Tonight and tomorrow night, through the inky blackness of the night sky over Tenerife, Spain, a green laser is beaming into space to see if Rosetta's instruments can pick up the pin-point of light.

Kristin was hard at work all night with the team at Tenerife, and she sent us this image of the laser in operation.

ESA Optical Ground Station (OGS), Tenerife, Spain. Researchers at work in the night of 11/12 November 2009 to conduct a laser pointing experiment with Rosetta's NAC (high-resolution narrow aperture camera) on the OSIRIS instrument.

Image credit: ESA/K. Wirth

Kristin told us that they aimed the laser at Rosetta twice while the OSIRIS Imaging System's Narrow Angle Camera was taking images with Tenerife in the field of view, using a band pass filter suitable for seeing the green laser; the aim is to help calibrate the NAC. The experiment will be continued tonight as well (another image of the team at work after the jump).

ESA Optical Ground Station (OGS), Tenerife, Spain. Researchers at work in the night of 11/12 November 2009 to conduct a laser pointing experiment with Rosetta's NAC (high-resolution narrow aperture camera) on the OSIRIS instrument.The laser experiment is prepared and executed by: Zoran Sodnik of ESA / ESTEC, Thomas Schildknecht of Astronomisches Institut der Universitaet Bern (AIUB), Angel Alonso and Daniel Lopez Prieto of Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC).