„Lift up your eyes to heaven and see. Who has created these things?
It is the One who brings out their army by number; He calls them all by name.
Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power, Not one of them is missing (…)”

Middle Eastern poem about the stars, 8th century BCE

Recent

C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE)

Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE)

In this no-so-great-picture the comet is about 104 million km away, speeding at 54.000 km/h. The core is about 5 km in diamater, the tail is over 87.000 km long.

read more Jul 20, 2020

ATLAS

C/2019 Y4 ATLAS, before it fell apart

ATLAS was a Kreutz sungrazer comet. These comets are fragments of a large comet that broke up centuries ago. Their orbits take them extremely close to the Sun, and because of that they often fall apart. Thousands of this family have been discovered so far, but most of them didn’t survive their meeting with the Sun.

read more Apr 6, 2020

Solar Eclipse

2015 partial solar eclipse

2015 partial solar eclipse in Ireland as observed with a shoebox. A camera obscura is the ancestor of the photographic camera. The Latin name means “dark chamber,” and the earliest versions consisted of small darkened rooms with light admitted through a single tiny hole. The result is an inverted image of the outside scene cast on the opposite wall.

read more Mar 20, 2015

Articles

Etcetera

Assorted throwaway pancakes

More often than not astrophotos don’t come out the way you planned them to. There are about a 200 steps involved in taking a picture, and they all have to be right. Also, often we need to experiment, finetune equipment or the sky is not good enough for long enough to finish a project. These are some examples of failures and experiments.

read more Mar 20, 2022

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