DeepskyWim

Tonight, there was a conjunction of Venus and the moon.  Also the pleiades are very close by.  I took some images, one of them with also Orion in the same field of view.

Tonight was the first clear night of a week full with predicted nice weather.  Our daughter also asked to look through the telescope and we enjoyed the views of Venus, the Pleiades, M 42 and M 35.  We also took some time to do light-painting, which resulted in these nice pictures. I took some pictures of Venus and the Pleiades. They are close to each other in the sky now. I also did some observations later in the evening.  The sketches will appear later on this blog.

The weather predictions for the following week are very good.  Clear skies every night and this time, the clear skies coincide with a new moon. Perfect conditions to do some observing.  However, there are a few problems: The corona-virus is sweeping across the world, so we can not make unneeded displacements.  This means that the observations should be done from our own backyard.  In fact, this weekend I planned to go for an observing trip to Grandpré, where the skies are really dark.   As I wrote in one of the previous posts, the motor of my equatorial platform for my 18'' Obsession telescope is broken.  We tried to fix it, but this did not work out as hoped...  I planned to use the old groundboard of my Obsession again, but this needed some fixes (the teflon became loose).  This means that the ground board is at the house of my father-in-law for reparation, together with the rocker... As we can not drive anymore, this means that I can not use my Obsession for the observ