Bad weather, but I've still saw a few messiers

It was cloudy, with hard wind, but I had to go out with a telescope this night. Because the weather was unpredictable I took the 90mmF10 refractor on EQ2 mount (my grab-n-go scope).
After looking at Saturn (it still is a very beautiful object, best at 90x) I saw that the seeing and transparancy were very bad. I still decided to try some Messier objects:
M57 Ring nebula in Lyra: very nice, best at 42x
M13 Globular cluster in Hercules: very nicely visible, but I could not resolve stars in it, also not at 180x
M27 Dumbell Nebula in Vulpecula: also very nice at 42x
I wanted to wait for Jupiter, but clouds came in very fast.
The Hyperion 21mm eyepiece I bought second hand a few weeks ago is really showing its quality with deepsky objects.
At the end, with this kind of weather, it is not bad that I still could see some bright Messier objects from my backyard.

Brassband Sirena visits Heineken Brassband

Heineken is well known for their famous lager beer......











But not many people know that they also have a "fanfare" (brass only) orchestra in their "Den Bosch" brewery








First Sirena of Hooge Mierde starts to play for the 1st half of the evening.







2nd Clarinets.....







Bariton section.....








The Heineken orchestra takes their turn for the 2nd half of the evening.








Trombone section...









French horn section....











The director of the Heineken orchestra....









And they played a Czech Polka...








Concentration in the horn section.......

Nice walk around De Moer near Tilburg

We decided to talk a walk in one of natuurmonumentens new area's: De Moer, next to Huize heidezicht.

Here's a very young froggy lying in a small pond.






A tufted duck...







A heron sitting next to the lake....







Here's a view on the lake...







Here's a nice froggy on the side of the lake....









And a libelle....









A nice field full with culverts...







Close-up of a culvert in the field.








Here is a very nice libelle sitting in the grass....








And a small roe- deer at the end of our walk!

Tartiflette

Ingredients:
1 kg potatoes
1 French reblouchon cheese of 500gr.
200gr bacon
3 onions, cut to small pieces
butter
olive oil
salt and pepper
thyme
150ml creme fraiche (1 small cup)
2 toes of garlic
1 bottle white Pinot wine
2 small buns (brown)
salad or aspergus

Preheat oven to 220gr.C.
Wash potatoes and cut in small slices of 1/2cm. Cook in salted water for 10min (must still be firm).

Heat oliveoil in pan, fry onion and garlic. Bake the bacon until it gets a little bit of colour. Add wine and creme fraiche. Bring to taste with salt and pepper and a little bit of thyme.

Butter the ovendish. Put 1 layer of potatoe slices in the bottom, add the sauce, add another layer of potatoes, and so on.

Cut reblouchon cheese over the middle so you get 2 round pieces of the same size.
Put on top of the ovendish, with crusts facing up.

20min in oven, remove the crusts (edible), 10min in grill oven (highest position)

Crust can be put on the bread.
Serve with salad and bread.

Live recording

For a live recording of our performance last saturday, look at:
http://coverbandtheone.come2me.nl/index.php?id=701833
There are also some other live recordings on our new website.

The Dutch Mountains

Today we drove to the "Holterberg", since the Netherlands are very flat, we are very proud of our hills and really call it "mountain", even if it is only 75mtrs high.






The road over the Holterberg is a very nice road through a nice natural park.









This was Marions 1st time on the Holterberg










Nice view on the park.

Saturday Night Gig

Here we are playing in Weert











Patrick laying it down!










Me, in the groove!








And Eric also, really in the middle of the groove!







Abraham was very happy with our performance!










Abrahams son also plays the drums!!







Groovin....

M13 Globular star cluster

Last Fridaynight was very clear again, I decided to photograph the M13 globular star cluster in Hercules. It is a large group of stars near to our Milky way, it is at a distance of 25.100 lightyears.

M64 Black eye galaxy

Last night I tried another nice object: M64, the Black eye galaxy in Coma Berenices. It is a nice bright galaxy 19.000k ly distance from us.
This is a composition of 14x 2min autoguided at ISO800, totalling 28min. I could not make more exposures, because one of my neighbors decided to let his firebucket go out, and this smoke came in front of my autoguiding camera. But anyway, I still was able to capture the galaxy.

M63 Sunflower galaxy

This night I tried to photograph the M63 Sunflower galaxy. This is a very bright and beautiful galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is about 37.000.000 lightyears distance from us.
This was my first real good attempt with exposures longer than 2min. This is a composition of 10x 5min at ISO800. I also tried automatic shutter control for the first time. From now, after adjustment/focusing, the telescope can automatically take pictures which is very nice. The picture came out quite well, also, to the left, Galaxy UGC8313 is very faintly visible. This is a magnitude 14 galaxy. Both these galaxies are part of the so-called M51 group (see previous picture of this on my blog). They form a local cluster of galaxies.

Clear night

Last night was very nice and even warm. I first put the telescope out to let it cool down and then collimated it carefully (aligning primary/secondary mirrors).
After that I started to view many galaxies and a few globular star clusters:
M51: Very beautiful, also saw NGC5195 neighboring galaxy.
M13: Beautiful star cluster, after looking periphery more and more stars become visible.
M63: Galaxy, centre well visible, very beautiful at 100x
M101&M94: Also visible, but very faint, at best at 100x
M81/M82: Very good visible, especially M82, even at 200x
This was the first night I could really compare the Vixen LV10 plossl with the standard Skywatcher 10mm plossl. The Vixen is much nicer to view through because of its long eye relief. There is just more visible than with the standard plossl.
All observations were done using my UHC-S filter (filters out street lights) It was a beautiful night, this night I am going to try to photograph M63.

Flying home....

And new terminal 2 at Warsaw airport is finally open. Very nice and spacy. Also fitted with this nice new bar.







And back with the LOT in a Embraer 170 airplane, was not very full, so I could sit on 2 seats next to each other.

Finished!

The kiln and it's control system are working ok! This night we did a test firing with real products and all looks well!