Walk on "The Malpie"

Yesterday we decided to take a walk on "The Malpie" hay just south of Valkenswaard. Here you see one of the many "vieuwthroughs" of the hay area.






The summer season was very dry. Therefore the small walking brigde was well above the water level.










And the birds are already moving south because of the pending winter........







And the mushrooms are growing very fast in this part of the year....







And here's an overview of the hay area.......







Here are some branches with red leaves......








And some more mushrooms.......







And here's a young mushroom just coming out of the soil.......

KSE Bowling

Last Saturday evening KSE went bowling at "The Vennebos".....It had been years and years since I bowled. The first leg was very bad, I missed almost every time. The 2nd leg started out nice until I twisted my wrist wrongly......

M33 triangulum galaxy

Last night I photographed the very beautiful M33 triangulum galaxy. This is a stack of 28x 10min autoguided @ ISO800. Combined into a picture of 4hr40min total exposure. There was quite some fog so I had to turn the heating up. Very nice picture, it is one my best so far.



And here's a version of my picture that has been reworked by an experienced astrophotographer.

M76 Planetary nebula

Last wednesdaynight on 14th of October was predicted by astroforecast.org to be a very exceptional and clear night. I had to take advantage of that. The M76 planetary nebula was already long on my todo list and in this time of the year it is in a very favorable position for me to photograph it from my backyard. This is a astrophotograph I made with my 200mmF5 Newton. It is a widefield image of 13x10min (totalling 3hr10min autoguided) @ ISO800.

And here is a crop of the M76 planetary nebula.

Spring session with the 10x50 bino in the backyard

Sat24.nl did not predict clear skies. Still it cleared up a bit around 23.00hrs. Because of that I hopped quickly in my backyard with my old and trusted 10x50 bino. Here the observation list (temperature: 8C, humidity: fair, seeing: bad (light clouds).
M45 Pleiades: beautiful and big open cluster. By looking periphery more and more background stars become visible.
M31 Andromedanebula: big and bright elliptical galaxy with bright big centre. It remains a joy to look at this beautiful deepsky object.
NGC869/884 Perseus double cluster: 2 beautiful concentrated open clusters. Beautifully together in the field of view of the bino.
M33: Galaxy is visible as a very big, but very faint nebula. Just visible by looking directly at it.
NGC663: Open cluster is visible als a small faint nebula.
NGC752: Big open cluster. By looking periphery stars start to dissolve.
M36, 37 and 38: Auriga open clusters: 3 beautiful open clusters, visible as small faint nebulae.
M81 and M82: Both galaxies are just visible as 2 very small and very faint nebulae.
So not a bad night out. Tomorrow the weather forecasts are much better. Very clear skies are predicted, so I'm planning to photograph M76 (The Little Dumbbell).

Relaint Robin Space Shuttle