The Pleiades Messier M45

The open star cluster Pleiades Messier M45 last night when seeing was very poor. Picture was taken with Nikon D7500 on TLAPO80/480 f/6 and setting : ISO1600 and total exposure time of 38min, eacht picture 30s. Raw pictures converted to DNG and stacked using DeepSkyStacker including darks. Final editing using CS4.

Are you ready for your Solargraph Pin Hole Camera?

Within a couple of days winter season is started. This is the period that the sun's orbit at the sky is increasing again untill mid june. A way to capture this daily increase of the sun's orbit is by installing a pin hole camera with photopaper. The result you will get after 6 months is a solargraph. You can make this yourself by installing a regular 50 or 72cl can with photopaper outside for this period of six months.

DIY Solargraph and results can be seen on these pages of my blog. Good luck!

Sun in H-alpha with SolarMaxIII

A spotless Sun on December 15th with a couple of prominences. Picture was taken with Nikon D7500 and SolarMaxIII 70/400, afocal 10mm. Setting was ISO2000 and 1/6s exposure time. Raw picture converted to DNG and edited using CS4.

Solar Minimum

Already for a month no sunspots seen on the Sun. It seems the Sun is getting into a very low minimum as the days/year without a sunspot are record breaken over a period of 100 years.

Sketching the Moon - Workshop @Helios by Jef De Wit

Astronomy club Helios organised a workshop on sketching craters of the Moon. The workshop was presented by Jef De Wit who explained in detail how to sketch craters of the Moon.

Selfie with Jef De Wit

 With a set of white, grey and black pencils and using black paper the work started to sketch craters from a picture a meade earlier in 2017.

Picture with Nikon D60 on Dobson 12" (Pascal Hilkens) and sketch on the right

The Making of the shetch

Moon 43% Illuminated - Rework

I did some rework of my earlier picture of the Moon (43% Illuminated).

Moon 43% illuminated

This evening I put my scope outside, my first time since November 11th. The Moon is low above the southern horizon and 43% illuminated.

Picture is taken with Nikon D7500 on TLAPO80/480 f/6, ISO100 and shuttertime 1/100s. Raw picture converted to DNG and edited using CS4.