I have recently come across some interesting publications from the astronomical community. The first is Sloan at Night.

Here is a video of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and what it does in the course of a night. It has been running for a decade1. SDSS has given us an enormous amount of data because it surveys the the sky to try to understand questions that can only be answered with data sets of large systems. One question it has helped to answer is the structure of the universe. Also it has helped to understand rare new classes of stars2.

So here is a video of what SDSS looks like at night, from initial set-up, to middle of the night changing, calibration3, and more.

  1. to be honest I am not sure exactly how long it has been running other then it is in its fourth set of programs and each set takes 3-4 years ↩

  2. like carbon enhanced metal poor stars ↩

  3. when it looks like the telescope is glowing from the the inside. ↩