Self built dew heater controller

The Dutch atmosphere is generally speaking very moist. This causes telescope mirrors to fog up. To prevent this I have dew heaters on my telescope. The ones I have are a little bit too heavy so they must be regulated. For that I am building my own 3 channel dew heater controller and 1 channel fan speed controller. Here the 1st dew heater channel is ready.........

An even more snow......

Here a Robin is looking for food in our garden.











And here's another bird looking for food...







Our wintergarden......even more snow than last week....







And here a wideview picture.....

Robin in the wintergarden

It is very cold, here's a Robin searching for food in our garden

Deepskydag 2009

Last saturday we had a meeting of the Dutch group of deepsky observers, many nice presentations were held (see the link: http://www.astroforum.nl/deepskydag-2009-aftertalk-topic-t23035.html) and we met a lot of people we normally only meet at www.astroforum.nl. Here are some impressions








The winner of the international constest of the smallest 200mm dobsonian in the world: Bert Boghelman.






Really everything you need, collimation cap, eyepieces, batteries for the secondary mirror heating etc. etc. etc. is put inside the small box.









Presentation of Jan van Gastel on observing in the French Mountains.......






Workshop on deepsky object sketching.................

Liev

Last friday our singer and guitarist performed acoustic in the tavern "Paulus" in Hilvarenbeek, it was a very nice and intimate performance.

Brassband Sirena Hooge Mierde music contest

Every few years our brassband has to attend a music contest. Here's the full lineup in "De Schalm" in Veldhoven.





Bass-brass section.....











Violin soloist.

After performing the jury stated that Sirena has acquired a position in the 2nd division.

My band: The One

Our latest band picture. See our website at: http://coverbandtheone.come2me.nl/

White Heron' spotted again on The Kampina

On Saturday we went for a walk on one of our most favorite routes. The "white" route that goes around the north part of the Kampina near Boxtel. Most of the time of year you see many birds over there. This time we were very lucky to spot a couple of white Herons. This type of Heron is very rare in Holland.
Here's one fishing.....



And another one airborne. This was a very difficult shot because I had my Sigma 500mm F10 mirrorlens attached......






And here's another one in the air.







And fishing again.....

Astronomyday 2009 in Goirle

Today I visited the astronomy day 2009 in Goirle. It was a nice day where many (both amateur and professional) astronomers gave presentations on what they were currently doing with various astronomy projects.
Here's a presentation of a 200mm Newtonian telescoped that has been converted into a F/15 system with 15% obstruction.


And an improvement to SCT's to prevent stray light effectively by using special baffles and diaphragms.






Amateur radio astronomer on detecting the sun at various wavelenghts.






Professional astronomer on roentgen novae.







An update on the current solar activity.

Gig at De Verandering in Hilvarenbeek

Last Saturdaynight we had a full house gig at "De Verandering" in Hilvarenbeek.

Magnetar

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

My 200mmF5 Newton telescope

This is my current astrophotographic setup. A 200mmF5 Newton on HEQ5pro mount (guiding/goto with Shoesting EQdir/Cartes du Ciel). I use a Canon Eos400d in prime focus as imager. For autoguiding I use a 90mmF10 refractor fitted with modified Philips SPC900 webcam fitted with a Sony ICX-424 B/W CCD sensor, autoguiding is done with PHD guiding in combination with a GPUSB interface driving the ST-4 autoguiding port on the HEQ5pro. Because I mainly photograph from my backyard I have to use a light pollution filter. For this I use an Astronomik clip-in CLS-CCD. For compensation of the coma in the Newton I use a Baader MPCC Multi purpose coma corrector. The exposures on the Eos400d camera are triggered with a DSUSB interface driven by DSLRShutter software. To prevent dew the 200mmF5 is fitted with a dew heater.

Autumn walk on Strijbeekse heide near Chaam

On saturday we made a nice walk on the Strijbeekse heide. It is one of the biggest forests in Brabant. Here you already see the autumn leaves coming on the trees..










And it is time for the mushrooms......here you see a few on a tree.












And here is a very nice one. I had to lie on the ground when photographing this one. Was not easy because there was almost no light.....

NGC147 Dwarf galaxy

This is NGC147, a very faint dwarf galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. This is a combination of 10min exposures @ ISO800. Totalling 4hrs total exposure time.
I took this picture with my 200mmF5 Newtonian telescope with an Eos400d in prime focus. I used a 90mmF10 refractor with a modified webcam as guidescope.

NGC869 and NGC869 Perseus Double cluster

Yesterdaynight was clear so I decided to photograph an old friend that I watch very often with my 10x50 binocular. NGC869 and NGC884: The Perseus Double cluster. The total exposuretime was 3hr10min, consisting of 13x10min autoguided ISO800 and 6x10min autoguided ISO1600. After the session the water dripped from the guidescope. The main scope was also starting to fog (despite the heaters) because of the moisture in the air.

NGC891 Galaxy

Here is NGC891, a galaxy in the constellation Andromeda 30 million lightyears away. The conditions were very difficult because there was a lot of moisture in the air and on top of that fog. I still decided to go on and took this pictures. It is a combination of 26x10min@ISO800 autoguided. Totalling 4hr20min exposure.

Wright flyer model aircraft

Experimental model airplanes Interexp 2009

This weekend was the InterExp 2009. It is an international fly-in of experimental model aircraft in Nederweert, The Netherlands.

Here you see a flying barrel





And here's the Wright flyer. It is the experimental airplane of the chairman of aeroclub Bladel. This aircraft was the first to see the skies. It is very difficult to build and trim. This afternoon a large hop was made....unfortunately followed by a small crash (some wooden parts were broken). It won the spectators' prize of being the most popular aircraft!


Here's a pulsejet airplane. The reason it was on this airshow was because it had a regulation on the flow of fuel to the pulsejet engine.





And here is a very special airplane, made of 3 wings.....The text on its wing reads: "What goes up, must come down". The 1st flight of this airplane had some difficulties and it landed in the mais. The 2nd flight (depicted here) was much better and it also made a nice landing.





And finally, "Patrouille de France", a combination of 4 model airplanes flying as one. The last airplane has a smoke pod.