This evening I came home under clear skies! Sat24/Astroforecast however predicted non-optimal atmospheric conditions: around 22.00hrs the seeing quality would drastically decrease. So I put the 200mm Newton outside to let her cool down. After installing, balancing and aligning the telescope I started the observation session:
First I had to look at Venus (for the 1st time ever) with my 5mm UO Ortho in the 90mmF10: nice view! It was not good for my nightvision, but what the heck: I never saw Venus before in a telescope. So things started out ok. After that the deepsky session started under fair/bad seeing conditions):
M42 on 47x (with the 21mm Hyperion) was a joy, the trapezium was clearly visible. M42 did not show sharp details which indicated seeing conditions were bad.
M43 on 47x was only visible periphery (and I'm sure I've seen M43 many times directly from my backyard!).
NGC2232: a simple open cluster at 47x. It looks like it has 2 arms with a central bright start in the centre. No background stars visible, also not with periphery looking.
NGC2250: a small open cluster, best visible at 31x (with 2" Astro-tech Titan). I can barely see it. It looks like it is not a star-cluster at all. No background stars visible. This observation is doubtful (it is also a magn. 8.9 object).
NGC2286: a lot of faint stars of almost the same magnitude are visible at 31x. By looking periphery more and more background stars become visible.
Do 25: nice open cluster. Many stars of different magnitudes visible at 31x.
NGC2301: nice open cluster at 47x. It looks like a flattened V. Many small groups of stars are also visible.
And after that some Messiers:
M50: Open star cluster with diverted groups of stars. Best visible at 47x.
M48: Open star cluster with regularly placed stars of almost the same magnitude. Best visible at 47x.
M67: Small open star cluster, just on the edge of direct vision on 47x.
M44: Beautiful big open star cluster, just fits my field of view at 31x.
M44: Beautiful open star cluster. Just fits my field of vision at 31x. Foregroundstars have all almost the same magnitude and are equally divided throughout the star cluster. By looking periphery background stars become visible.
M35: Beautiful open cluster with many stars. Just fits my field of vision at 47x. By looking periphery more and more background stars become visible.
And some other objects:
CR89: nice open star cluster, just fits my field of vision at 31x. Foregroundstars are all almost the same magnitude.
NGC2169: Very small open cluster. Best visible at 47x. Looks like some sort of "paralellogram".
NGC1746: Big open star cluster with faint stars of almost the same magnitude. Best vision at 31x.
Then more and more fog came......I decided to put my telescope indoors again and after that everything fogged up.
But at the end: a nice open star cluster night!
Here Patrick is layin' it down.
The whole ceiling of the small pub is full with wooden shoes.
This is me when viewing down on my 2 basses......You already see the floor-switchboard of our singer/guitarist. That left me about 30square cm to stand on......
Here the pub-owner is putting on some real rock-stuff!
Here we are busy again with recording the guitar parts of our new album.....
Mr. bassman (me!)
Cello busy with recording......
Me and Liev.....
Here the brassband is walking up front....
The Alpen-Express........
One of the bigger walking groups........
In my opinion the most beautiful car....
The prince-car
Last sunday our local brassband of Hooge Mierde, Sirena, performed many Hollywood-tinted tunes......They called it "Hailywood".
Everybody is dressed up with hats: Indiana Jones theme....
The audience with in the back the board of 11 and the prince-carnival.
Here's a view on a very nice birdwatching hut. We stayed there for a while to observe the birds.
There were 2 wild horses grazing in the meadow...
This is a view on the field.....
Apart from a group of ducks and a swan there were some buzzards roaring in the sky. Here's one of them.
A few weeks ago I saw this very annoying smudge on my primary mirror. I think it was a droplet of water that fell of the secondary mirror after a observing session.....Since it was almost entirely behind the secondary mirror it did not really influende telescope performane....but every time I collimated my telescope I saw this very irritating smudge.....
With the help of clean water with only 1 small droplet of dishwashing soap and some cotton pads I was able to remove it very slowly. Every time taking a new pad, dripping it in water, and slowly move it to the middle of the mirror, without pushing (only letting the pad clean by its own weight). After that I picked up the water with every time a clean pad....The smudge stain is almost 100%, only a very small one remains, but I consider that acceptable.
Here we are recording the drums for our new album in the Flash studio in Biest-Houtakker...
Last night was very cold, because of the wind. But because of that the sky was very clear. So we decided to go to the small airfield in Netersel with my 200mm newton telescope. I was the first there and after some time 2 fellow astronomers (morelinux with his 200mm LX90 SCT and g0t0 with his 250mm LX-200 beast). Here's a list of my observations:
Here's one of the lakes in Oisterwijk. It is -almost- frozen.....we saw some daredevils skating on some other lakes.
This is a view from the birdwatching hut on one of the lakes.
Here's a nice view on the "Reuselse hei".
And here's a birch tree that has been heavily damaged by (we think) a bird looking for insects......
Last weekend we had the so-called "soup-flying" with aeroclub Bladel. It was rather cold, therefore we had the hot soup. The airplanes were fitted with skis for this special occasion!
Here the Piper is landing on its skies.
And here it is safely on the snow again.
In the center is NGC2683, called the Ufo Galaxy. It is a magn. 10.6 object I photographed last night. It is at a distance of 16.000k ly from us. This is a stack of 22x10min ISO800 autoguided (totalling 3hr40min). It was a very challenging object to photograph. At the end of the session my telescope was totally covered with ice.
This is a cropped version after extensive postprocessing.....
And with a lot of work I could also extract a very gaint background galaxy. I'm still investigating which one it is and what it's magnitude is.
