Observing and Earthquakes

Some shocking news that has greeted me just now, that Italy has been struck by a devastating Earthquake and many are injured and worse. My first reaction is my best friend took a flight back to Pisa yesterday and I am hoping that the earthquake there didn’t hit them as hard, but my thoughts are going out to the people who have lost their homes and their lives, this is just simply very, very sad news. And I’m hoping of course that everyone I know in Italy has not been affected by this!!!

To top this all, me being typical me left my computer running when I was following the Virtual Telescope 100 hrs of remote observing session and fell asleep, the 3 days of continuous activities must have wiped me out! I’m getting far too old for this sort of thing these days! But I hear that the Gianluca Masi was observing at the time during the earthquake and was also making an image at the time, so here it is, an astronomical image taken during an earthquake, 

The image of M13 taken by the VT during the Italian earthquake at 3.30am Italian time

I’m also hoping now that Gianluca and co are ok !