From the distant past

This image shows From the Distant Past, a laser installation by German conceptual artist Tim Otto Roth, as it is projected onto the dome of New York’s Hayden Planetarium. The installation shows spectra (graphs that represent the brightness and colours of astronomical objects) collected by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, projected using a green scanning laser. These spectra include data from distant galaxies whose light has taken billions of years to reach us.