The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO VLT) has captured the first-ever image that captures two exoplanets orbiting a Sun-like star.
As the ESO explains in its blog post on the impressive feat, observing systems with multiple exoplanets is ‘extremely rare’ and, until this image, astronomers had never ‘directly observed’ multiple planets orbiting a young star.
Credit: ESO/Bohn et al.
In this groundbreaking image, captured by the SPHERE instrument onboard the ESO VLT, two ‘giant’ exoplanets are shown orbiting the star TYV 8998–760–1, which is estimated to be 17 million years old. Scientists captured the image by using a coronagraph to block the light from the young star, allowing for the light bouncing off the fainter planets to be seen.
The two gas giants are approximately 160 and 320 times as far away from their host star as the Earth is to the Sun. ‘This places these planets much further away from their star than Jupiter or Saturn, also two gas giants, are from the Sun; they lie at only 5 and 10 times the Earth-Sun distance, respectively,’ reads the blog post.
This chart shows the location of the TYC 8998-760-1 system. This map shows most of the stars visible to the unaided eye under good conditions and the system itself is marked with a red circle.
You can find information on this image and future findings by heading over the the ESO website.
First, it is incredible how large this planerary system is! If it were 10 light years away, the distances between these dots could have been distinguished with a naked eye!
Even at these 300 light years, these ACTUAL distances could have been resolved with any half-decent household telescope (∼100mm ∅). (Of course, this is about the distance ONLY: this assumes visible light, no need for a coronograph, and sufficient brightness!)
Second, did anybody go through the paywall and found out how many photons were actually captured for each planet on this photo?
A member of the largest German photography forum is a Postdoc in astrophysics and has worked at the VLT, precisely in the pursuit of astroplanets. He has shared some of his experiences and described the inner workings and purpose of the VLT in one of his threads, interspersed with brilliant landscapes nightscape images he takes. Fascinating stuff.
I assume they’re emitting IR. The illumination from the star at 160AU will be 1/160^2 as much as we get from Sol, so their heat signature will dwarf any illumination.
Gas giants have a LOT of heat in them (from the same source as Earth’s core… the potential energy of their constituents is converted into heat during the formation of the planet from gas and dust).
There is no way the instrument captures more than the light from the planets, their shape should be totally impossible to resolve. So, the dots you see are diffraction disks. From the animation it looks like we see the exoplanetary system „from above“, so probably about 50% light from both planets. - except of course, the light is IR indeed -
The inner planet is massive, 14x the mass of Jupiter, almost a brown dwarf. The outer planet is 6x the mass of Jupiter. Both of these objects are relatively newly formed and extremely hot (1700K). What you're seeing is near-infrared light from the planets' own internal heat.
I was quite interested to see that the various Coronagraph types were a lot more than just a black blob on a piece of transparent material...
E.g. "A phase-mask coronagraph (such as the so-called four-quadrant phase-mask coronagraph) uses a transparent mask to shift the phase of the stellar light in order to create a self-destructive interference, rather than a simple opaque disc to block it."
"Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us" ;)
Don't get me wrong - this image is a most impressible feat. But AFAIU, it is not the first direct image of an exoplanet, and with the aid of a coronagraph. It is 'just' the first image of a 'system', in the sense of two exoplanets or more.
The human mind is really terribly flawed. Before we knew about exoplanets we marveled at the uniqueness of our solar system. Then we found one on another star and were surprised. Then another and another. Now we realize it's nothing special at all, almost a certainty everywhere we look.
Can you imagine what human mankind could achieve if religion didn't exist. Because it is holding back science a lot. I am sure our universe is not unique either and there is actually a multiverse.
@Jones Indiana, On what evidence do you base your assumption that the Universe is not unique and that there are multi-verses?
Religion has undoubedly held back technological advance, one the flip-side, I think holding back scientists from developing even more potent weaponry is much more preferable.
Personally I don't. But scientist claim there are strong clues to that this universe is not the only one.
As for potent weaponry. Unfortunately more wars have been fought over religion than over anything else. They all claim to hold the single truth to then start fighting over it.
