European SpaceTalks with Frank De Winne

For the celebration of the 10th anniversary of their flight to the ISS, Belgian Astronaut Frank De Winne and his crewmates Roman Romanenko (Russia) and Robert Thirsk (Canada) came yesterday together at the Planetarium in Brussels to look back at their ISS mission and to look forward to the future of human spaceflight and robotic exploration.

Frank De Winne

About 70 people listened how ISS expedition crew 20 experienced their space trip starting from the training, launch with Soyuz TMA-15, the life on board the spacestation and the safe landing. All stayed for 6 months (186 days) in space.

The audience had the chance to ask all kind of questions which were full energizend answerred by the astronauts. 

Fltr: Astronauts Frank De Winne, Bob Thirks, Roman Romanenko and Myself

Frank De Winne discussed in the second presentation the 3 year outlook of ESA (Space 19+) with focus on getting to the Moon by 2024. A little was talked about getting to Mars as there is still a lot work to be done. He gave the example of the very complex program of sampling 300grams of Mars soil and bringing it to Earth.  The Space19+ enveloppe program will be discussed end of 2019 by the EU in order to get approval.

ISS Expedition 20 Crew Signed Postcard

The event took about 2,5 hours and was well received... mission completed. 

NLC Timelapse

I made a timelapse of the NLC burst of the evening of June 21, 2019 UT22h50. To start the timelapse video, click this link.

Start of Summer

It's June 21 and start of the Summer. At exactly 17h54 the Summer 2019 will be kicked off :)

Camino Portugues De La Costa - Credit Pascal Hilkens

Eclipse 2017 - Rexburg

When searching in my archive I opened my 2017 eclipse files. I reworked some of the pictures and this is one of my favorites.

Noctilucent Clouds?

Not sure if the faint "clouds" are NLC's. It was for sure not visible with the naked eye. After looking at my pictures I could recognize a white blur. It could be some high clouds but still...

Sun in H-Aplha SolarMax3 DS

The Sun this morning in H-Alpha. Seeing was low due to clouds. In fact I was too late this morning. As from 6AM untill 8AM the sky was blue :)

Picture taken with Nikon D7500 on SolarMax3 70/400 f/5.7 DS and barlow x2; ISO1000 and exposure time of 1/5s.

The picture shows different prominences.

Noctilucent Clouds - OSWIN Radar showing huge peaks as from 3AM

I stayed awake untill 1AM local time but it wad too cloudy at the north-western horizon. Also the VHF radar in Kuhlungsborn did not move. This morning however, I saw the same radar showing huge peaks from 3AM onwards. Not sure of this resulted in NLC at 51° but still very impressive readings. .

For NLC radars - see link to my blogpage Usefull links