Comet 12P/Pons Brooks with telelens

 

Image of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks taken on Wednesday March 27. Some high clouds but still, when looking good you will recognize two tails.

Setting: Nikon D7500 f/5.6 200mm telelens, 39x2s on ISO12500. High ISO to prevent startrailing.
Stacking was done with APP 2.0.0 beta version 26. It took some time as settings were not correct.

Circumscribed Halo

At noon the Sun came out with a halo round it. Beside the 22° halo, there was also a circumscribed halo above the Sun and the parhelic circle. After editing the picture, I found also the lower circumscribed halo.

According Meteoros.de website  i could simulate my image. 

Moon Halo

 

Halo around the Moon, image taken with Nikon D7500.

Jupiter, Mercury and Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks

 

Picture of Planets Jupiter and Mercury with Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks. The two pictures are single shots using my Nikon D7500 with my new tripod equiped with a ball head. 

Astrometrica Software

 

Yesterday I found out the existance of Astrometrica Software (thanks to Bert Moyaerts) and which can help identifying small objects. Astrometrica Software provides the ability to easily compare astromerical images for the purpose of moving object detection. See links below for software, installation guides, instructions, and practice image sets. 

See this link : http://iasc.cosmosearch.org/Home/Astrometrica

Lecture by Prof Dr Hugues Sana on the search for black holes

Selfie with Prof Dr Hugues Sana

I attended a lecture on March 23, during the annual VVS meeting by Prof Dr Hugues Sana on the search for missing black hole binaries. Stellar-mass black holes are the final remnants of stars born with more than 15 solar masses. Billions are expected to reside in the Local Group, yet only a few are known (according Hugues Sana only 59!), mostly detected through X-rays emitted as they accrete material from a companion star. He discussed the Doppler wobbling of binaries using spectral analysis.  Detailed analysis of the spectrum of such binaries result in a hidden spectrum meaning the precence of two stars. Of no hidden spectrum is found a black hole is responsable for the wobbling. The  team found a (near-)circular orbit and kinematics of VFTS 243 implying that the collapse of the progenitor into a black hole was associated with little or no ejected material or black-hole kick. 

 

Sundials & Timedials

 

Bought this book second hand but never used. Let's see what this brings... building and understanding sun and timedials.