All technology can be used for the good and can be abused to do bad things with it. I don't believe technology itself is the problem, but the people misusing it for their own benefit over others.
In non particular order: racism, abuse, religion, money, greed, suppression and jealousy are the main problems we face on this earth.
@BobT3218 What are you talking about? Exoplanets are considered to exist in abundance - since the fifties at least. Even life actually. There is a significant chance nevertheless - according to current science - that a technical civilization like ours turns out unique in the galaxy, if not the entire still observable part of the universe.
@Jones Indiana Scientists do not claim so. This is Theoretical Physics and some hypothetical models *assume* a multiverse with varying values for the constants of nature (to address the fine tuning problem). However, none of these hypothesises even made it to theory status, an even modest level of acceptance, or any experimental predictive power.
In no way does any serious Theoretical Physicist claim what you wrote.
These ideas should never have made it out into the uninformed popular science mass media.
Really... So you consider Stephen Hawking's NOT a serious scientist?
He might have been as much of a inspirator as Albert Einstein and he was at least as important to science. Both scientist have been great contributors to mathematical science and physics.
Famously, physicist's Stephen Hawking's last paper before his death also dealt with the multiverse. The paper was published in May 2018, just a few months after Hawking's demise. "We are not down to a single, unique universe, but our findings imply a significant reduction of the multiverse to a much smaller range of possible universes."
It's true, there is no evidence there are other universes but if there were, it would explain some dilemmas scientists currently grapple with. Science is heavily based on evidence but it's not a necessity. Although it was casual observation that sparked Einstein, his theories that emanated from it are pure logic.
@Jones Indiana, Firstly, I do not support or condone religion. The claim that most wars have been fought over religion than anything else is totally wrong. Sorry.
Lets have a look at some of the wars within the last 250 years. Napoleonic wars, nothing at all to do with religion, 1.5 to 3 million dead. American civil war, which had nothing to do with religion, 600,000 dead. Wars of the British Empire, which had nothing to do with religion, no casualty figures. Franco-Prussian war, which had nothing to do with religion, 190,000-40000 dead. WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, which had nothing to do with religion, in excess of 100 million dead.
In fact, religion should be envious of secular war because secular war has killed many, many times more people than religion ever has.
Hawking was a serious scientist. Serious Theoretical Physicists formulate hypothesises all the time, marking them properly as such. Hawking is no exception. To confront the general public with hypothesises not even turned theory however, is *not* serious!
BTW, Hawking and Einstein are physicists of completely different caliber. The most known "theory" of Hawking is that of Hawking radiation of black bodies. However, this theory has a poor theoretical foundation (in the absence of a quantum theory of gravitation) and he has not contrubuted at all to the development of such a theory. I call Hawking radiation a theory because it makes measurable predictions. However, said measurements have yet to become possible, despite some debatable claims. That's actually sad as due to a lack of experimental evidence, Hawking never got the Nobel prize he deserved.
No scientist or engineer in their right mind would want the job. But then, I'm old enough to remember when most government agencies were run by highly experienced career scientists and engineers that had worked their way up through the ranks. Then some idiot came along and said these guys should be back in the lab and on the drawing board, that organisations should be run by business managers... and so the rot set in. We are now, decades later, paying the price.
What qualifies "scientists & engineers" for running, shaping a human society? It's clear that the existing personnel is not good, but simply replacing them with specialists who are good in their field won't automatically make things better, either. And then I'm not even talking about the external restrictions on what heads of state can ever do, imposed by an economy that is responsible for a major amount of what is going wrong in this world.
Placing actual scientists in charge of things which obviously benefit from it, might be an improvement over "draining the swamp" with oil industry execs and other lobbyists and grifters.
Placing people competent within their fields into the regulatory agencies for them (EPA, NOAA, DoE, etc..) would be a good start.
Scientists and engineers are much better used at their technical jobs where they can contribute most to the society. For example Elon Musk can do the most when he spends 100% of his work time at Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink. He has direct control of his companies and can change plans quickly when needed (Starship development for example), he wouldn't have the luxury in any political position.
