Bright Sun Dogs

This afternoon the sky showed some high faint clouds which resulted in bright sun dogs.

Photokina 2016 - Cologne

Visiting the biggest trade fair of imaging, camera's and video in Cologne, Germany.  Testing of new lenses, camera's and discovering new gadgets.

As Nikon fan I was able to test different camara's and lenses.

Also interesting was guiding equipment for use on tripods and made for wide fields photographs. Below guiding Mini Star Adventurer is build by Skywatcher and will be next month for sale.

At the end I bought a special gadget for my smartphone, a Pro Clip Lens Fish Eye 180° from Kenko. The results so far are very cool !! Image below made without editing.

Halo around full moon

On sept 16, 2016 clouds prevented the penumbral eclipse of the moon. In stead we could observe halo's around the moon as clouds were sometimes very faint.

Sun Pillar above Averbode

This evening just before sunset, a very bringht sun pillar could be observed for some time. This atmospheric phenomenon is caused by the reflection of sun light by ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.

Start of autumn

Today at 16h21, local time, official start of autumn. Also known as the September equinox and the moment the sun rises exactly at the east and sets directly in the west. From today onwards the sun moves across the south untill solstice, december 21.

350 Astronomical blogs and usefull links

Amazing, already 350 astronomical blogs posted. Have a look and visit my astronomical links using the page of my blog

Beautiful Sunset at Motovun Croatia

Moon ASI224MC & TAL200K

Earlier this week I was able take some pictures of the moon using the ASI224MC camera on the TAL200K.

Results were stacked using Autostakkert! and editing using CS4.

Famous craters shown : Kepler and Mercator. I put also the landing area from Surveyor 1 - the first US moonlander.