DeepskyWim

As a Christmas gift, my father-in-law made me this beautiful eyepiece case.  The box contains space for all my eyepieces and collimation tools and there is still some spare space for the eyepieces (and the Howie-Glatter laser collimator) I want to buy in the coming year. At the right side of the box, there are 4 boxes that can be stacked, where my other accessories can be stored:  SkyFi 3 Argo Navis Sky Quality Meter Handpad for the ServoCAT Red flashlight Power cable for the powered ground board In the top lid, a tablet and a sketchbook can be stored.  There is still some place in the box above the eyepieces where the light shroud can be stored. A very nice solution to store my eyepieces! All eyepieces, collimation tools and SkyFi 3 The closed eyepiece case The empty eyepiece case The empty eyepiece case All eyepieces and collimation tools All eyepieces, collimation tools and the Argo Navis All eyepieces, collimation tools, the Sky Quality Meter and the handpad for the ServoCAT All ey

The last months, it became obvious that Jupiter and Saturn were nearing each other.  On the night of December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn only were in conjunction and separated only by 6'6''. Due to the bad weather on this night, I could not observe the closest encounter.  Luckily, on December 20, the weather was very nice.  With the naked eye, the view was already nice, but with my 20cm travel dobsonian, the view was really amazing.  Both Jupiter and Saturn were visible in the field of view, even using my 5mm Nagler eyepiece (160x). The weather was not stable enough to use the 18'' Obsession.  The planets were located very low above the horizon anyway, so using the 18'' Obsession was not an option. The days before the conjunction, the weather was sometimes clear for a while in the evening, so I could take some pictures to see how the planets closed in to each other.   Jupiter and Saturn on December 20, 2020. Jupiter and Saturn on December 18, 2020 Jupiter,

The sun is active again! We were in a solar minimum for a few years, but finally the solar activity is ramping up.  The solar cycle takes approximately 11 year from maximum to maximum.  I took the opportunity to use my 80mm telescope to project the sun on a piece of paper.  The larger sunspot (AR 2786) was also visible with the naked eye using solar eclipse glasses. WARNING: NEVER look directly at the sun!  It is only safe to watch the sun using dedicated filters! I took some pictures.  You can see AR 2785 (the smaller sunspot) and AR 2786 easily.  More information on the current status of the sunspots can be found at the  spaceweatherlive  website. Sunspots AR 2785 and AR 2786. Canon 80D, 300mm, f/22, 1/500s, ISO 100. In the evening, it was still clear.  Jupiter and Saturn are moving closer and closer to each other.  On the night of December 21, they will be less than 1 degree from each other.  The view through a telescope (or binoculars) will be really spectacular then.  Let's ho

After a long time of bad weather, we finally had some good nights in the beginning of November.  The moon was still close to full moon, so there wasn't a lot of time to spend observing.   On November 5, 2020, I had a lot of problems to point the finderscope.  I had to wait for Mars to appear from behind the house of the neighbours before I finally found an object that was bright enough to point to.  Once the finderscope was pointed, I did an alignment of the Argo Navis, and I calculated the mount errors.  It was the first time I did the extra pointings to be able to calculate the mount errors.  The result was indeed an improvement and the telescope pointed correctly over a large portion of the sky.  I will describe the steps I did in another blog post.   I observed some spectacular objects, but the humidity was very high which made the eyepieces hazy once they were put in the focuser.  I ended the observing evening by looking at Mars and the view was really amazing.  The FeatherTou

