Astronomical highlights 2014

The 2014 was a year with quit some interesting astronomical highlights.
The most impressive was seeing live the Space Shuttle "Enterprise" in New York. It was also my first time observing noctilucent clouds and my first article in the astronomical magazine "Heelal".

Startrail with in the background the Abbey of Averbode.

Since March I'm owning my personal weather station Oregon Scientific WMR200

My first time photographing Jupiter.

A lucky shot when photographing sunspots, a plane crossed in front of the sun.

More then 500 pictures taken to have 1 picture with lightning

Beautiful collored rainbow taken early in the morning.

My second solargraph from december till june.

This is a real wow moment, observing noctilucent clouds...

Standing in front of the Space Shuttle "Enterprise". What a spacecraft!

Double rainbow picture which was also published in the Magazine "Heelal"

Phantom sun or sun dog picture.

Time for Solargraphs

How to make your own Solargraph?

Tomorrow December 21, time to install your Solargraph. I'm ready as I prepared three solargraphs this afternoon. Location will be visited tomorrow and then waiting for 6 months on the results.
Have fun ... or better have patience!

Periodic Table of elements

When entering the lobby of the Campus Library Arenberg in Leuven, a life-size display of the periodic table of elements took my attention. This table of Mendeleev is presented in a way that each element has it's own box. And each box is representing the element in its's pure form, the way it's found in nature like minerals and some practical applications.

My Article published in Heelal

In the latest magazine of "Heelal" (vol 59, nr 12, december 2014, p 416) my article on double rainbow and the picture is published. This is my first article and of course is a nice recognition :)

Phantom Sun or Sun Dog

This afternoon @ Averbode, I could observe a beautiful sun dog or phantom sun. A Sun dog or phantom sub is a member of the family of halos. These are created by light interacting with ice crystals in the upper regions of the atmosphere. Sun dogs appear mostly as two subtly-colored patches of light (with red nearest the sun) to the left and right of the sun, approximately 22° distant and at the same elevation above the horizon as the sun. Best observarion time is when the sun is low above the horizon.
Both pictures are taken with Nikon D60 using a AF-S Nikkor DX 18-200.

Astronomical news

More astronomical information or links to websites you can find on my page Usefull Links.
An interesting website with the most recent and latest astronomical news is Astronieuws.nl.
The information shared is in the Dutch language, but they reference the original sources.

Double rainbow explained and Alexander's dark band.

A rain droplet functions both as a mirror and prism.

As the first, primary, rainbow is caused by refraction and reflection of sunlight within rain drops, the secundary rainbow will show up when sunlight is reflected twice within the droplet. This also explains the reason why we see the reversed order of the colors. Because of the extra reflection and thus light gets lost, we see the secundary rainbow less bright than the primary rainbow.

Another phenomenon is the area between the primary and secundary rainbow. This area is typical darker and called Alexander's band or Alexander's dark band. This optical phenomenon was the first time described by Alexander of Aphrodisias, 200AD.