The evening of July 29, the sky looked clear, but sadly, clouds were expected during the night. It looked good enough to do some observing, but when I started around midnight, I already saw that the clouds were coming. I did still have some time to observe M 13 and M 27.
This was the first time I could test the Berlebach Nix II Observing chair. During the observation of M 13, I used the chair as a step, as M 13 was almost in the zenith. For M 27, I could use the chair as a high chair. It was nice to be able to sit down and enjoy the pretty view of M 27. I still need a longer observing run to really test out the chair.
I could also try the new Tele Vue 21mm Ethos eyepiece. The eyepiece provided very nice views, and I preferred the view over the Tele Vue 31mm Nagler, but the field of view is of course a bit smaller. The (also very recently bought) Tele Vue 13 mm Ethos and the Tele Vue 8mm Ethos also provided very nice views.
I already had to stop observing at 0:30, because the clouds were all over the sky.
August 2 - 3
A few days later, a clear night was predicted. It was a very warm night, and I could observe the whole time with my shorts and t-shirts. I started observing at 23:30, with a temperature of 20.4°, and a humidity of 77%. I stopped observing at 1:45, while it was still 17.9° and a humidity of 84%.
It was a good night for our garden, with an SQM value of 20.25. The seeing was good and I could enjoy using the Tele Vue 8mm Ethos and Tele Vue 5mm Nagler eyepieces without problems. I had some more time to test the Berlebach Nix II observing chair and the Tele Vue 21mm Ethos eyepiece and I'm very happy with both of them. I will write a separate blog post about these later.
I did not note a lot of things down, as I wanted to enjoy the views through the telescope after a long time without observations.
I started with M 13 and M 56, two nice globular clusters. After these, I looked at M 57, the ring nebula. As the seeing was very good, I could even use a magnification of 676x (using the 3.5mm Baader Hyperion eyepiece). The central star could be seen from time to time. My next step was the Veil Nebula in Cygnus. Using the O-III filter, there was an amazing amount of detail that could be seen, in the part around 52 Cygni, Pickering's Wisp and the Eastern Veil Nebula.
I moved on to the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888), which was larger than I remembered from an observation many years ago. The brightest part was easily seen using the O-III filter in the Tele Vue 21mm Ethos, the rest was quite faint. NGC 7331 could be seen as a bright galaxy. I had the best view using the Tele Vue 8mm Ethos eyepiece, with the Astronomik CLS filter. I could not see the fainter companion galaxies (they were easily visible some years ago under a dark sky in France).
The next object I observed was M 92, another globular cluster in Hercules. I was really amazed by the beauty of this cluster! Separate stars could be seen right up to the center of M 92, and the stars are visible very far from the center. The best view was using the Tele Vue 13mm and 8mm Ethos eyepieces. In the Tele Vue 5mm Nagler, the whole field of view was filled with stars.
NGC 6905, the Blue Flash Nebula in Delphinus was also a very nice view. A faint central star was visible and some detail was visible in the planetary nebula.
I ended the night with some views of Saturn. Cloud belts were easily visible using the Tele Vue 13mm and 8mm Ethos eyepieces. As the seeing was good, I could even use the Baader 3.5mm Hyperion eyepiece. The Cassini-division in the rings was easily visible.
I really enjoyed this observing night! I could finally test my new Ethos eyepiece on a broad range of objects and I'm very impressed with the quality, the nice views and the amazing field of view.
The Berlebach Nix II observing chair was also tested and is very nice to use, and very relaxing to observe as a step for the highest objects and as a chair for the lower objects.
On August 30, 2023 we installed an ASA AZ800 telescope in the observatory at work, at the Institute of Astronomy of KU Leuven . The telescope will be one of the telescopes of the MARVEL project, an array of four telescope we will install on the Roque de los Muchachos in La Palma, It was a very rainy day, but we managed to put the telescope in the observatory. Enjoy some of the pictures! The upper part of the telescope in the corridor. The lower part of the telescope ready for lifting up. The lower part of the telescope going up. The lower part of the telescope entering the dome. The upper part of the telescope entering the dome. The installed telescope.
For Father's day, I got the field edition of the Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas . In the past, I always used the first edition of Uranometria 2000.0 by Will Tirion, which was published in 1987! I was always very happy with the Uranometria and I always preferred the first edition over the second edition. I never took the book outside, but I made a copy of every page which I put in a sheet protector. I took the pages in a big folder outside to starhop through the skies. The Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas comes in a nice sturdy slipcase. The last years, I mostly observed from home (Bortle 5), so I mostly observe bright objects. Since last year, I added a SkyFI 3 to my Argo Navis / ServoCat so I can use SkySafari to always have a map on my phone or my tablet. However, a real star atlas has a nicer overview, which is very useful when observing. Under dark skies, a good star atlas is really needed to find the faintest objects. A nice card with the legend of the atlas The nice t
I was on La Palma from January 15 to January 21 for a technical mission at the Mercator telescope. The weather was not very good, but I managed to get out the Orion Skyquest XT12i IntelliScope we have in the Mercator building on the first evening I was there. I forgot already that the sky is so unbelievably good from the Roque de los Muchachos. There was quite some wind, but I could hide behind the car, so the wind did not disturb me that much. The telescope has a right angle finder and a telrad, but the batteries of the telrad were empty, so I could not use the telrad. Pointing the telescope with only a right angle finder is very difficult, so it was not easy to find the objects I was looking for. It was quite cold, with a temperature of 2.3° when I started observing around 19h40 and a temperature of 3.7° when I stopped around 22h15. The humidity fell from 57.5% to 33.2% and the wind speed was around 6 m/s. I did not observe for a very long time, because I had to wake up ve
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