Walking the 14 lakes route

Today we walked the 14-lakes route around all 14 lakes of "The Oisterwijkse vennen".
Here's a male duck.......





We had lunch at the Nature Monuments information office. Of course with a nice herbalife shake!






Because it is autumn, we saw many of these......Here are a few "tondels".

"Back to Business" event in Papendal

The event is almost starting, my sister is trying to take a picture, but our whole team is focused on the big screen....










David Heber is starting his presentation about improving nutrition and the benefits of herbalife.






Our team with Torsten and Petra.







And at the end we were treated a presentation by Alan Lorenz. Very nice and motivating presentation. Also very funny, we laughed a lot.

In total: a super day.

Vega

After very carefully collimating the telescope (readjusting primary and secondary mirrors) I tested the new adjustment on a bright star.
Vega, of the starsign Lyra, a very bright star only 24.3 lightyears away.
Judging from the diffraction spikes (from the spidervanes of the secondary mirror) the collimation and focus are very good now in the center of the telescope.

The Moon

It was so light this evening, tried a few deepsky objects visually, but nothing to be seen.
The almost full moon was so light, so I decided to photograph her, this is 1/160sec on ISO100 with Canon eos400d in prime focus of the telescope (200mm aperture f=1000mm).

Riding on the dykes............

Today we drove on the dykes in the area between the "Maas" river and the "Waal" river.
To go there, you have to use the small ferries of course...




Of course, on a sunday, you cannot find any single cafe or something at all (even a toilet) opened. So we decided to take a picnic on a dyke.

M57 planetary nebula

Look very close in the middle: it's M57 (planetary nebula) in Lyra. The estimates are that it lies between 1000-3000 lightyears away from us.....

M27 Dumbbell nebula (again, now much better)

Here's M27, the dumbbell nebula again.
It's a nebula around an exploded star, it lights up because of the radiating star in the middle.
The distance is about 1250 light years.
This picture is a composition of 60x 1Min on ISO800, shot with an eos400d in prime focus of a Newtonian telescope with aperture of 200mm and f=1000mm.

Walking around the Zwartven

It's almost time to harvest the mais......







I saw this beautiful libelle near the zwartven

M31 Andromeda nebula

The Andromeda nebula again. This time with extensive recalibration of the Eos400D and photoshopping.
This is a "nearby" galaxy, 2900 thousand light years away. It is part of the cluster of galaxies together with "our" milky way galaxy.

Running again!

So, she's running again, new voltage regulator installed, battery recharged, new front tyre (Bridgestone BT014F) and new front wheel bearings. The new F tyre is even better than the one I had before! Very nice.

Stranded.....

Yesterday after fuelling up, the fuel meter did not went up to full completly, this morning a few kilometers before Eindhoven the speed gauge started to flip up/down, and suddenly stopped, and then a few kilometers further the whole bike went dead.
Lights still on, so still a little bit of power left, but not enough to start, also not after removing the headlight fuse.
And the battery is only a few weeks old......so must be the voltage regulator. That is well known to be the only part that can normally break on a vfr......

M27 Dumbbell nebula

This is the M27 Dumbbell nebula in the starsign Vulpecula (small fox). It is a planetary nebula. It was discovered by Messier in 1764 and the first of its kind ever discovered.
It is 1250 thousand light years away from us.
I selected this picture from a series of 20 I made, this one was 2min with ISO1600

M31 Andromeda nebula

Ahhh, the first night out with clear sky!
This is the andromeda nebula, a galaxy 2900 thousand light years away from us.
Not bad for the 1st time, still focusing the eos400d when it is attached to the telescope is not easy.

The Moon

For the 1st time: the moon through my telescope with Eso400D in prime focus. Was not easy because there were many clouds, and some rain, so I shot from the inside of the house through the glass.
But not bad for such a night with many clouds.......

Blackbirds

Here blackbirds are "fighting" in our garden for the small water pool we always put near our garden table. Look at the middle one, he's the boss and guarding "his" pool very well.




Here, the "boss" is taking a bath after all other blackbirds have given up trying.

Small deer

Here are some small deer eating grass.......







But when I was about to shoot a real proper picture with my 300mm lens, they heard something and ran away......

Too bad.

And now this one, slightly bigger

Now we see a little bit more, but the weather hasn't been good the last days, I've only been able to see for a few minutes without rain or clouds.......
But my 200/1000mm newton on heq5 will prove itself. Last night I had 10min of clear sky to align on polaris, after that, when I saw a slight "hole" in the clouds with a star I could align and track it, for many minutes. So this heq5 mount, where the newton is standing on is quite a stable mount.

Current "telescope" 10x50 bino on gitzo

My current "telescope"..... 10x50 bino on heavy Gitzo

Working at the vacuum steel hardening furnace

Old, very very old, but still going strong..................this vacuum furnace was once the "pride of Philips"........









Some small minor issues with the control, but all is running more or less ok again. See the very mall fuse, right just a little bit from the top, it trips every time, because of a shorted motor, but we will find and solve it.............

Sitting in the garden................

Some nice clouds over Hooge Mierde...........







Who's eating our "boldistel"?







And here's another one eating our "boldistel"......

Slightly better moon picture

Improved the spraydryer again

This is the old -seventies- spraydryer. I built a new control system for it in 2002, but still some small tweaking had to be done to improve its operation..............

First they renewed the whole spraydryer chamber and improved the insulation.




And I replaced the very old max. temperature safety with two digital autoresetting ones. Before this you had to reset the button on the safety each time by hand after a power cycle.
This was very very annoying.............

But now also this has been solved, now the whole thing can go to the UK also!

1st time clear evening sky in weeks

Here's a nice view on a half-lit moon.....

Rainbow!

After big rain, we saw this nice rainbow over our town....

Sipping coffee in Leopoldsburg

So, after some riding we like a nice cup of coffee.........at one of the nice terraces of Leopoldsburg of course...






There was also a nice old Sherman tank standing next of the Cafe.

Pictures from Wales

Here's a nice waterfall........








And a nice church in Chester......

Kiln ready to roll!

Here it is, it is finally running more or less smoothly.......

Wales: nice things to see

A trainstation with a VERY long name, look closely.......






Nice mountains................







And nice clocks too.........

Day off: we go to see the aquaduct

Today we went to the Pontcysyllte aquaduct built by Telford.
It is a navigable aquaduct, you can walk over it and you can also pass it with a boat!




It is a real engineering feat. Built more than 150 years ago! The water inside the aquaduct is in a large iron trough.










This is a view from the valley on the aquaduct from the original small valley bridge over the river Dee.






If you look carefully you see a boat on the bride going from one side to the other.

The kiln we're re-starting!

This is the kiln from 1983 we're trying to startup, many things have to be repaired, but we did 2 simple testfirings without air/oxygen and this more or less went fine.
We have to replace many heating elements and some thermocouples though.......Here you see it from the side.





And here you see it from the "loading side". The big pipe in front is feeding the cooling air during cooldown.








And here is a view on the controlpanel, this is more or less still ok, it was built by us in 2001. Only have to upgrade the cpu and communication cards.....

But this evening the 24VDC/30A power supply broke down. Ordered one straight away from RS and hopefully it is arriving in the factory tomorrow.........I'll keep you posted.