Lunar Eclipse - a compilation

A total of 212 pictures were taken of the Lunar Eclipse last monday, Jan 21, 2019. I made a selection of 7 pictures to make a small compilation. It's a first trial and I'm not 100% satisfied of the result... but it's time consuming so I will try later once more :)

Lecture by Sir Roger Penrose

Selfie with Sir Roger Penrose

The auditorium of the University of Maastricht was fully loaded for the lecture of Sir Roger Penrose on "Can we see Hawking Points in the CMB sky?"

A dedicated search of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from Planck satellite data, driven by implications of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), has revealed a remarkably strong signal (of confidence level greater than 99.98%), previously unobserved, of numerous anomalous highly energetic small regions in the CMB sky.

CCC proposes that our Big Bang was the (conformal) continuation of the remote future of a previous cosmic ‘aeon’ and that these anomalous regions would appear to be the result of individual points on CCC's crossover 3-surface from that previous aeon. They can be readily interpreted as the conformally compressed Hawking radiation from supermassive black holes in that aeon, but seem impossible to explain on the basis of the conventional inflationary picture of our very early universe.

My Mindmap of the Lecture

Total Lunar Eclipse and reappearance of SAO97570

A clear bright sky and a temperature of -10,4°C were the perfect condition for the Total Lunar Eclipse. Pictures still need to be edited but the one below is for sure one of my favorites. It's showing totality and the reappearance of star SAO97570 at 100°

Sun in H-alfa and prominences

The Sun is out! For the first time this new year it was possible to observe the Sun. Obervations done using my SolarMaxIII 70/400 DS BF15 both visually and photographic. Pictures were taken with ASI224MC and Nikon D7500. Visually one promince could be observed having the shape of an irrugular arche.

Close Conjunction between Venus and Jupiter

The Temperature this morning is as low as -9°C and we have a cloud free sky. Both Venus and Jupiter are above the south-eastern horizon in close conjunction. In the morning of Jan 22nd, both planets will be even "closer".

Moon 97% - 1 Day before Total Lunar Eclipse

With one day to go before the total lunar eclipse I took the time to try out some settings. As the configuration is f/6, shutter speed is between 1/500 and 1/1000 when using ISO100.

Total Lunar Eclipse : 40 hours to go

On January 21, 2019, 3h34UT (4h34 local Belgium time) we can observe a total Lunar Eclipse. Weather forecast seem to be very promising, so be prepared to watch to moon getting dark. Be warned that temperature will be around -5°C and a perfect relative humidity below 80%.

See also my pictures of the Total Lunar Eclipse of Sept 28, 2015. 
See also Lunar Eclipse Exposure Guide