President should be someone with great leadership skills, someone wanting to move the country forward instead of waging wars against his political opponents, someone inspiring new generation of citizens to work toward common goal for a better society instead of trying to boost his fragile ego.
President also should be smart enough to have group of advisors and assitents who can manage the more specific things, from engineering problems, to science research, to social issues. Those can then reach out to each individual scientist and engineer should they need help in specific projects.
@Mr Bolton – I generally agree, but then again @themountainphotographer isn't really wrong, either. I just guess "scientist" or "engineer" isn't enough. It's also necessary that they know – and want to know – quite much about the consequences of things on the planet and on mankind...
If it weren’t for scientific advances we’d be living in fear of plague, most of us would be peasant farmers or hunter gatherers living subsistence, and dying before 40, if we made it through childhood.
The main destructive thing science has done is extended human life expectancy and improved agricultural production, leading to overpopulation. If you want to blame that on science, go for it.
@Tonio, then I prithee, who developed nuclear weapons, cluster munitions, MOAB, LGBs, APFSDS, chemical and biological weapons? Or who originated the technology that gave us oil refineries, factories that belch forth millions of tonnes of pollutants et cetera.
Neither is the world over populated. There is plenty of space (it is selfishly mismanaged), there would be more but Agent Smith (Matrix) expresses it more eloquently than I.
Europe alone wastes enough food each year to feed the worlds 850 million, not once, but four times over.
Scientists and engineers have eluded responsibility for some of their endeavours for far too long.
@cjbre, I would be surprised if you actually agreed with me. I respect your opinion.
Most of those weapons technologies were fostered in the 20th century by America's military industrial complex, in a foolish arms race with Russia's equivalent.
That is not the fault of science; also a lot of good tech came from that arms race. But it was and is still pretty ridiculous how much money we throw away to feed the MIC. BTW, President Carter was the only 20th century President to start zero new wars-and in fact caused the government to shut down for two weeks once over Republican congressmens' insistence on us building yet another aircraft carrier that we didn't need. That we still don't need.
@Tonio Loewald: Noone questioned the good in science, but that's not the point. This is not a question of whether we want science or not, of course we want it. But it's just a tool. And it depends on which hands it gets into whether a tool is good or bad. In the past 200 years, science has often enough been in the wrong hands, been used for bad things. Much has already been mentioned here, so I won't repeat it, but those things have been so bad and continue to be so that this planet is verging on irreversibly becoming inhabitable.
And no, overpopulation is not an effect of modern agriculture. On the contrary, the few regions in whch population growth is still high are the least developed ones. And the reason for it is that the achievments of civilization are not evenly spread throughout the world, because science was always primarily used for the profit of those who already had it, not the rest.
"overpopulation is not an effect of modern agriculture" There are many factors and modern agriculture is definitely one of them... Should we still be hunters and gatherers only, there would be an equilibrium, like with any other wild species, between predators and preys, and we would not be as numerous...
Because this is scary news ! Some evil aliens might live there... And considering these are giant planets, their inhabitants are certainly giant, too... ;-)
Why? Because it's nothing special. We now know that exoplanets are everywhere. The only thing special about it is that it was able to be photographed and thus it's on a photographic blog. The great unwashed out there with their iPhones can't do selfies with it so don't care.
@Karroly, if aliens actually existed and held hostile intentions against homo sapient, then console your self with the fact it will be all over very quickly. Not that they would want anything to do with this noisy destructive species. Afterall, mankind has been broadcasting its violence into space for some decades. :-)
@Karroly, I believe we should create a more prudent intergalactic policy for Earth. To Wit: We Earthlings have never been killed by Aliens we did not seek, and we would like to keep it that way! However, planetary-wide unity and cooperation would instantly improve if we received just a simple message from space! “We are coming!” Or maybe, if there are Aliens out there with a since of humor, but also like us unable to travel the vast distances that separate us, might send us that simple message with the hope that it cause an outbreak of civilization on our planet! You know, somewhere, anywhere! Hey, it’s worth a shot!
