May 9th Transit of Mercury

On May 9th the planet Mercury will transit the sun. The last time we could observe this was in 2006 but this was not visible in Belgium. From Earth only Venus and Mercury can transit the sun as they are closer to the sun then Earth. These transits are rare and with Mercury this only happens about 13 times per 100 year.
For Belgium and the rest of Western Europe the transit is seen from begin (ingress) till end (egress). Timing is set below - be aware this is UTC which means for the region Time=UTC+2h and these are depending of the location of the observer - changes up to a couple of minutes.

Never look at the sun with the naked eye!! Use special sun filters or use projection methods to observe the transit. Below figure shows how Mercury will move across the sun. 

Weather Summary Feb 2016

Comparing with last Feb 2015, we had more wind more rain and the temparture was about 1,7°C higher.

Gravitational waves

This week big news when first time ever gravitational waves were detected.  All information on the creation, detection and the theory behind these waves you can find on Gravitional waves - LIGO

Sun - Earth - Space-Time Distortion

Interferometer using Nd-YAG Laser - detecting up to 10-19m

Waves detected by both LIGO Observatorys

Compilation of the seasons in my garden

One year long, every month, i took a picture of my garden. This way you can witness how nature makes changes and impacts its surroundings.

Weather Summary January 2016

Half Moon - Sharp Details using Celestron 70 with ASI224MC Camera

Open sky for about 10minutes. Enough time to set up  my equipment again. Celestron 70 400mm with ASI224MC camera. The results are stacked using Autostakkert2! and edited using CS4. The result is beautifull and very sharp. Great!

Half Moon

Today it's half moon. Picture taken with my Celestron 70 D400 using ASI224MC camera. After stacking using AutoStakkert2 picture was edited with help from CS4. Seeing was poor.