Boarding Pass to Mars

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I'm on board of the next Mars mission. My boarding pass just arrived 😀

SpaceX Starlink

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This morning at 0h58 I could see many individual lights, like a train. It was very bright and moving as fast as the ISS (which passed 30 minutes earlier at 0h12).
Unfortunately I was just switching scopes and my camera was inside, not ready. However it was a visual spectacular phenomen, "wow".
According other message it was SpaceX with Starlink satellites.
Anyway a fantastic experience and a little "alien".

The Sun - Die Sonne

Finally I bought the book "Die Sonne". My first impression is very promissing with lot's of information about almost all aspects of the Sun. It's not a Solarphysics book but I gives a detailed overview on what needs to be know of the Sun for an amateur astronomer.

The Dark Universe

Yesterday I attended two lectures around the Dark Universe. As part of the Pint of Science series both lectures were given in Café Le Cheval Marin, Brussels.

Selfie with Yoann Genolini

The first one explained that matter alone can not explain the high velocities in the outer regions of galaxies. For that dark matter was introduced with a ratio of 80% dark matter and 20% matter. Dark matter is invisible, meaning it's not interacting with light and it shows up via gravitational phenomena. Beside this it should also be colliosionless. Candidates for dark matter come and go but at this stage no defined theory is available.

Selfie with Wout Merbis

The second lecture was about black holes and more specific how they store information. After explaining what a black hole is, more information was given on Hawking radiation, singularity, event horizon, photon sphere, ergosphere and finaly holography. Black holes are such extreem that both the big as the small is needed to explain them or trying to explain them. So both gravity (Einsteins general relativity theory) and quantum mechanics should be used to describe black holes.

Robbert Dijkgraaf - Science and Cocktails

A Science and Cocktails public lecture will be held on Saturday 13 July at 8:30 p.m. with Robbert Dijkgraaf as speaker and the World Premiere of a Strings-inspired classical-modern piece. This is part of the Strings 2019 conference July 1- 13, 2019 at Flagey.

Francois Englert - Science and Cocktails

Francois Englert will give a lecture in the Frensh language with the title :"La compréhension de l’Univers: de Galilée, Newton et Einstein au boson BEH, et au-delà".This lecture is part of the series Science and Cocktails.

Pint of Science

The Annual Pint of Science Festival will take place on May 20 - 22, 2019. Lectures will be given in 14 cities within Belgium. For other countries check the website - Pintofscience.

Specific for Belgium and astronomy related, these are the lectures :

20 May 2019

Brussel : The Dark Universe. 

Leuven : It’s a small world after all. 

Mechelen : Een blik in het eindeloze heelal. 

21 May 2019

Antwerpen : From Cold plasme to cold space. 

Brussel : Outer Space, What lies beyond. 

Leuven : Life, Death and afterlife of stars.

22 May 2019

Brussel : A tour of the microcosmos. 

Leuven : And there was light.