Day 212: Making the MOST of every day

On top of the department of Physics and Astronomy is a satellite dish that spends its time pointing straight up in the air. This dish is the downlink station for the MOST satellite, a small suitcased-sized space telescope that is designed to monitor the light output of stars to look for signs of variability. Sometimes this variability is intrinsic to the star, caused by vibrations in the star itself, but sometimes the star's brightness varies because a planet crosses in front of it. Though this was not the primary design goal for MOST, it's certainly proved adept at finding a few such exoplanets. The lead scientist for the project calls it the "Humble Space Telescope" (as opposed to the better-known Hubble :-)

Back to photography, then: I've been waiting for a suitable time to get a good photo of the dish and have been wondering about how to get a better angle on it that simply a silhouetted of a dish looking straight up. But the other day I noticed it slewing around and I ran in to get my camera and get a shot, only to find it was back pointing upwards again once I returned. Today I was lucky as someone decided to move the dish around just as I was unlocking my bike. I already had the long lens on the camera, so all I had to do was point and click.

MOST satellite downlink antenna