I ordered the SkyFi 3  together with the ServoCAT on March 30, 2020.  Because of the CoVID-19 pandemy, the SkyFi 3 only arrived on July 2, 2020.  This was the second day of our holidays...  I could only install the SkyFi on August 3, 2020.  The installation is very straightforward. The only thing I needed to do was to plug in a USB cable both in the ServoCAT and in the SkyFi.   Thanks to the SkyFI, I can now use SkySafari to do a GoTo with the ServoCAT.  This is very useful, because I can now slew directly to the comets, use DeepskyLog to create observing lists and put them in  SkySafari, and always see a map of the sky where the telescope is pointed.  The first time I could test the SkyFi was on September 13, 2020.  There was however still a problem with the powered ground board of the ServoCAT.  After fixing the problem a few day later, the weather became very bad and the first night I could really test the SkyFi was on November 6, 2020.  The SkyFi really works as expected.  It real

Tonight, a new lockdown was announced in Belgium, because the number of COVID-19 (a.k.a. corona) patients is again very high.  When we looked outside, we could see that there was a nice - more positive - corona visible around the moon tonight.

Today, we could enjoy a nice rainbow.  The rainbow was only visible for a few minutes.  The secondary rainbow was also visible,  but much fainter. 

September 14, 2020 was a very hot day.  During the day, some clouds formed and a very bright sundog became visible. 

I ordered a Starlight Instruments Feathertouch focuser to upgrade my Obsession Telescope.  The new focuser arrived during our holidays, so I had to wait a bit before I could install and test the focuser. I installed the new focuser on August 3, 2020.  The installation was very straight-forward:  I removed the old JMI  NGF-DX3 focuser.  The old focuser is still in very good state and up for sale.  If you are interested in buying the focuser, just drop me a note.   The Feathertouch baseplate was screwed onto the upper cage.  The location of the screws is exactly the same as the location of the screws for the old focuser.  So this was an easy step. The hole in the upper cage was a little bit too small to be used with the Feathertouch focuser, so I had to make the hole a bit longer. The final step was to screw the new focuser on the baseplate.  I could only do the first tests on September 11, 2020.  During the new moon of August, we were in Austria and the weather was not good enough to d

During our holidays in Austria, we could see a very nice halo.  The 22°-halo could be seen very clearly.  At the bottom of the halo, the Lower Tangent Arc was very bright, as well as the Upper Tangent Arc.  These Tangent Arcs are already less frequent to see (according to the Atmospheric Optics website around 27 days per year in Europe).  Above the Upper Tangent Arc, a fainter atmospheric effect was visible: The Parry Arc .  The Parry Arc is a very rare sighting.  On average, the arc is only visible once a year in Europe.  However, after some discussions, there is probably a lens artefact at the location of the 'Parry Arc'.  But even without this rare Parry Arc, it was still a very nice sighting. On August 19, we could see another very nice halo.

After our stay in the Pyrénées, we also went for a week to Simiane-la-Rotonde, in de Alpes-de-Haute-Provence in France.  The skies were also very dark there (SQM 21.6) and there were less mountains to interfere with the observations of comet Neowise (C/2020 F3).  On July 18, 2020, Neowise was still very bright, easy to spot with the naked eye and very nice on the pictures I took.  Comet Neowise (C/2020 F3) with Canon EOS R, 60mm F/2, 4 sec, ISO 6400. A timelapse of comet Neowise on July 18, 2020. On the last evening of our holidays, July 24, 2020, we could observe comet Neowise again.  It was already a bit more difficult, but still easy to spot the comet with the naked eye.   Comet Neowise (C/2020 F3) with Canon EOS R, 70mm F/2, 6 sec, ISO 3200. A timelapse of comet Neowise on July 24, 2020. DeepskyLog observations:  https://www.deepskylog.be/index.php?indexAction=comets_detail_observation&observation=2567 https://www.deepskylog.be/index.php?indexAction=comets_detail_observation&am

On July 19, I did some observing with the 18'' Obsession.  It was to enjoy a very dark night again (SQM 21.6)! I started with observations of comet Neowise (C/2020 F3) and M 13.  Neowise was a real show in the eyepiece of the telescope.  I could enjoy a lot of nebula and detail.  After some fainter globular clusters in Ophiuchus, I enjoyed the splendid view of the Veil Nebula and the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888).  The crescent was very easy to see with a lot of details.  In the 13mm Nagler, the whole field of view was full of nebula.  I ended the observing night with a view of Jupiter and Saturn.  Table with my eyepieces, waiting for the night. I made a timelapse movie of the observing night, using my Canon 80D and a 10mm F/2.8 Sigma lens. All observations can be found in DeepskyLog .

