With gold-plated space telescopes promising to discover distant worlds and unravel the deepest mysteries of the universe, radio astronomy can sometimes feel a bit passé. But lest you think the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is no longer sexy, a glorious new photo collection featuring radio observatories across the US would like to show you otherwise.
DISHDANCE was produced by astrophotographers Harun Mehmedinovic and Gavin Heffernan as part of project SKYGLOW, an ongoing effort to capture the raw beauty of the night sky, unclouded by urban light pollution. While radio astronomers don’t have to worry about artificial light as much as, say, optical astronomers, they still prefer to build their observatories in remote, clear-skied locales. “We visited these radio astronomy locations as they happen to have some of the best night skies — especially in the case of Green Bank and VLA [Very Large Observatory in New Mexico],” Mehmedinovic told Gizmodo in an email.
We’ve featured some of SKYGLOW’s urban starscapes before, but this timelapse medley of radio astronomy facilities across the US is simply breathtaking. All those millions of stars….it’s hard to imagine somebody isn’t out there, waiting.
Still shots from the DISHDANCE collection will be included in SKYGLOW’s crowdfunded book, which is set to release in May of 2016.