Some pictures of some of our Black Forest walks

 This snail we captured in the woods west of the Gerstenhalm.

 Here's a view of the Belchen through the Muenstertal.

This is a view from the Belchen in the direction of the Alps.

 Here's our guesthouse "Gerstenhalmstueble" as seen from the Belchen.

 This is a very nice Swallowtail I saw on the top of the Belchen.

And here's a "Bergpieper" with an insect in its beak.

Nice walk in the black forest part 2: First observing session

 On the "Gerstenhalm" mountain are many flowers, the butterflies love this. This one I photographed while it was sitting and eating nectar from this nice flower.

 Buzzard vs. Crow: 0-1

 German "Wachhund"

Observing many galaxies on the "Gerstenhalm" mountain.

1st day in the Black Forest: walking about

 On our walk from our guesthouse to Kaltwasser we saw this friendly photogenic goat.....

 This is a view from the Hohbueh mountain in the direction France.

From our windows we have this nice view in the night.

Testing the VFR800 battery and voltage regulator

Here I'm testing the battery and voltage regulator of my VFR800. Engine fully heated, headlight on, cooling fan kicks in at about 106 degr. C. Voltage drops below 12V indicating worn down battery......Unfortunately garage already sold all of the type I need....So tomorrow to Rotterdam again on the XJ600s...

Dutch astrophotography day: Me showing my UGC10822 photo

Here I am showing my UGC10822 astrophoto on the Dutch astrophotography day in Mijdrecht, Netherlands.

German ATT fair: brand new MESU german equatorial mount!

Today I visited the ATT astronomy fair in Germany. I went together with some guys from Halley observatory. We had a wonderful day and also saw the brand new MESU optics German equatorial mount. This is a serious option for my observatory, 100kg loading capacity, servocat goto system and built to last with industrial electromotors.

NGC3972 with bright supernova SN2011by

This is galaxy NGC3972 with in it the bright supernova SN2011by.....it is still not at its peak. I photographed it with my 200mmF5 Newtonian, it is a combination of 5 30min exposures @ ISO800.

There is a very strange line over the picture. I think it is an interal reflection inside the telescope. NGC3972 is the galaxy in the center. Around it are many other galaxies that could easily be viewed visually from my backyard through this telescope. There are some guiding errors, because photgraphing in zenith is very difficult with my setup because of its adjustment.

Picture of the starparty last Saturday at Halley Observatory

Here's a picture of me looking at the Megrez/NEQ6 setup that was used by another astronomer to photograph the famous Leo Triplet. In the back some guys are watching deepsky objects through a classic Vixen R150SS....I really likes the views through that nice small telescope.

High resolution version of Arp199, incl. zoomed in version.

Here is a high resolution version of the Arp199 picture.

 

And here is a zoomed in part of Arp199.

Takahashi 1st relight: NGC5545/5544 Arp199 galaxies in Bootes

Last saturday night I photographed the NGC5545/5544 Arp199 galaxies in Bootes. The two galaxies are interacting with each other. See them on the center on this picture, taken with the 300mmF3.8 Takahashi astrograph of Halley observatory Heesch with my Eos400d in its prime focus. It is a stack of 4 20min exposures at ISO800.

See below an overview chart of the other galaxies on this nice picture:

The Takahashi is sitting in the small globe on the backside of the observatory.....This picture I shot just before the sun set...

Afternoon on the "Reuselse Moeren"

 This afternoon we walked on the "Reuselse Moeren". We saw a roodborsttapuit (English?) and a nice hare.

UGC10822 Draco dwarf galaxy (neighbor to our milky way)

Last weekend on 2 nights I photographed the UGC10822 Draco dwarf galaxy. It is a neighbour of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Standing on a distance of 263.000 light years. It has a magnitude of 9.9, but a very low surface brightness of only 17.2!!!
That makes it a very difficult object to photograph. This galaxy has intensively been studied and astronomers believe this galaxy contains large amounts of dark matter.
On the original 5h40min stack the galaxy was almost not visible. On this inverted picture you can see it. The picture also contains many faint galaxies, here are some:
UGC10854 m15.82 (bright left mid), 130 million lightyears distant.
PGC2577314 m16.38 (left top)
PGC2577420 m17.56 (left top)
PGC3136246 m16.20 (mid top), 720 million lightyears distant.
PGC2575568 m17.12 (mid top)
PGC2576050 m17.12 (mid top)
PGC4013667 m18.11 (mid top)
PGC2568758 m16.77 (mid top)
PGC3136201 m18.46 (!!!) (right top)

Used equipment: Skywatcher 200mmF5 Newtonian on NEQ6, fitted with Eos400d. Skywatcher 90mmF10 refractor used as guidescope, fitted with SC3 SPC900 with ICX-424 CCD.

Takahashi polar alignment successful!

With the help of a very experienced amateur-astronomer we were able to align the Astrotechniek CP-180 mount. After that I checked alignment with EQalign. It showed that alignment was well within 0.5arcsec on both axes, we left it like this. The azimuth of the mount is max. adjusted on the ad-hoc modified plate extension. The mount also had to be tilted backwards (like before). This mount was certainly built for lower latitudes. I already expected this during the first trials, but now I'm sure.
After that I tested autoguiding with PHD, the 100% aggressiveness was readjusted to 20%.
With the stainless steel Bahtinov mask and live view on the Eos the Tak was very quickly focused.
60s. test-exposures (with Hutech-LPS-P2 filter with full moon) were made of Aldebaran. In the corners I still saw minor coma, can be miscollimation.
Current status: mount well aligned, focus ok, autoguiding ok.
Next steps:
- Bring laptop of Halley people in order so it also works with the mount and the autoguiding
- Careful collimation of the Takahashi
- Search for max. exposure time @ISO800 with LPS-P2 and Halpha filters during night without moon.
It was a good evening/night, now we are ready for some nice astrophotography with this setup......to be continued.