I doubt we would understand any communication from any form of life outside of our planet. The majority of our species does not, can not or refuses to understand that this planet is full of other species with whom we could communicate but instead treat abhorrently. Any extra-terrestrial species witnessing what we do to other intelligent life forms on this planet would do well to not trust us, for fear we would treat them in similar vein.
@ZV-1 You have to be careful not to anthropomorphism aliens as we so often do, like we call them "little green men". Most likely they will bear no resemblance to any life form we know. They certainly won't have human like emotions such as logic or compassion, very few Earth organisms even do. The relationship is more likely to be like a cow is to grass. Which will be the cow and which the grass remains to be seen.
Err, I made a comment... just for fun ! In fact, I do not believe at all in the possibility of hostile aliens visiting us (although I do think the existence of advanced extraterrestrial lives is probable), for many reasons. But it would take me too long to expose my view about that, and DPR is not the right place.
@Bob...Any aliens capable of visiting Earth will be far beyond our intelligence. As such, we are the ones in danger. I doubt they will be following the Federation’s Prime Directive! Remember, we share 98.7% of our genes with chimps! Imagine how difficult things could be for us if a visitors were JUST 1.3% smarter than we are.
I do find it amusing (and I am not pointing fingers at anyone here, it’s a general observation) that some people utter decry the existence of God but happily embrace the existence of aliens.
My criterion is the same for both, namely, evidence.
@themountainphotographer The quantum world has shown us that there are things beyond human comprehension and things that not only don't we know but are unknowable. Perhaps God lies in that realm of things that are unknowable. If that meant it has no relevance to you then so be it.
themountainphotographer, Believing in the existence of God and "believing" in the existence of extraterrestrial life are very different things. There is no scientific observation that would lead me to believe that there is a zero, low, high, or 100% probability that God exists. Many years ago, when astronomers had yet to find exoplanets, I would say the probability of extraterrestrial life was purely speculative, like the existence of God. But now, with the discovery of exoplanets and the estimation that virtually any star system hosts some planets, and that some of those planets look more or less like Earth, the likelihood that alien lives exist in other parts of the Universe is no longer a speculation, but a probability, in the scientific sense of the term. And the more we investigate, the more we find elements which increase this probability. On the other side, there is no progress concerning the probability of God's existence... And this is a HUGE difference.
Did I say probability is evidence ? No, I did not. But the ever-increasing probability, thanks to astronomical discoveries, provides more confidence into a possible extraterrestrial life, and thus strengthen the "belief" that such a life exists. And this is precisely this process that is lacking when searching for God... In other words, the belief in alien lives has a better foundation than the belief in God. That's why, even though there is still a lack of evidences, "happily embracing the existence of aliens" makes more sense than believing in God.
@ZV-1 You've nailed it! But then would they feel the need to or even know how to make their presence known to us anymore than we feel the need to or know how to make our presence known to earthworms?
Karroly, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that aliens(God)s stopped by, and manipulated the genetic code of one of our ancestors to create us, or simply stopped by and interacted with us for a period of time. In either of these cases, humans would certainly have thought of them as God(s). An ascription they might have liked very much. And in fact, they actually would be God(s) to our humble species.But does that mean we can have life after death? Now that’s a whole other matter. The only thing I’m sure of regarding that is that there is more than enough room in the universe for heaven to be as large as desired with room to spare. But bringing the focus down to what’s important, uh, me. Can I get in if heaven exists? I’m doubtful.
ZV-1, I am not against the idea of terrestrial life being an advanced alien creation. But God(s) and our hypothetical creators are different things, for me. Extraordinary powers are attributed to God(s) : immortal, viewing the future, creator(s) of the universe and uncreated, resurrecting the deads, etc... While our "true" creators may be, well, just more advanced than us, but with none of the "usual" God attributes... That's why, even If I am certainly an ignorant worm in front of my hypothetical alien creators, I will not confuse them with the Gods we have invented. ;-)
@Karroly Since the beginning of the universe, countless stars systems with there associated planets and possible intelligent life have come and gone. I haven't done the maths but I would guess the chances are that if we made contact, the alien would be at a level of inteligence so from us either way that we would probably not identify them.
