{"id":22506,"date":"2019-01-06T05:56:26","date_gmt":"2019-01-06T05:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=22506"},"modified":"2019-01-06T05:56:26","modified_gmt":"2019-01-06T05:56:26","slug":"a-laser-strike-at-the-galactic-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=22506","title":{"rendered":"A Laser Strike at the Galactic Center"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img src='https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/image\/1901\/vltlaser_beletsky_960.jpg' style='max-width:600px;' \/><\/p>\n<div>Why are these people shooting a powerful laser into the center of our Galaxy? Fortunately, this is not meant to be the first step in a Galactic war. Rather, astronomers at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) site in Chile are trying to measure the distortions of Earth&#8217;s ever changing atmosphere. Constant imaging of high-altitude atoms excited by the laser &#8212; which appear like an artificial star &#8212; allow astronomers to instantly measure atmospheric blurring. This information is fed back to a VLT telescope mirror which is then slightly deformed to minimize this blurring. In this case, a VLT was observing our Galaxy&#8217;s center, and so Earth&#8217;s atmospheric blurring in that direction was needed. As for inter-galaxy warfare, when viewed from our Galaxy&#8217;s center, no casualties are expected. In fact, the light from this powerful laser would combine with light from our Sun to together appear only as bright as a faint and distant star. via NASA <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/ap190106.html\"><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why are these people shooting a powerful laser into the center of our Galaxy? Fortunately, this is not meant to be the first step in a Galactic war. Rather, astronomers <a href=\"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/?p=22506\" class=\"more-link\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[10,12],"class_list":["entry","author-admin","post-22506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-whatsup","tag-ifttt","tag-nasa"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22507,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22506\/revisions\/22507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/finn-family.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}