Last saturday 9-4-2011: Starparty in Netersel

Last Saturdaynight we had a very nice starparty at our standard location on the model-airplane field near Netersel. We were with a large variety of telescopes: a Meade LX-90 200mm SCT, a small apochromatic refractor, a classic Vixen R-150S on EQ3-2 and 2 200mmF5 Skywatcher Newtonians (both on HEQ5pro mounts). When I arrived on the field there were some members busy with flying their model helicopters. They really wanted to see the moon, so I quickly installed the Newton in its mount so they could have a look. There were many oohs and ahhs, they said they first went home for dinner but promised to get back later that night.

After that many other visitors came, but despite of the moon we could still show them some nice objects. After showing M51 I tried the Whale galaxy on them. In the 8mm Hyperion (at 125x) it was very obviously visible to me (and other astronomers), however, the visitors still could not see them. After putting in my 33mm SWAN (30x) they could barely see it. This shows how much experience you get when you regularly observe objects. After that I made a comparison on the "Whale" between a 7mm WO UWAN and my proven (standard deepsky "weapon of choice") 8mm Hyperion. Unexpectedly, the Hyperion won on both transmission and contrast, I did not expected that.

Around 300am in the night the moon finally set and I was able to view some nice objects, here is the list:

Globular clusters in Ophiuchus: M10/12 very much resolved in the 8mm Hyperion (125x), M14 very faint, not resolved (8mm Hyperion)

Galaxies in Canes Venatici: 

NGC4631 Whale galaxy in 33mm SWAN (30x), very nice needle visible, bright. 

NGC4656 Hockey stick: also very nicely visible in the same eyepiece.

After that we went to the famous Hercules globular clusters:

M13: Resolves perfectly up to the outer boundaries in 8mm Hyperion (125x)

M92: Only outer regions resolve in the 8mm, bright center

After that we went to the summer triangle planetary nebulae, first Lyra:

M57 The ring nebula is visible, but details are not very shart in 8mm Hyperion (125x)

And after that Sagitta:

M27 The Dumbbell nebula shape is clearly visible in the 8mm Hyperion (125x)

I noticed that by 300am M51 was directly overheat in the zenith, so I gave it another final try:

M51: I was very amazed to see the outer ring structure in this nice galaxy. I never saw it this good.

2 weekends on the "Strabrechtse heide"

Last 2 weekends we had nice walks on the "Strabrechtse heide", there are a lot of animals to be seen. Here's a Stonechat (Roodborsttapuit)

A roe-deer (sorry for the unsharpness...)

A Stonechat (Roodborsttapuit)

A green frog.

Canadian goose.

Cormorant landing.

Little grebe

And last but not least: a black woodpecker!

Nice walk on "'Het Merkske" near Castelre

Today we went for a walk at "Het Merkse" near Castelre, here's a buzzard flying high in the sky..

"Dagpauwoog" butterfly

Woodpeckers.....

Spring is starting in Holland!

Last Saturday we went for a walk at the "Merkse" near Castelre, in the vicinity of Hoogestraaten Belgium. At the end of the walk we came by a meadow full of lambs...

Celestron CGE repaired!

After many months of struggeling, an Astroforum.nl member decided to repair his troublesome Celestron CGE mount together with me. I did some careful measurements on the electronics, the cooling of the motor driver IC has been improved. After careful testing this beautiful mount is working ok again! Now I have some time for the Takahashi setup of Halley again.

Here's the operation table, with 2 Fluke multimeters, laboratory power supply with current limiter and electrical drawings of the Celestron CGE mount.

Here we are testing the repaired mount, note the 1.5A current on the 12VDC power supply.

"Achterhoekweekend" of the Dutch www.astroforum.nl

This weekend was the biggest astroparty in the Netherlands: The "Achterhoekweekend". It was a marvellous experience, we could observe 2 nights. The Saturdaynight was the best, highlights were NGC4356, a m13.3 galaxy (personal record) and the Whale galaxy NGC4631. I also observed this galaxy in Norberts 18" Dobsonian, what a feast!

Here we are, observing many faint galaxies in Virgo, Coma Berenices and Leo......

Here I'm checking which parts of the CGE control boards are still ok......because there was 12VDC on the 5VDC....Only the resistors are still ok.

This is the 18" Dobsonian where I observed the Whale galaxy in.

Here you see some of the telescopes used. The biggest one is the 18", besides that are a 250mm travel-dobsonian and a classic dobsonian.

There's always plenty of stuff that needs to be adjusted/collimated/repaired. Therefore I always take my tools with me.

This is me dressed up in full gear for observing. Those winter nights can be very cold and I'm prepared for that.

No spare parts for the CGE......

Unfortunately, the spare PCB boards for the CGE mount were not received......This evening I carefully studied CGE problems and the electronic design. What worried me is that the specification of the RA/DEC motors is 18ohm, while the driver IC on the control board can continuously drive a load of 600mA: 20ohm. When performing a long high-speed slew this IC can become overheated. It can be replaced by a heavier version that can deliver 1A continously. Maybe that is a better option.