A Little Rocky Planet ?? The Rubin Auxiliary Telescope (AuxTel), with its open dome and deep red interior, looks to be inhabiting a little rocky planet floating through the expansive Milky Way galaxy in this #imageoftheweek taken at Cerro Pachón in Chile. But in fact this image was created using a 360-degree panorama and composed into a photosphere image. The green and red light circling the horizon of the ‘planet’ is airglow, an atmospheric phenomenon caused when trace particles and gasses in the atmosphere become electrically charged or ionized. Their atoms emit light at various wavelengths when they recombine at night and faintly glow. The dark dust trails and red star-forming regions intertwined throughout the Milky Way are also prominently featured in this surreal view of the cosmos. Off in the distance, on the lower left side of the ‘planet’, the geometric dome of Rubin Observatory, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab, can be seen. Download the high resolution version here: https://lnkd.in/e6u2qf89 This photo was taken as part of the NOIRLab 2022 Photo Expedition to all the NOIRLab sites. Petr Horálek, the photographer, is a NOIRLab Audiovisual Ambassador. Credit: Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava) @petrhoralek #astronomy #rubinobservatory #milkyway
