracket and wired up for mains supply instead of a petroleum lantern).