Saturday, November 26, 2005
No clear skies......
After last night’s severe snowstorms I hoped for “clear skies” this morning. But when I got up, I was in for a little surprise. It was still snowing, and according to the local weather station we will keep this weather for the most of next week: cloudy, sometimes snow, temperatures around zero degrees Celsius and ……… no clear skies! Anyway, I decided to test our new Zeiss spotting scope on the birds again. I bought the Diascope 85 together with the zoom-eypiece, and yesterday I got two other Zeiss eyepieces from Leo (a fellow observer who lives just down the road) to test them. The quality of these eyepieces is also outstanding, good eye-relief, very clear and transparent; but for now the 20–60x zoom is just OK for me. In the near future I hope to get an adaptor to connect the Nikon Coolpix to the zoom eyepiece. I’m very pleased with the quality of the spotting scope. The images are good, but they can get a lot better when I can shoot the images using the Zeiss eyepieces. The camera will also be modified a little, but more about that later. I will keep you updated!
Today I shot two good images from a Chaffinch using Televue Plossl and the Nikon Coolpix connected to the Zeiss. I also recorded some footage from a Greenfinch with the camcorder connected to the Zeiss with a TAL 25mm Plossl. Click on the images to enlarge them or to start the movie.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Birds in the backyard!
Yesterday we got our new birding scope, an 85mm Zeiss Diascope together with a Zeiss zoom eyepiece (20x-60x). The first impression I got when looking through this small instrument can be described in one word: stunning! I never had an instrument with this optical quality. The Zeiss Diascope will not only be used for birding, but also for astronomy. I think it will be very good for observing (and imaging) the Moon but I'm also very curious how it will perform on larger deepsky objects like the Pleiades, the Orion Nebula, M 31 or the Double Cluster in Perseus. 
Click to enlarge
Today however, it was completely clouded, so I tried to shoot some images from a few backyard visitors: a Robin and a Collared Dove. I used the Coolpix 4500 and a Televue 32mm plossl connected to the Zeiss Diascope with a special “astro-Adaptor”. Below are the first results (click images to enlarge). All images were only slightly processed (unsharp masking, levels, contrast brightness) and finaly resized from 2272x1704 to 800x600.
Click to enlarge
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Deepsky Top-100 (17): M 36, the Butterlfy Cluster
Towards the end of the year, Auriga climbs higher and higher in the night sky, and within its borders lie three of my favourite open clusters, M 36, M 37 and M 38. All three open clusters will be included in my Deepsky Top 100, but I will start with M 36, which I observed and sketched this week (8 November 2005). Le Gentil discovered M 36 in 1749, while he was working as an assistant of Jaques Cassini at the Paris Observatory. Messier observed M 36 on 2 September 1764. It lies in Auriga, near the galactic anticenter, at a distance of 4100 light years. When you look in this direction (Auriga), you look away from the galactic centre, towards the nearest stretch of our galaxy's rim.
Monday, November 07, 2005
Celestial Christmas Trees
Although its another 6 weeks till Christmas, you already can enjoy the view of three celestial Christmas trees around this time of the year: M 39 in Cygnus, M 103 in Cassiopeia and NGC 2264 in Monoceros. However, if you want to observe all three in one night, start early in the evening and stay up until way after midnight.1. M 39 (NGC 7092)
At the end of October / the beginning of November Cygnus is high in the southwestern sky around 20.00 hours UT. You can find M 39 about 9 degrees to the east-northeast of Deneb, the bright star marking the tail of the Swan. Although M 39 fits in the 48’ field of view of my telescope 8-inch Klevtzov, I find that M 39 is at its best in my 15x80 binoculars (f.o.v. 3.5 degrees). With plenty of space surrounding the cluster, M 39 stands out nicely from the neighboring star fields and its triangular shape makes it look like ......... a Christmas tree. M 39 has a diameter of 31’ and visual magnitude of 4.6. In the 15x80 I see about 20 to 25 stars ranging from magnitude 7 to 10, a very pretty sight.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Astron
During my short holiday in Drente (Netherlands) I visited the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, one of the observing facilities of ASTRON. It was quite an impressive sight to see the telescopes lined up in the field. The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope is one of the most powerful radio observatories in the world. It enables astronomers to study a wide range of astrophysical problems: from pulsars to kinematics of nearby galaxies to the physics of black-holes. The WSRT is an open user facility available for scientists from any country. It is also part of the European VLBI network (EVN) of radio telescopes. This allows the astronomers to obtain some of the sharpest and more detailed images possible in astronomy. (Text from ASTRON Website)
I took a few snapshots from the radiotelescope for my astronomy journal. Click on the images to enlarge.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Camcorder astronomy
Yesterday I finally got my EZ-pix digital camera holder from ScopeTronix. I need this camera bracket to shoot live images of the moon and the sun with my Canon MVX25i camcorder. I tested the setup last night on Mars using my TAL 200K and a Tal 25mm plossl eyepiece. The seeing was lousy, Mars was right above the roof of my house, and the air was very humid. I still got some satisfying results with the camcorder at the eyepiece. With the 25mm plossl (80x) and 14 times optical zoom I was able to get the camera more or less into focus using the camcorder’s color LCD screen. With this low power eyepiece the camera showed mars in color and a broad dark mare-band with Syrtis Major was clearly visible (not really sharp, but just the outline). Of course I have to do some more testing with focussing, exposure and gain control, but the first results look very promising. Today I tested the same setup with the Coronado PST, and again the first results where very promising. The camera recorded a small prominence and a large filament without any trouble. I just have to experiment with some more powerful eyepieces (20, 15 and 12mm) to get some more detailed views. I will keep you updated. 
Click to enlarge
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Solar Handbook
At the moment I’m reading through the Solar Astronomy Handbook by Beck,Hilbrecht, Reinsch and Volker. This book with more than 500 pages is a very complete observers guide to the Sun. It was published in 1995, so you won’t find the newest observing techniques like webcam imaging in this book. However, it tells you everything you want to know about Solar Observation in white light, H-alpha and even amateur magnetic field observations. There are also some chapters on how to observe and register solar eclipses (visual, photography, filming etc.) I am reading this book because I want to learn how to register my solar observations in white light and H-alpha, how to count and classify sunspots, active regions, prominences etc. Anyway. this is the most complete work on solar observing that I could find at the moment. If you have any questions about the Solar Astronomy Handbook, please give a comment or send me an e-mail.Willman-Bell inc. publishes this book under ISBN 0-943396-47-6
Clear Skies!
Sunday, October 16, 2005
PST lecture
Last Friday I gave a lecture about observing the Sun in H-Alpha with the Coronado PST. At the local astronomy club people got interested in the PST after I showed them the first images I shot a few weeks ago. To give them an idea of what to expect from the Coronado PST, I made a small PowerPoint presentation about using the PST, observing the Sun in white light and H-alpha, and my first results with the PST. It still amazes me (and many others) what you can see (and photograph) on the Sun with this little instrument. Filaments, plage's, active regions, flares, prominences, sunspots, its all visible with the Coronado PST. This is definitely the best value for money you can get for observing the Sun. 
I also hope to show you some more result with the Baader Herschel wedge (white light), but the Sun is going lower and lower in the sky during the coming months. The Sun disappears behind the trees and stays invisible from my backyard for quite some time, so I will have to wait until next spring for more solar observing sessions. But....... when the Sun goes lower in the skies, the Moon rises higher and higher, so this is the season for lunar observing and imaging. I will keep you updated!