Halo 360°

Capturing a very bright 360° Halo around the Sun.

Coronal Hole and Sol'Ex images March 22

My Sol'Ex was used to capture the HeD3 line and after editing is was possible to bring forward the current coronal hole of the Sun. A comparison was made with SDO/AIA 211A and GOES19 195A. All in all it's not most beautiful picture but still I could capture the coronal hole. For sure I will try this again when a more deligned coronal hole shows up.

The day started with some bad seeing but during noon time seeing became better. I made time to adjust the Sol'Ex and was able to get sharp images in all captured wavelenghts.
Tilt was corrected with some very good results: 0,1° deviation... not bad at all. The most suffer from dust on the slit. Yesterday I did some cleaning, but not enough it seems. 

Sun March 21

The Sun this afternoon, observed with Sol'Ex in H-alpha and CaIIH.

CaIIH1v

Sun in CaIIH

My last So'Ex observation was on January 4th this year. So today it was some trial and error...

Sun today in CaIIH 

Sol'Ex by James R with TS TLAPO80/480 and ASI678MM

SharpCap, Inti, CS4, DeNoise AI

Space Weather and Avidos - VVS Sun Working Group

Last week, March 8th, I attended the Sun working group of the VVS. Beside giving a lecture on "how to observe the E-Corona using a Sol'Ex" an interesting lecture was provided by Jan Janssens of the SIDC (Royal Observatorium of Belgium) of space weather and the aurora of Jan 19, 2026.

Selfie with Jan Janssens of SIDC 

In his lecture he refers to radiation during spaceflights and shows a link to the website. I searched this website and it's an ESA website in Sweden. After registration I could simulate my exposure during my flight from Brussels/Beijing in Jan last month. This was about 30microSv. 

Normal natural exposure in Belgium is about 2,4mSv. When going through the details, CT en PET scans are responsible for 7mSv for CT and 4,5mSv for PET. I wasn't aware this was such high.

This is the link to Avidos

This is the link to the dashboard 

ATT-Essen - 50 days to go

50 days to go ... May 9th is the day for the ATT Essen, the ATT (Astronomie- und Techniktreff) is the biggest trade fair for amateur astronomers.

For more information see this link.

Drone DJI Neo 2

One of my objectives is to expand my photographic skills and in particular taking pictures from a different angle. How would a sunset or sunrise look like from an angle way above ground level? For this reason I bought a drone or UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System).

I bought a DJI Neo 2 drone; it's a beginners drone in the Open Class A1 and Cx label type C0.
The camera sensor specs :
    * Sensor: 1/2-inch CMOS
    * Effective Pixels: 12 MP
    * Lens: FOV 119.8°,
    * Aperture, 16.5mm equivalent focus 35mm
    * Video Resolution: 4K/60fps (up to 100fps), 2.7K (9:16)
    * Max Video Bitrate: 80 Mbps
    * ISO Range: 100-12800
    * Stabilization: 2-Axis Mechanical Gimbal + RockSteady EIS
    * Storage: 49 GB Internal

The drone is equipped with a LiDar (Light Deteection and Ranging) sensor which measures distance and detects obstacles.

As the drone is equiped with a camera, the drone is regsitrated. For Belgium no certification is needed but for some other countries it's mandatory eg. Spain. I downloaded the 101 page training and completed succesfully my exam. So I'm a certified A1-A3 UAS Pilot :)