DeepskyWim

As the humidity in Belgium is very high most of the time, I finally decided to buy a dew controller and a heater for the eyepieces, secondary mirror and the filter slide.   Installing the Dew Controller The Dew Controller I ordered is the Quad Channel Digital Dew Controller from Dew Control . The 2m long cable of the dew controller was too short to connect directly from the ServoCat power bar.  To fix this, a connector from the front of the lower cage to the power bar was installed on the telescope.   The connector on the front of the lower cage. The attached cable to the connector on the lower cage. The installed Dew Controller on the upper cage. From the upper cage, I can easily attach the heater strip to the eyepieces.   The dew controller and the heater strip on the eyepiece. The heater strip on the eyepiece. Installing the filter slide with the Omega Dew Terminator For the filters, I ordered a new filter slide, with the  Astrocrumb Omega Dew Ter

The weather in Belgium was again very nice, with no clouds at all in the week of March 21.  I installed the Obsession 18" telescope in the garden on Tuesday, March 22.  The moon was just past full, but on Tuesday, there was already a few hours of observing time without the moon and that improved during the rest of the week. Tuesday, March 22: Bad transparency and first tests with the dew controller Last weekend, the connector from the front of the lower cage to the power bar was installed on the telescope.  Thanks to this change, the 2m long cable is long enough to install the  Dew Controller  on the upper cage (I apparently didn't need the extension cable I bought).  From the upper cage, I can easily attach the heater strip to the eyepieces.  Everything worked as expected and I didn't encounter a lot of problems with dew this night (but the humidity was not that high for Belgium). The SQM readings were really bad, but the seeing was remarkably better than during the obse

I was already fascinated a long time by the Tele Vue Ethos eyepieces.  During the observing weekend in Grandpré in the beginning of November last year, I could use the Televue 17mm Ethos during the few moments when the sky was clear in the beginning of the night.  The view was really nice, and I finally made the step and I upgraded my Tele Vue 13mm Nagler to a Tele Vue 13mm Ethos and my Tele Vue 8mm Radian to a Tele Vue 8mm Ethos during my  work trip to the USA .   The Ethos eyepieces are much larger than the old eyepieces, as can be seen in the picture. The old 13mm and 8mm eyepieces and the new Ethos eyepieces. The Ethos eyepieces can be used both in a 2" focuser and in a 1.25" focuser.  Combined with the paracorr, the 13mm Ethos is used in the 2" version, and the 8mm Ethos in the 1.25" version (as the 2" version can not be focussed correctly). I could already test the two new eyepieces during the clear nights at the end of February and the begi

Yesterday evening, just when we wanted to go to bed, we saw a very bright moon halo.  I took some time to take some pictures with my Canon EOS 80D and Sigma 10mm lens.

The weather is exceptionally nice the last weeks, so I took the time to go observing another time during the new moon period.  VVS Capella  has a new observing site in Honsem, and I decided to go there on Saturday evening, March 5.  It is a very nice location, with a model of a Renard R31 aircraft that was used by the Belgian air force around the second World War.   Observing the Orion Nebula (M 42) from Honsem Joost joined me.  He made some pictures, and observed together with me through the Obsession telescope. We observed M 42, M 43, NGC 2022, M 51, M 81, and M 82, but did not note anything down. The seeing was not very good, but better than during the previous observing session . I started observing at 21:45, with a SQM of 20.05 and ended around midnight, with an SQM of 20.20.  At the beginning of the session, the temperature was 2.5°, dropping to -1.4° at the end of the session.  The humidity increased from 72% to 89%. On good nights, the SQM value can be around 20.50 (or 20.60)