North Virgo Cluster and Markarian's Chain

This picture shows an incredible number of 67! galaxies. Some of those are :

* M84
* M86
* M87
* The Eyes NGC4438 and NGC4453
* Markarian's Chain M84, M86, NGC4435, NGC4438, NGC4443, NGC4458, NGC4473 and NGC4477

The picture was taken using Nikon D7500 with TLAPO80/480 f/6 with a total exposure of 8minutes. Raw pictures converted to DNG files. Stacking, including darks, using DeepSkystakker and final editing with CS4.

My Picture uploaded into Astrometry - credit Astrometry.net

Globular Clusters M53 and NGC5053

Globular Cluster M53 is located about 63.000ly away from earth. NGC5053 is located at a distance of 53.500ly from earth.
Both clusters are taken with Nikon D7500 on TLAPO 80/480 f/6. Stacking, including darks, with DeepskyStakker and final editing using CS4.

Jupiter

During the dark moment of last night I was able to make some pictures of Jupiter. Picture was taken using ASI224MC on TAL200K. I tried out my new ADC and to get back into focus I added a barlow x2. It was difficult to get the picture sharpened as each time I adjusted the ADC, Jupiter moved out of sight. SharpCap was used as capture software and pictures stacked by AutoStakkert!2. Final editing done with CS4.

Boarding Pass to Mars

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I'm on board of the next Mars mission. My boarding pass just arrived 😀

SpaceX Starlink

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This morning at 0h58 I could see many individual lights, like a train. It was very bright and moving as fast as the ISS (which passed 30 minutes earlier at 0h12).
Unfortunately I was just switching scopes and my camera was inside, not ready. However it was a visual spectacular phenomen, "wow".
According other message it was SpaceX with Starlink satellites.
Anyway a fantastic experience and a little "alien".

The Sun - Die Sonne

Finally I bought the book "Die Sonne". My first impression is very promissing with lot's of information about almost all aspects of the Sun. It's not a Solarphysics book but I gives a detailed overview on what needs to be know of the Sun for an amateur astronomer.

The Dark Universe

Yesterday I attended two lectures around the Dark Universe. As part of the Pint of Science series both lectures were given in Café Le Cheval Marin, Brussels.

Selfie with Yoann Genolini

The first one explained that matter alone can not explain the high velocities in the outer regions of galaxies. For that dark matter was introduced with a ratio of 80% dark matter and 20% matter. Dark matter is invisible, meaning it's not interacting with light and it shows up via gravitational phenomena. Beside this it should also be colliosionless. Candidates for dark matter come and go but at this stage no defined theory is available.

Selfie with Wout Merbis

The second lecture was about black holes and more specific how they store information. After explaining what a black hole is, more information was given on Hawking radiation, singularity, event horizon, photon sphere, ergosphere and finaly holography. Black holes are such extreem that both the big as the small is needed to explain them or trying to explain them. So both gravity (Einsteins general relativity theory) and quantum mechanics should be used to describe black holes.