To-Do: Feel The Motion of the Earth

Time-lapse videos of the night sky are mind-blowing:  they convey the motion of the earth against the vast and distant firmament in which we live.  Here's one of the most spectacular I've seen, filmed by two astronomers at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert of Chile.

(OK, ignore the cheezy music, but marvel at how the observatory's laser guide, which creates an artificial star 90km above the surface of the earth that helps the telescopes correct for the blurring effect of our atmosphere, follows the movement of the stars).

Update on Sunday, June 12, 2011 at 22:51 by Andrew McLaughlin

And here is what's described as a "minor edit", in which the stars are fixed in place, and the rotation of the earth becomes evident.  The effect is dramatic and astounding.