The Night Sky Live for Beginners

A: A CONCAM is a CONtinuous CAMera that is placed somewhere in the world with a fisheye lenses to watch the entire sky every night. Each camera takes a 180-second exposure every 4 minutes, then relays the data back to nightskylive.net. Collectively, these physical CONCAM devices are part of the Night Sky Live project that also includes people, data, web pages, etc. The Night Sky Live project aims to make these images and data available to those who are interested.

A: This map of the world indicates where the sun is shining and where all the CONCAMs are located. Click here for more information. The pictures below the world map are the latest images from each camera. Clicking on one of these images will bring you to the main page for that camera.

    

A: These images are two versions of one 180 second exposure taken with the CONCAM at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. This is the entire sky as seen from Mauna Kea, and you'd see a similar sight if you were lying down on the ground up at the sky. Telescope domes line the rim of this fisheye image -- when at the image top a dome will appear to be upside-down! The image on the right is the annotated version, including star names, constellation names, and planet names, making it easy to identify which bright spots are what.

A: That is the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy. The band of our galaxy shows up very clearly on CONCAMs because the cameras are (slightly) more sensitive than the human eye.

Q: What's wrong with this image? A: This image clearly shows the moon, a laser beam, and a photon torpedo about to hit the observatory. Ok, well I just made up the laser beam and photon torpedo, but the moon is definitely a problem. Because the cameras are so sensitive, when the moon rises it actually blinds them-somewhat akin to a person looking at the sun. For more common problems and how to identify them, see the Night Sky Live Phenomena page.

A: Once you're at the page for a specific CONCAM, say, the camera in South Africa, just click the Archive link (http://nightskylive.net/sa/arch ive.html) and you'll see a listing of dates with the most recent night at the top. To the left of each date is an image of the phase of the moon, to help quickly identify which nights might give the best images.

A: UT stands for Universal Time, commonly known as Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT. A quick list of how to convert from GMT to common US time zones, go here: http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/zo nes.html. A quick internet search can tell you how to convert to other time zones.

A: The data collected by The Night Sky Live Project can be used by scientists to measure the brightness of stars, to study atmospheric effects, and many other things. For a more detailed explanation, see the CONCAMs for Scientists page.

A: No. The Night Sky Live project is inherently boring.

Well, perhaps there are a few images that are sort-of cool. One place to start is by browsing our Images for Discussion Gallery.

Q: What are the waves that we see in the all-night movies?

A: The long waves crossing the image are traveling ionospheric disturbances. Since CONCAM is very sensitive to the red, these waves can be seen clearly.

Q: This inadequate FAQ doesn't answer my question. What should I do?

A: You could either call the police, send e-mail to concam at mtu.edu, or answer the question yourself and e-mail it back to us attached to a copy of the FAQ html. We will likely post your addition!