Halo Moon

Almost a full Halo around the Moon.

Moon, Saturn and Jupiter in the morning sky

Clear sky with -0,5°C and the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter in the morning sky.

Final C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto with M36 & M38

Not really pleased with the results of my Iwamoto pictures, I started to do something different. In stead of taking the ISO 3200 or ISO 6400, I took the ISO 1600 pictures.The Nikon Raw was converted to DNG and editing with CS4. Unsharped Mask was used but this time the threshold is increased. The pictures looks more sharp with the comet still bright enough to distinguish from the background stars. The open star clusters M36 and M38 are easy to recognize.

C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto near M36 & M38

Comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto near open star cluster M36 and M38. Picture taken on Feb 27, 2019 with Nikon D7500 on TLAPO80/480 f/6 and setting ISO6400 for 30s. DNG file and dark used for editing with CS4.

Iwamoto - My first animated GIF

My first animated GIF file :) and showing how "fast" Iwamoto is moving in front of the stars. Two pictures taken on Feb 26, 2019 UT20h15 and UT20h22. The GIF file shows in those 7 minutes how the comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto moves against the background stars. Each picture was taken with Nikon D7500 on TLAPO 80/480 f/6 ISO6400 with 30s exposure time. The GIF file was made using CS4 (Animation - Gif). DNG files are used without editing.

Solar Tadpole Shaped Jets responable for heating up the Corona?

Images from IRIS show the tadpole-shaped jets containing pseudo-shocks streaking out from the Sun.

Credits: Abhishek Srivastava IIT (BHU)/Joy Ng, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Are Solar Tadpole Shaped Jets responsable for heating up the Corona? At least a new discovery of pseudo-shocks adds another player besides Alven Waves and Nanoflares to that debate. According to NASA, it may contribute heat to the corona during specific times, namely when the Sun is active, such as during solar maximums.

When recently analyzing data from NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, scientists noticed unique elongated jets emerging from sunspots and rising 4,500 km up into the inner corona. The jets, with bulky heads and rarefied tails, looked to the scientists like tadpoles swimming up through the Sun’s layers.

Using computer simulations matching the events, they determined these pseudo-shocks could carry enough energy and plasma to heat the inner corona.

See the entire article via this link. 

ESA Lagrange Mission

Our Sun, the nearest star,  is a enourmous ball of plasma and emits every second millions of tons of high energy material. This happens in the form of Solar Wind, Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CME). High energy particles and CME's can reach Earth as fast as 15 hours and electromagnic radiation from Solar Flares travels with the speed of light reaching Earth in 8 minutes. These Solar Storms can cause geomagnetic storms on Earth and are harmfull for satellites, astronauts and our infrastructure on earth. GPS systems, satellite communications and power grids can be effected with a result of power loss, communication loss, ....

ESA is planning for a dedicated space weather observatory which warns us in case of  these harmful eruptions of the Sun. The new spacecraft will operate at the fifth Lagrange point at a distance of 150 million km. On this stable position in space the spacecraft is able to observe the Sun and Earth sideways.

Sterrenkijkdagen op 15 en 16 maart

Dit jaar vinden in gans Vlaanderen de Sterrenkijkdagen plaats op 15 en 16 maart. Helios Averbode zal aanwezig zijn op 16 maart te Langdorp (achter het Wolfscafé). We verwelkomen iedereen die meer wilt weten over de sterren of wanneer je een kijkje wilt nemen doorheen een telescoop.

Leo Triplet M65 M66 NGC3638

My earlier picture of the Leo Triplet was reworked. The tiff file from DeepSkyStacker is edited with CS4 and manualy reworked with a dark frame. The coverage of the dark frame is set on70% and all "red" colors are removed. The result is much "darker".

More Deepsky Objects

I made some time to look at my pictures which I made during the night of Feb 23, 2019. Following objects were photographed :

IC434 : Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula; the Flame Nebula can be seen but the Horsehead Nebula is outshined.
M51 Whirlpool Nebula : the pictures are much better the before and came with a cherry ... a potential supernova (AT2019abn)
NGC 2169 : The "37" open star cluster; nice
NGC 2361 : The emission is very difficult to see; and it was not 2361 but 2261 I wanted to see :(
NGC 2301 : Open Star Cluster
NGC 2360 : Open Star Cluster; Caroline's Cluster
NGC 2392 : The Eskimo Nebula; colors are beautiful
NGC 2424 : Faint Spindle
NGC 2419 : Nice allignment with Globular Cluster
NGC 2683 : The UFO Galaxy

Messier M95 M96 and M105

A total of 7 galaxies captured in one picture. Galaxies M95, M96 and M105 are located a distance of more then 30 million light years from us and can be observed in the constellation Leo. M105 is surrounded bu NGC 3384 and NGC 3389. Pictures are taken with Nikon D7500 on TLAPO 80/480 f/6 and ISO 3200 setting. No moon and temperature around 2°C and relative humidity < 100%. Darks were taken and DeepSkyStacker to stack all pictures. Editing with CS4. 

Messier M40

Messier M40 or Winnecke 4 is an optical double star; no more no less. It stands out as the most odd object in Messier's list. When looking more in detail there are two background galaxies north of M40: NGC 4290 and NGC 4284.

Deepsky NGC4449 M63 M102 M106

Observation of some Deepsky objects on February 27, 2019. Condition with no Moon, temperature of 3°C and relative humidity below 100%.
All pictures taken with Nikon D7500 on TLAPO 80/480 f/6 and ISO1600. Converting RAW to DNG format in order to stack using DeepSkyStacker. Final editing with CS4.

Potential Supernova AT2019abn in M51

On Feb 23, 2019 I made some pictures of the Whirlpool Galaxy M51. Today I was reading of a potential Supernova in M51 so I went back and looked if I catched the nova... and yes it's there.
My picture was compared with pictures on the TNS (Transient Name Server of the IAU) - see this link and astronometry.
In order to get the best view of the potential supernova I inverted colors, but on both the inverted picture as the colored picture the nova can be seen.

Above my inverted picture (Nikon D7500 TAL200K f/8.5 ISO12800 18m) indicating the potential supernova AT2019abn (AT = Astronomical Transient) by the black cross in the "arms" of M51.

Post #1000

Started in December 2012 this is my post number "1000". 

Weaher Summary February 2019

Some local records are broken this past month :
* longest dry period of 18 days
* highest temperature of 22,3°C (including lowest dew point)
* highest pressure of 1044 mb

It was a rainy period in the beginning of the month (with avg normal rainfall over the entire month) and the second half was extreme dry and warm.