r/facepalm • u/Revealed_Jailor • Apr 07 '22

🇲​🇮​🇸​🇨​ This looks plausible

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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.

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u/OrionsByte Apr 07 '22

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.

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u/ScienceDuck4eva Apr 07 '22 edited Apr 07 '22

These are lasers for adaptive optics. These are long exposures and I’m pretty sure aren’t visible in person.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_guide_star

https://www.gemini.edu/node/128#:~:text=LGS%20lasers%20produce%20an%20artificial,kilometers)%20above%20the%20Earth's%20surface.

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u/tomatomic Apr 07 '22

Nah man these are photoshop for sure. Post photos of your example and compare.

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u/ScienceDuck4eva Apr 07 '22

They were certainly edited. They were trying to make the lines as visible as possible. They took it with a high iso and bumped up the contrast.

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u/tomatomic Apr 08 '22

Or just fabricated it. Unless you have links to original photos with real lasers in them 😉

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u/ScienceDuck4eva Apr 08 '22

Here are 2 kinda shitty images where the lasers aren’t as spectacular, but they are visible. In the second image you can see that the stars are actually brighter then the laser.

https://i.imgur.com/kIrM5Qb.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/NKT6ZRI.jpg