ESA Lagrange Mission

Our Sun, the nearest star,  is a enourmous ball of plasma and emits every second millions of tons of high energy material. This happens in the form of Solar Wind, Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CME). High energy particles and CME's can reach Earth as fast as 15 hours and electromagnic radiation from Solar Flares travels with the speed of light reaching Earth in 8 minutes. These Solar Storms can cause geomagnetic storms on Earth and are harmfull for satellites, astronauts and our infrastructure on earth. GPS systems, satellite communications and power grids can be effected with a result of power loss, communication loss, ....

ESA is planning for a dedicated space weather observatory which warns us in case of  these harmful eruptions of the Sun. The new spacecraft will operate at the fifth Lagrange point at a distance of 150 million km. On this stable position in space the spacecraft is able to observe the Sun and Earth sideways.

Sterrenkijkdagen op 15 en 16 maart

Dit jaar vinden in gans Vlaanderen de Sterrenkijkdagen plaats op 15 en 16 maart. Helios Averbode zal aanwezig zijn op 16 maart te Langdorp (achter het Wolfscafé). We verwelkomen iedereen die meer wilt weten over de sterren of wanneer je een kijkje wilt nemen doorheen een telescoop.

Leo Triplet M65 M66 NGC3638

My earlier picture of the Leo Triplet was reworked. The tiff file from DeepSkyStacker is edited with CS4 and manualy reworked with a dark frame. The coverage of the dark frame is set on70% and all "red" colors are removed. The result is much "darker".

More Deepsky Objects

I made some time to look at my pictures which I made during the night of Feb 23, 2019. Following objects were photographed :

IC434 : Horsehead Nebula and Flame Nebula; the Flame Nebula can be seen but the Horsehead Nebula is outshined.
M51 Whirlpool Nebula : the pictures are much better the before and came with a cherry ... a potential supernova (AT2019abn)
NGC 2169 : The "37" open star cluster; nice
NGC 2361 : The emission is very difficult to see; and it was not 2361 but 2261 I wanted to see :(
NGC 2301 : Open Star Cluster
NGC 2360 : Open Star Cluster; Caroline's Cluster
NGC 2392 : The Eskimo Nebula; colors are beautiful
NGC 2424 : Faint Spindle
NGC 2419 : Nice allignment with Globular Cluster
NGC 2683 : The UFO Galaxy

Messier M95 M96 and M105

A total of 7 galaxies captured in one picture. Galaxies M95, M96 and M105 are located a distance of more then 30 million light years from us and can be observed in the constellation Leo. M105 is surrounded bu NGC 3384 and NGC 3389. Pictures are taken with Nikon D7500 on TLAPO 80/480 f/6 and ISO 3200 setting. No moon and temperature around 2°C and relative humidity < 100%. Darks were taken and DeepSkyStacker to stack all pictures. Editing with CS4. 

Messier M40

Messier M40 or Winnecke 4 is an optical double star; no more no less. It stands out as the most odd object in Messier's list. When looking more in detail there are two background galaxies north of M40: NGC 4290 and NGC 4284.

Deepsky NGC4449 M63 M102 M106

Observation of some Deepsky objects on February 27, 2019. Condition with no Moon, temperature of 3°C and relative humidity below 100%.
All pictures taken with Nikon D7500 on TLAPO 80/480 f/6 and ISO1600. Converting RAW to DNG format in order to stack using DeepSkyStacker. Final editing with CS4.