Saturday, November 19, 2016

Wow a Supernumerary Double Rainbow



Clouds, rain and sun ... the perfect ingredients for a perfect rainbow. Above Aarschot I took below pictures which not only show a perfect double rainbow but a supernumerary double rainbow.
According literature a supernumerary rainbow is defined when below the first rainbow more colors are seen beyond the normal colors. As seen on the pictures a "white" band is seen below the violet color which when enlarged consist of faint colors of green and violet. So we see from the outside to the inside red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet and then green and violet.



As I was not sure and did ask for a second opinion to Frank Deboosere, our national weatherman and amateur astronomer. And he confirmed the supernumerary band aswell. 



Thursday, November 17, 2016

Eclips August 11, 1999 Virton

When searching for a picture I found some old pictures of the solar eclipse of August 11, 1999 which I observed near Virton, Belgium. Unfortunately clouds made it difficult to see the entire spectacle.





Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Supermoon on November 14th- really Super?

What's in the name? On November 14th 12h21 MET the distance moon-earth will be as close as 356509km. Why is this important? It's because this happens on almost the same moment when the moon is full (14h52 MET). It's calculated that the moon will be 14% "bigger" and about 30% "more bright". As all this happens during daytime, best observation is the morning of Nov 14th or at evenings. Will you notice the difference... not really.
The last time the moon was that close happened on Jan 26th, 1948 (356461km). On November 25th, 2034 the moon will be even closer with 356445km.
So why should you look at the moon? Only it's because you know that it was about 68 years ago the moon was that close. Super right?

Friday, November 11, 2016

Tiangong 2 - Visible

This evening and upcoming evenings and of course when clouds do agree to open, you can observe the Chinese vessel Tiangong 2 above the southern horizon.  For Belgium see timings below, for other locations see website Heavens-Above.


Launch of new Nikon D5600


Nikon will shortly launch the new Nikon DSLR camera Nikon D5600.
See also Nikon Website