Orion Nebula M42 with ASI224MC

Weather conditions were again very good yesterday evening. Humidity was below 90% and temperature around -6°C. Objective this evening was to experiment with longer exposures for the ASI224MC. I started with M42, the Orion Nebula and a exposure of 20s. In total 50 pictures are taken and stacked using Registax and edited using CS4. In comparison with earlier M42 pictures much more details show up with more "red" color.

Sunspots in pairs

So far this year, one out of two days we see sunspots. Last year we had 32 days without sunspots.
Currently we have three pairs of sunspots. Sunspots mostly show up as pairs. This is because one "spot" is where the magnetic fieds leaves the photosphere and the magnetic fields re-entries in the other one. By convention, north is when the magnetic fields leaves the photosphere and re-entry is south.

Picture was taken using my Dobson 12" with Baader Astrosolar ND5.

Waning crescent Venus 46%

The past weeks you could not miss Venus at the evening sky. Venus is currently very bright and is now less then 50% illuminated. When using a telescoop Venus shows up as a "lunar phase" and is currently waning crescent.
Conditions this evening were very good (temperature -5°C, huminidy 89%). Observations done using Dobson 12" with SE 9mm clearly showed the phase of Venus which is currently 0.46. Below picture was taken with TAL200K and ZWO ASI224MC using Registax and CS4 for editing.

Book 15 Million Degrees

I'm halfway reading a book titled 15 Million Degrees (english and a dutch translated version is also available) by Lucie Green.
If you want to understand how the sun "works" and this in the context of historical achievements ... this is your book. Once finished I will post a detailed review.

What a night

It's a very good night to observe the stars. With temperatures around -6°C and huminidy 85% we have a very good seeing aswell. After 3-star allignment my TAL 200K was set for taking pictures using ASI224MC. With the naked eye it was possible to observe M44, M36 and M37. Pictures taken of M42, M81, M79 and M97.

Capturing pictures was done using FireCapture and SharpCap2.8. I found out that no colors were taken when using FireCapture.

Picture taken using SharpCap 2.8 - Stacked with RegiStax6 - Edited by CS4

Making a new 12" solarfilter DIY

Last summer I made a solarfilter for my 10" telescoop. Today I made a new one for my 12" Dobson. I'm using AstroSolar Safety Film D5.0 made by Baader Planetarium.
A step by step approach to DIY is explained earlier and can be found on my blog here.

Astrophysics Course at Urania

Today I attended the first lesson of astrophysics. This new course is given by Urania in Antwerp each tuesday evening for the next 10 weeks.
The auditorium was full with about 40 people.
Astrophysics is about applying theoritical physics on astronomical problems.
 In this first lesson an introduction was given to mathematics describing linear algebra, complex numbers, trigonometry, calcalus, ...