For a real weekend treat, check out this beautiful time-lapse video taken by a camera mounted on a catwalk on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on Mauna Kea in – you guessed it – Hawaii. 🙂

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(If you don’t see a video above, click here to watch on YouTube.)

Wow…absolutely beautiful! Especially considering no fancy editing has been done…this is just a night in the life of an island observatory! I particularly like the lengthening shadow of the volcano the observatory is located atop, and the rise of the Moon and how it illuminates the ever-shifting clouds.

This video was made on April 23 via still images taken every 60 seconds. The camera faces east towards Hilo and you can clearly see the lights of the city illuminating the clouds, as well as flights arriving and departing from Hilo airport.

This “CloudCam” takes images every night and then archives them. They can be viewed and downloaded on the observatory’s site here.

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope was most recently featured in astro-news with its aid in discovering the coldest-known star yet: a brown dwarf barely warmer than a hot cup of tea! The CFHT was used to determine the distance to the star, which is part of a binary system located 75 light-years away.

Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope / Coelum