Hidden Figures

This movie tells the story of three African American female mathematicians who worked at NASA during the space race. Katherine Johnson was part of the Space Task Group and was the first woman getting credit as an author of a research report within the Flight Research Division of NASA. Dorothy Vaughan was the first black supervisor at NASA and working with the IBM7070 using programming language Fortran (which I also used during my engineering degree late 80's).
Mary Jackson became the first black female engineer at NASA and did major contribution towards wind tunnel modelling.

An very interesting movie giving background how things were done during the space race. Today we have computers... at that time all was done using manually!

Bigger Can for Solargraph

Uptill now I always used 500ml cans for making my solargraphs. During my visit in the US I found a bigger can with a volume of 710 ml or 24 Ounces. I will prepare both cans for my solargraphs and expose them  between June and Decemeber. I really hope this 710 ml can is able to capture the sunpath entirely.

Urania Closing the Year

This morning Observatory Urania organised their annual closing meeting. After the presentation on administrative aspects a very interesting overview was given on art and astronomy from ancient history uill today.
Once completed, participants from last year's lectures received their certificats ... including myself as I attended Astrophysics.

Onze zon - De meest nabije ster.

Hierbij de link naar mijn paper over onze zon. Het document beschrijft de huidige stand van zaken rond de werking van de zon, het inwendige van de zon, de atmosfeer van de zon alsook de belangrijkste fenomen die zich kunnen voordoen.

Beautiful clouds

Colored and dynamic clouds in La Grange (Georgia) with temperatures hitting 90F (33C)

100 days to the Eclipse

On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will be seen in big parts of the USA. See also this link.

ATT Essen - Review

Kokerei Zeche Zolverein Essen - Located behind ATT parking spot 

It was my first time ever that I did visit the ATT Essen. It's the biggest European fair for amateur astronomers with both commercial trade and second hand material.
I arrived around 9h45 with plenty of parking space. Arriving at 10am the Gymnasium am Stoppenberg, the entry was blocked with a long waiting row. But 15 minutes later and paying 6 euro entree fee, I could enter the astro arena.
On my way in I did meet with collegues from Astroclub Urania from Hove (Antwerp).

A lot of variation of astro stuff, second hand material and also new equipment -  a total of more then 80 participants. During the day it was also possible to attend some seminars. I attended a lecture on "what an astro beginner need to start with" provided by the local astro club.

Personally I was interested in color filters, red dot finders, wide field oculars and a small apo OTA. At the end I bought one baader "yellow" color filter (as they did not had the color filter series available) and the SkySurfer 3 red dot finder.

I left the fair around 4am and took the time to visit the old mine site located behing the parking spot. This area is UN World Heritage Site and the site was once a very productive and modern mining site.

Some pictures taken during my visit of the site.

Steel frame of cooling towers

Washing of the cokes

Storage tank