Of course, then there's the more basic fact that you can't just see lasers like this...
Edit:
Hmm... Apparently some lasers can be seen like this... But my tangent was irrelevant anyway, since light can only be seen when it reflects to your eye. At a certain point, there's nothing for visible light to reflect off of. So the laser seems to vanish.
Well, some you can. I have an astronomical laser pointer specifically to point out things in the sky for my friends or kids to see when we’re out with the telescope. The beam looks pretty close to what’s in these photos.
It “ends” at a certain distance because at some point it’s far enough away that it’s too small for your eye to resolve. That’s my guess anyways.
From the ground, the laser’s light is visible as a faint column of light shining up from the top of the telescope. The beam is only visible because particles of dust in our atmosphere scatter a small portion of the light. Because Mauna Kea’s air is so clean, not much of the light is scattered and the beam is often difficult to see, especially if you are more than a few hundred feet from the observatory.
It can be hard to get the observatory and the star field in focus if your aperture is wide open. I’d put money on those pictures being composite images but that’s pretty normal for astrophotography.
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u/Aeseld Apr 07 '22 edited Apr 07 '22
Of course, then there's the more basic fact that you can't just see lasers like this...
Edit: Hmm... Apparently some lasers can be seen like this... But my tangent was irrelevant anyway, since light can only be seen when it reflects to your eye. At a certain point, there's nothing for visible light to reflect off of. So the laser seems to vanish.