Happy Astronomical New Year 2020

Happy New Year with a lot of astronomical highlights and don't miss the occultation of Venus by the Moon in June and Venus between the Pleiades beginning of April.

Horsehead Nebula IC434

The famous Horsehead Nebula IC434 located in constellation Orion and about 1375 ly from Earth.
Setting : Nikon D7500 on TAL200K f/8.5, ISO3200 with darks and total exposure of 42 minutes, each picture 30s/ Raw data converted to DNG format and stacking using DeepSkyStacker with final editing using CS4.

The Orion Nebula M42

The Orion Nebula or Messier M42. Setting : Nikon D7500 on TAL200K f/8.5 ISO3200 and total exposure of 16minutes, each picture 30s. Darks are included. Raw pictures converted to DNG and stacked using DeepSkyStacker with final editing using CS4.

NGC2261 Hubble's Variable Nebula

NGC2261, Hubble's Variable Nebula or Caldwell46 is located in the constellation Monoceros at a distance of 2500 ly from Earth.

Setting : Nikon D7500 in TAL200K f/8.5 and ISO3200 and total exposure of 14 minutes each picture 30s. Raw data converted to DNG and stacked using DeepSkyStaker; final editing in CS4.

Star Wars Episode IX : Great movie

Last evening I saw the new Star Wars movie : The Rise of Skywalker also known as Episode IX. The reviews were not that great but I'm favourite. Great links to previous Star Wars movies. I liked the plot and still like all the special effects. Mainly the Death Star scene I found absolute the max. Will I go to a next Star Wars movie ... absolutely YES.

Moon and Venus in evening sky

This evening, both the Moon as Venus, low above the south western horizon.

Lecture by Jan Janssens @ Mira

Selfie with Jan Janssens 

Attending a dutch lecture with the title "New glasses for a new solarcycle" by Jan Janssens from SIDC (Belgium) at the Public Observatory Mira in Grimbergen.
Topics were solar cycle #24 and predicting minimum for april 2020 +/- 6 months; space weather basics and major historic space weather events. At the end of the presentation an overview was provided on current active satellites and future satellites: Solar Orbiter, Proba-3 and Lagrange.