"the alien would be at a level of inteligence so from us either way that we would probably not identify them." Worms are certainly not aware of our existence. But this is also because we do not speak worm "language" and we cannot set us at their level. Maybe worms communicate with each others and one day, when we are more advanced and knowlegeable, we will understand this language and I am pretty sure some scientists will test what they have learned and will try to communicate with them. This will certainly not be a long and erudite conversation, but this day, the worms will, more or less, discover humans...
Had a girlfriend who always said "Most humans are trash." Looking at America's current political scene and who/what we put into office, and keep in office.. I have difficulty arguing against that position.
@falconeyes, it's close in a galaxy that's 106,000 light years across, in a (known) universe with a diameter estimated at 93 billion light years.
300 ly is also unimaginably far in human terms, a distance our species is unlikely to ever get anywhere near travelling barring currently unimaginable inventions and discoveries. So yes, it is a great achievement to resolve such details at this distance. And yet in cosmic terms it's right next door.
Having watched Star Trek once or twice, I wouldn't say "unimaginable" is the right choice of words.. but yes, 300 light years is close in galactic terms.
I like Star Trek but IMO it doesn't really put such distances in perspective, thanks to magic technology that allows ships to travel at hundreds of times the speed of light.
Without looking it up, how big would you say the Federation is?
It seems to cover a pretty fair chunk of the Alpha quadrant. Voyager hinted at some Beta quadrant exploration, and IIRC Enterprise D got thrown into the Gamma quadrant where they were first introduced to the Borg.
Even within the Alpha quadrant, they talk about some journeys taking months to complete-however judging by how long it was supposed to take Voyager to get back from the Delta quadrant, I would say that the Federation doesn't even exist clear across the Alpha quadrant.
You got a lot closer than I would have without looking it up. Supposedly there are a few clues that suggest a diameter for Federation space of about 8,000 ly -- just a small bubble in the Milky Way.
My reply was for the distance to see an exoplanet from Earth. Of course is it nearby in cosmic terms, what a trivial comment to make ...
It is helped by the fact that the planets are hot young giants. And that SPHERE, the VLT instrument used, sees both near-infrared and visible light.
So, the planet only appears a million times fainter than the star, as opposed to a billion times fainter for a rocky planet. But 4 million times farer away than Jupiter means 16 TRILLION times fainter to start with.
So, even if you’d able to depict Jupiter with 1/1,000,000s exposure time using a good telescope (a tele should need 1/1,000s+), it would still take you half a year exposure time to depict this - and ten years to dispose of noise ;)
To actually see such faint speckles of light is an achievement not thought possible not so long ago. Commenters to the thread don’t really appreciate what it means to directly depict exoplanets. We’re still hunting unknown planets of our own solar system ;)
You know what? No, it isn't dark humor. It's racist and anti-Chinese. And whatever you claim, it is a talking point lifted right off the tRump train. It's gross and if I were a mod we would be having a discussion about it.
I'm not a mod, however. Just got my flame suit on for the backlash certain to ensue from the above..
I can tell you are aware of ignorance. Your low IQ. Your refusal to read. Dividing the world into political two-parts. You think I named VCG Visual China Group when in fact they named themselves. If you don't like the humor, move on. No need to start libeling people by falsely accusing them of being racist.
@mick232, Yes, some Hubble Space Telescope's (and most other telescope's) astrophotos are in FALSE COLORS but NOT ALL. In fact, just a small percentage are 100% false colors. Indeed, most astrophotos do have ENHANCED visibility in IR and Hydrogen Alpha band which DOESN"T make them Imaginary in any sense. Check the facts please before posting someone else's BS!
There is a reason why there are false color pictures in astronomy and that is to bring out the chemical composition in a nebula or galaxy. Of course, they are made to be appealing albeit, not the "real" deal, but that doesn't make them unimportant. This life is not only about reality, it's also about manipulated reality.
