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.

M31 Andromeda nebula

This is the Andromeda nebula, also known as M31 in the Messier catalogue. Our nearby galaxy. This is an exposure of 13x10min ISO800 autoguided with my Eos400d attached to my 200mmF5 newton on HEQ5pro mount. In the bottom right also M32 is visible and in the mid right NGC206.



This is the same picture after extensive postprocessing in Photoshop CS2.....

German windmills

Last week after a day of hard work we went for a walk to see those windmills. In the fields around our hotel was say many of those giants.

Computersystem ready

After 4 months of hard work the computersystem for my next project in Germany is more or less ready. Last week my Polish co-worker and me hard to work hard until late in the night to get the system going.........Here you see the 3 most important computersystems of the controlsystem.









And here is the backside of the sytem, cables, cables and even more cables.........Next week we will test the factory control system together with the customer in Germany.

Pushing hard on the Schaumann project

Last weeks I already pushed hard on the Schaumann re-automation project. This week we are going 150% for finalizing his project......I really enjoy the envolvement of many teammembers to finish this project to its final endresult, everybody is doing everything he can......to be continued.

At the Hooge Mierde post office

I noticed I didn't post many pictures of my beloved VFR800 yet. Yesterday I sold my Astrotech 32mm eyepiece to a fellow amateur astronomer. Here I'm at the postoffice (annex breadshop) in the morning waiting for it to open for delivery of my package with the eyepiece.....
After riding the VFR800 for 1 year I must say it is a marvellous motocycle. The only comment I have is the rough running at low revs......but who cares about that (I don't.....)

Flying again with the Calmato

After a few days of building a new airplane (after the Protech Azurro crashed) I had my first flights again today with a Calmato. Very nice airplane, flies easier than the Azurro.....

New airplane

Last sunday I crashed my Protech Azurro.....I made a big mistake during takeoff (too much up) and after that my plane crashed. Therefore was working very hard last 2 nights to finish my new Kyosho Calmato.....Unbelievabe, many things are already finished and everything fits. My previous plane was much more work, it took me weeks to finish it. The Calmato is very straightforward and simple to build, it took me 2 evenings........

Eyepieces collection

This is the collection after a few years of searching and looking around on the 2nd hand fora. The latest additions were the 33mm Willliam Optics SWAN, marvellous eyepiece, did me a lot of good in La Palma. This island has so dark nights that looking through a 33mm eyepiece gives a very nice view with a dark background. The latest addition is a 4mm TMB/Burgess Planetary eyepiece which drives my telescope to a power of 250x....

Astro holiday on La Palma

Here's a picture I took on La Palma with a Meade 250mm/F4 Schmidt Newton and my trusted Eos400d. Because I could not get autoguiding working I could only expose for 15sec. This is a stack of 180x15sec@ISO1600.





And a crop of M27











Here I'm observing the lower regions of Scorpio through the 250mm Schmidt Newton.






We also went on top of Roque de La Muchachos where the international observatory is situated. This is a picture of the GTC, the largest telescope on the site, just before its official inauguration.




My holiday workhorse: the 250mm Meade Schmidt Newton.











We also went for a walk on the volcanoes. Here you see the Teneguia that erupted in 1971.






We also went on a boat-trip to see the Island La Palma from the sea, afther that our captain found some dolphins.....






And here you see one of the chicken that are walking around the garden next to our holiday house........

Open day at aeroclub bladel

P51 Mustang flying in the sky.....









P51 cockpit.








Take a parachute......and jump!











Overview of the "Static"







A Hurricane......








The Wright flyer! After some tests in the sky!







And finally: The P51 on the static.

Sun with sunspot 1019

Today, 1-06-2009, I made this picture of the Sun, in the top of the picture you see sunspot 1019....










Here is a enlared picture of the area.