Space Weather Flow Chart

I made a Space Weather Flow Chart which provides an oversight on solar phenomenon, solar activity, effect and consequence.

Versie 2 van Onze Zon : De meest nabije ster

De afgelopen maanden noteerde ik alles wat maar enigzins te maken had met de zon. Dit met de bedoeling om mijn eerste versie van mijn paper "Onze Zon : De meest nabije ster" aan te passen en af te stemmen op deze nieuwe informatie. Mijn Kerstverlof was er dus aan voor de moeite maar heeft wel geleid tot een nieuwe tweede versie van mijn paper.
Je kunt het werk hier downloaden en ik wens iedereen veel leesplezier. 

ISS Crossing Disk of the Sun

Tomorrow, Wednesday December 27, around 13h57 (12h57 UT) ISS will be crossing the Disk of the Sun between Antwerp and Liege. This is only visible using a small telescoop with Solar blocking Filters.

Orion Nebula M42

Using a different way of editing my astropictures within CS4 gives some nice results. As an example I used a picture of M42 (Orion Nebula). The technic used results in a complete shift of the histogram and taking out some noise.

Congratulations

Celebrating 5 years of blogging.

Astronomical Highlights 2017

My Astronomical Highlights of 2017 is, of course, the Great American Eclipse. Beside this wonderful and beautiful moment also other moments are worthwhile to share :

Solar Eclips in Rexburg Idaho Aug 21, 2017

The Milky Way or a Meteor as seen in National Park Arches (Utah)

The Sun this year with a perfect 360° Halo and with Sunspots (even when the Sun is getting into a minimum period) :

The Planets this Year with Saturnus and Jupiter :

Deepsky  Objects M42 en M51 :

And My Solargraph using a 72cl can :

Ms Hisako Koyama - Observing Sunspot for more then 40 Years

Hisako Koyama +40Years Observation of Sunspots

Via the website of the University of Colorado Boulder I found an article on "Hidden Figure" Hisako Koyama. She is a Japanese Solar Observer and observing +40 years of sunspot and making +10000 drawings. 

To better understand the solar cycle, an international group of scientists reconstructed the number of sunspots seen each year since scientists first observed them by telescope in 1610. A researchers team searched through original sunspot observations for the past 400 years and discovered Koyama’s work in Japan. They combined her collection of drawings with those of Galileo Galilei, Pierre Gassendi, Johann Caspar Staudacher, Heinrich Schwabe and Rudolf Wolf to establish a continuous sunspot count for the past four centuries. 

Those five names are the giants of sunspot records. Koyama’s more than 40 years of drawings proved invaluable to the scientists because few solar observations have been collected by the same person, using the same telescope and using the same observation method for such a long time. 

Her drawings are digitized and available via the Japanese National Museum of Nature and Science.

 

Interesting to note is that she is one of few people who ever witnessed a white-light flare with the naked eye. She recorded this on November 15, 1960.

If you want to search into the archieves for digitized sunspot drawings, use this link.