And @mick, if you are trying to say us that if we look throguh a telescope we don't see colors in celestial objects, try again after checking the facts! Almost all celestial objects are too dim to be able for our cones in the retina to perceive any light so the rods are responsible for any light discerning in the night but there is a big problem, the rods are incapable to discern colors. Rods ofers us only monochromatic vision. A camera sensor instead is sensible to colors during long exposures and also to infrareds and ultraviotes.
I was of course exaggerating. But the fact remains that you can get totally different images depending on what wavelengths of the spectrum you map to which color (and map at all). It is definitely not what you would see if you were closer to the object, but that is exactly what the average person is made to believe. What I find questionable about this practice is that it's usually not being disclosed.
I don't get why people are so bound to reality. Photography is not about reality unless it's a reportage. We manipulate reality because manipulations are our engagement in the entire process. Our eye have vast limitation in perceiving colors in dim light. Personally, I do not like false colors images but I do understand them. I have never seen any false color image on HST site that hasn't a description as such!
I first started to watch astrophotography since I was 14. After only one year I understood that there are false color images and it never posed me any problem. I don't see you to be a lazy fact checker, why would you make yourself an advocate for the lazy ones?
We ENHANCE our reality in many possible ways and that is ok. Making an image more contrasty or more saturated are reality manipulations that makes images a sort of "unreal" or to be more precise, SURREAL! Reality alone is not very seductive...
"Photography is an art. Astronomy is a science." --- Astro-Photography is an ART in the first place. You would be amazed by how scientific astro images are looking. They mostly lack any sort of added visual aestetic. Most are used in B/W.
HST on the other hand allowed us to see the Universe unlike any other telescope before. HST is also our investment and not all the people are interested in scientifically correct images. We would be rude not to satisfy their needs as well... But I repeat, more than 80% of astrophotography are in real colors with some enhancements in Hydrogen Alpha and Oxygen3 bands. Some of them have also IR layers. Just because we are unable to see some things that doesn't mean they are not out there...
When we say Photography we say ART. There are Astro Photos that are art because they are photographs and Astro images that are not art because they are simple images. We, educated people, do not call an image a photograph unless it is ART, or at least this is what we should do. Taking images with a camera is not the same as making photographs. When we say Photographer we say Artist.
At last, take it as follows: try to see celestial object not only as scientific specimens but as subjects in a landscape that we want to see in all their splendor which our limited vision stops us to see unless we use visual aids, cameras, telescopes, filters and processing. The HST images and not only, are astro landscapes. Of course, they are making also scientific images that are not published and they don't look nowhere near as those astro photos, it would defy the reason...
Your critique here by linking an article that explains the use of different filters on Hubble etc here is irrelevant. (I would add take images with different filters and then combining them is something even amateur astrophotographers have been doing for a long time)
This is obviously an infra-red image of some type and the near and mid IR is used extensively in protoplanetary studies / exoplanet hunting. If you read the original ESO blog post they are totally transparent with what they did to get the image and what instrument was used, and how it works. With further links / papers. As someone interested in this, I find the SPHERE instrument that took this incredible: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/vlt-instr/sphere/
Although I agree with Mick 100% that science needs to be as transparent as possible..... The colour of the star and the planet isn't as relevant as the magnitude and orbital data..... Colour is quite arbitrary even in terms of vision....All the stars look white when you look at them in the sky.....but when you take an extended exposure you realize that there are all sorts of interesting colours....
Just a few decades ago there was significant doubt other planets even existed outside our solar system.... Now you have a picture of it.... Whether it's real colour or false colour does it make much difference....
@Sirandar Stars can actually exhibit color even to the unaided eye. There are a fair number of variables at play which may need to fall in your favor but the color is there under the right conditions. If you go so far as scanning the sky with a simple pair of binoculars, then the colors are likely to be much more apparent. No cameras or long exposures needed.
Sorry, but by this logic images created with, say radio or X-ray telescopes would be 0% reality since our eyes are incapable of seeing radio waves or X-rays. Yet the observations made with them are representations of actual physical reality, even if our human senses are limited.
Basically it's not a lot different to what we do. A raw image is not an image at all. It's just a field of data that is firstly interpreted by the camera manufacturer's imagination. Then it's partly interpreted by the PP software designer's imagination and lastly by our own imagination.