During our holidays in the Pyrénées, we visited the Tourmalet, a mythical col know from the Tour de France.  When we arrived, the weather was still nice.  So we could enjoy a nice view of the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, with the observatory.  It was already quite late when we arrived at the Tourmalet, so we didn't have the time to visit the observatory. Pic du Midi de Bigorre as seen from the Tourmalet.

During our holidays in France, we really looked forward to see comet Neowise.  Mails from our friends in Belgium made clear that the comet was a naked eye object.  We hoped to see the comet when we were in the Pyrénées.  By then, the comet was also visible in the evening.   There were a few problems however: The weather in the Pyrénées is very variable.  In ten minutes, the weather could change from sunny to totally overcast.  Most of the evenings, there were so many clouds that we could not look for the comet at all. The little house we were staying is was located at a very nice location, close to the Cirque de Troumouse.  This meant that we were really in the mountains, and that we could only observe close to the horizon in a very small part of the sky.  Luckily, this was the northern part of the sky, exactly were the comet should be visible.  To be really sure that we could see the comet, we had to wait for a clear night. The evening of July 15, it was finally clear.  Before it was

The week following the new moon of June, we could enjoy very hot weather in Belgium.  The skies were clear, so there were some opportunities to observe.  The main problem during this period of the year is that the astronomical twilight never ends, which means that the sun never get below 18° the horizon.  This means that it never gets really dark... This can also be seen at the values of the SQM meter.  The highest I got was 20.09, while on the clear months in the past months, I sometimes had a value of 20.31.  On Monday June 22, I observed till 1:30.  I played with the ServoCAT and enjoyed some old friends: M 57, M 27, M 13, M 56, and the Veil Nebula.  I did not note down my observations, but I just enjoyed the views. The young moon on the evening of July 23 (Canon EOS R, 300mm F/5.6). On Tuesday June 23, I also observed.  I was a very warm night, so I could observe without a jacket.  The frogs were croaking a lot.  I turned the auto-align mode of the Argo Navis to off and the slewing

On June 11, the weather was not so good, but in the evening, the clouds suddenly went away.  As the predictions for the night were good, I took the Obsession outside to do some tests and observations.   The ServoCAT did follow the objects very good, but the slewing towards new objects was not very accurate...  I will need to do some fine tuning on the azimuth axis.  The encoder of the altitude axis did not change, so I don't suspect that the problem lies there. I did enjoy some showpiece objects.  The summer constellations were already high enough in the sky to enjoy the view of the Crescent nebula (ngc 6888), the Veil nebula, the Ring nebula (M57), M 13...  I also enjoyed some nice galaxies (like M 82).  The nights are very short this time of the year, so I did not observe for a long time.  The quality of the skies was less than during the previous observing nights.

On May 15, 2020, the  ServoCAT  arrived.  The installation did take some time, but thanks to the very good instruction documents and movies, everything went without problems. Installing the powered ground board The first step, and in my opinion also the step that took the most time, was to install the powered ground board.  Because the 18''  Obsession telescope has a triangular ground board, a new, round ground board was made. I bought birch plywood of quality B/BB, with a thickness of 18mm.  Most wood shops can provide the birch plywood, but probably you will need to ask explicitly for it.  Around ground board with a diameter of 58cm was made. The new ground board. The old ground-board can be removed by loosening the screw in the rocker box.  Don't forget to remove the washer. The screw to remove from the rocker box. Also remove the washer in the center! The old, triangular ground board is no longer needed. In one of the feet of the new ground-board, a hole should be dril