First picture with COAST telescope on Tenerife

As part of the OpenLearn course I was able to make my first picture using the COAST telescope on Tenerife. This robotoc telescope is located in the Teide telescope parc in Tenerife. It's a 14inch Celestron and the request of pictures happens through the Telescope.org website after registration. My first request was M104 Sombrero galaxy. I used the standard setting with exposure time of 120s and standard RGB. A couple of hours later the sytem confirmed my request and I received my first picture using a remote telescope. I can not compare yet with my TAL200K but picture looks quit sharp, knowing it's almost full moon.
Some learning to do on working with timing,.. and downloading and editing Fits files..

New record for Parker Solar Probe

Nasa's Parker Solar Probe realised it's fourth close approach to the Sun. This fourth encounter resulted in breaking the speedrecord as is now 393044 km/h and the closest distance to the Sun of 18.6 million km (as reference Earth is about 150 million km located from the Sun). As the probe is getting closer, temperature is increasing up to 612°C but equipment is kept cool up to 30°C.

Universiteit van Vlaanderen : Donkere Materie

De Universiteit van Vlaanderen heeft een video gepost rond donkere materie. Prof dr. Dirk Ryckbosch van de universiteit van Gent geeft duiding over wat donkere materie is.

Lecture by Werner Poets at Mira

Selfie with Werner Poets

This evening I attended a lecture by Werner Poets @ Mira (Grimbergen) covering the special theory of relativity.  The lecture started with the explaination of the two postulates : the  speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers and the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference when moving at constant speed. 

Starting from this Werner Poets used graphs to explain the theory and ended with the time dilation and length contraction when moving at speeds near the speed of light.

The lecture was sold out and he repeated the lecture after the first one as many people could attend the first one.

This first lecture will have a second part in september discussing the general theory of relativity and black holes;

Solar Orbiter : 10 days before lift off

On Februari 6th, thursday morning 5h27 (CET), ESA's Solar Orbiter will be send to space for it's solar mission.

For more information see also my blog.

My first achievement on Open University

Completion of the course "The Sun" on the Free Learning zone from Open University. The training was well written and a provides a good introduction on "The Sun".

Darkest Night Skies in Belgium area

My first experience of a dark night sky was in Valle (south of Grand Canyon). A couple of days later I stayed in the area of Arches national park and decided to re-enter the park at night. What an amazing experience and what a dark sky. I was able to take some pictures of the night sky but unfortunately my Nikon D60 get broke and I was unable to fix it. So, since that moment I want to experience a dark night sky again. As I'm living in Belgium, a dark night sky isn't obvious.
Some locations can be found via the Deepsky Team of the VVS.

Also France has some pretty good locations. Both the north, central as south of France are known for their dark night skies. Currently I'm looking in the area of Les Ardenesses in France; Grandpré area like Berzieux are potential locations which i want to try once weatherforecast is favorite for an entire weekend.

Dark Night Sky in Thailand Koh Phangan