Start Astronomical Winter

In the northern hemisphere the astronomical winter will start at exactly 23h23 local time (UT22h23).

Fix the date 23 january 2019 : Sir Roger Penrose

On Jan 23, 2019, Sir Roger Penrose will give a lecture as part of Studium Generale at Maastricht University. I made already a big circle in my agenda for this unique event.

Bathtinov Mask

For the first time I used a Bathinov Mask (in loan from Walter) to focus my telescope accurately. Putting the mask in front of my telescope and then pointing the scope on a bright star will show spikes. When the central spike is centred between the two outer ones, the system is focus.

Orion Nebula M42 - 9min exposure

The below picture is the result of 9 minutes exposure of the Orion Nebula or Messier M42.
Equipment : TAL200K with Nikon D7500. In total 18 pictures, each 30s, ISO6400 are stacked using DeepSkyStacker. The tiff32 file was edited using CS4.

NGC Objects 1647 2024 2129 2323

I made some pictures of a couple of NGC objects during the evening of december 13, 2018 :

NGC 1647 : Open Star Cluster
NGC 2024 : Flame Nebula
NGC 2129 : Open Star Cluster
NGC 2323 : Open Star Cluster - Messier M50

All pictures taken on TAL200K and stacking with DeepSkyStacker. No usage of darks. Editing from Tiff32bit using CS4 by modification of curves and levels on each RGB channel.

Flame Nebula NGC2024

First trials to capture the flame nebula or NGC2024. East of Alnitak (the most "left" star of the belt of Orion) the emission nebula NGC2024 can be found.
Picture was taken on TAL200K and stacking with DeepSkyStacker. Editing using CS4.

46P Wirtanen and Geminid Meteor

Two pictures of comet 46P Wirtanen with Geminid Meteors. Nighscape picture taken with Nikon D7500 and Tamron 10-24mm. Insert was taken using Nikon D7500 with TAL200K f/8.5.