DeepskyWim

During the week from November 21, 2021 to November 28, I went to La Palma to upgrade the Mercator Observatory Control System (MOCS) to a new version.  Because the Cumbre Vieja volcano was still eruption, the trip to La Palma was a real adventure!  We departed Brussels around noon on November 21, but when we arrived in Madrid, there were no flights to La Palma anymore, because the airport was closed.  After spending a few hours waiting, we were put on the waiting list for the first flight to Tenerife on Monday.  As there were a lot of people on the waiting list, we could not get on the plane, so we had to rethink our plans again.  They wanted to put us on the waiting list for the next flight to Tenerife, but as we could not be sure that we could get on the flight, we asked to rebook us to Gran Canaria.  From Gran Canaria, we took a Binter Canarias flight to Tenerife and on Tenerife, we took a bus from Tenerife Norte to Los Cristianos.  There we could take the boat to La Palma.  We arriv

During the weekend of November 5, 2021 to November 7, 2021, VVS Capella organized an observing weekend in Grandpré , France.  The weather prospects were not very good, but when I was driving towards France, more and more gaps in the clouds became visible.  When I arrived, the weather was good enough to set up my Obsession telescope.  Because of the bad weather prospects, a few people cancelled their trip, so we were in a small, but nice company.   In the beginning of the night, the sky was clear, so I started observing NGC 6543, the Cat's Eye Nebula.  VVS Capella could use a 17mm Televue Ethos eyepiece, and I was very eager to test this.  The view through this eyepiece was really nice.  In the Obsession, the field of view of the Ethos was larger than the field of view of 20mm Nagler, but with a higher magnification.  Before I could move to higher power eyepieces, the clouds started to come in and we had to stop the observations...  The timelapse shows nicely the clouds rolling in.

During the holidays around All Saints Day, we went on a short holiday to the Volcanic Eifel in Germany.  The main aim of the holiday was to spot some volcanic remnants and to do a lot of hiking.  We did find some time to spot some interesting astronomical sites.  During a walk around the Dauner Maaren, we could spot the  Hoher List  observatory. The observatory hosts a nice collection of telescopes.  We did not have the time to visit the observatory, but we will do so in the future. When we were driving home, we made a detour to watch the  Radio Telescope in Effelsberg .  This radio telescope is really impressive!  The diameter of the telescope is 100m, so everything is really impressive! From the parking spot for the cars a nice planet path can be followed to the telescope.  It is possible to come really close to the telescope, an impressive sight! Radio telescope Effelsberg Radio telescope Effelsberg Hoher List