That looks a bit similar to my own capture of Jupiter and its Gallilelan moons... but obviously a gazillion times more technically impressive - mindblowing, an actual image of planets around another star!!
. Planet X Lost Planet Planet Gear Bath Planet Planet Hollywood
Well, seriously, there are "rocky" planets like Earth and Mars , gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, ice planets like Neptune and the unfortunately demoted Pluto. There could be molten rock planets (lava) but we don't have any.
Thanks. Found it: Exoplanet A planet that does not orbit the Sun, but a different star, a stellar remnant, or a brown dwarf. A bit erudite for me. Could have called them planets.
I believe Pluto's lawyers are still arguing about the exact definition of "Planet", geez it even has a large heart drawn on it, who wouldn't let it be a planet?
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Photographer Stewart Marsden, the official photographer for the London New Year fireworks display and a National Geographic contributor, has written a lengthy tutorial that shows how to capture the best fireworks photographs possible.
Ahead of a full announcement next week, details have emerged about Xiaomi's upcoming flagship smartphone, the 12S Ultra. The phone, co-developed with Leica, will include the Sony IMX989 sensor, a new 1"-type sensor that Xiaomi reportedly developed alongside Sony.
Kosmo Foto founder, Stephen Dowling, has written a comprehensive tribute to the Olympus OM-1, a camera that set a new path for SLRs with its compact form factor and extensive lineup of lenses.
The Nettle Magic Project uses a hidden Raspberry Pi device with an IR camera to scan and decode a deck of cards marked with invisible UV reactive ink. The scan produces a full breakdown of the deck and delivers it to the performer in nearly real-time.
We go hands-on with Nikon's new compact super-telephoto lens, the Nikkor Z 400mm F4.5 VR S, to see what all Nikon has managed to pack into this lens, even without the help of PF elements.
Profoto's new A2 monolight is extremely compact and lightweight. It's about the size of a soda can and weighs around 770g with its battery and optional stand adapter attached. The 100Ws light is designed to be portable and easy to use.
DigiKam is a free, open-source raw photo management and editor for macOS, Windows and Linux. The team has recently released the latest version, bringing the app to version 7.7.0. The update adds many bug fixes, new features and file support.
The Nikon Z30 is the company's latest 'creator' focused mirrorless camera, a 21MP APS-C model made to be more vlogging friendly than ever. Find out what it offers and what we think so far.
Nikon has announced the Z30, an entry-level Z-mount camera aimed at vloggers and other content creators. What are our initial impressions? Better watch to find out.
Nikon has announced the Z30, a 21MP APS-C mirrorless camera aimed at vloggers and content creators. It has a lot in common with the existing Z50 and Z fc with a few tweaks and a lower price tag.
The Nikkor Z 400mm F4.5 VR S is incredibly compact, measuring just 104mm (4.1”) in diameter by 235mm (9.3") long and weighing 1245g (2lb 12oz) with the tripod collar. It's set for a July 2022 launch.
NASA and the University of Minnesota are working on a citizen scientist initiative alongside the Juno Mission and need your help. Volunteers are tasked with identifying atmospheric vortices on Jupiter, as captured by the Juno spacecraft.
The PROII CPL-VND 2-in-1 Filter offers a variable neutral density filter with between 3-7 stops of compensation as well as a circular polarizer filter. Independent control means you can dial in the exact type of compensation you want in a single filter.
Joining its diverse lineup of ONE R and RS action cameras, Insta360 has announced the 1-inch 360 Edition camera, co-engineered with Leica. The camera sports dual 1"-type image sensors and records 21MP still photos and 6K/30p video with a full 360-degree field of view.
Capture One Mobile bring Raw photo editing to iPadOS devices. While it's a familiar look and feel, it's clear Capture One has focused on providing a touch-first interface, designed for quick and easy culling and editing on-the-go.
Godox has announced the R200 ring flash for its AD200 and AD200Pro pocket flashes. The new add-on is a lightweight ring flash that works with numerous new light modifiers, promising portable and controllable ring light.
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