Enthousiastic beginning of 2010 with BBQ
Sunday, January 17th 2010 - Today we had our first official activity in our new observatory at The Breuly in Zevenaar being the newyear reception party for the members of our observatory. We also invited the members of the German observatory in Goch/Kleve for this event. They even brought along meat for the barbeque! Below you will find some of the pictures we took today. There is also a picture album available on this website with more pictures of this event.
Cross-border educational programme
Sunday, January 3, 2010 - Mr. Hartmut Sittel, chairman of the German observatory Goch-Kleve just accross the border, inspects our 40 centimeter Newton telescope (blue-orange-white telescope in background of picture below). The Newton telescope will primarily be used for visual observation by our own members, while at the same time both observatories in The Netherlands and Germany are collaborating on a joined educational project involving another special automated observatory that can be remotely controlled
Hartmut Sittel, chairman of the Goch-Kleve observatory, inspects our 40 cm Newton telescope.
Especially for this project an observatory has been build in Zevenaar, the Netherlands and equipped with a modern dome which can be remotely controlled such as by students working on their project at the German observatory in Goch-Kleve in Germany. This observatory will be used by students from schools in both the German Goch-Kleve-Emmerich as well as the Zevenaar-Arnhem-Doetinchem region. Mixed teams of students from both sides of the border will be introduced to astronomy, astrophotography, doing astronomical research and collecting and interpreting research data. The communication language within the student teams will be English giving this proejct an extra dimension. The students not only get to know their co-students from accross the Dutch-German border, but also get more experience communicating together in English, a language they all learn in school.
The dome can be remotely controlled. The dome shuts automatically with bad weather.
Apart from the above new project both observatories in the Netherlands and Germany teach each year thousands of children and students the basics of astronomy during school-classes given within schools in the area.
Saturn picture taken by Jan Adelaar
Recently on a cold Friday to Saturday night the weather started out with haze. Later that evening the sky cleared up and Saturn could be seen, even though now with its rings nearly closed, there was not too much to see. Of interest was its moon Rhea which can be seen as a dark black spot just underneath the rings.
Jupiter
At this time Jupiter stands higher in the sky. It wasn't too bad outside even though the current temperatures in this time of the year would suggest otherwise. The side of Jupiter visible at this time does not show anything of the comet impact that took place on the 19th of July last year.
Jupiter and Saturn as photographed by Jan Adelaar with a DMK video-camera and a C9.25 Celestron telescope as lens.
New observatory in Zevenaar is a fact
September 29, 2009 -- The actual building activities have started on our new observatory. The groundwork had been done already, such as laying the foundation and getting electricity, water, etc. Last friday, early in the morning the truck with the building materials arrived at the location of the former openair swimmingpool 'De Breuly' in Zevenaar and the unloading of the materials started. Right that weekend a group of volunteers started building and got quite far during the first three days of building. By now, the builing of the new observatory in Zevenaar has been completed.
More images can be found in the building picture album.
The building of our new observatory has been done mostly with volunteers and by our own members.
Starparty in Courtaoult, France
The first images are available of the latest starparty in the small village of Courtaoult in the North of France. Have a look at the picture album "Starparty Courtaoult 2009".
National astronomy-day April 3rd, 2009
Have a look at some of the pictures taken during the national astronomy day at our observatory.
Teaching astronomy on highschools
Some of our members teach astronomy at highschools and elementary schools in the area. One example is the lessons being given at the Montessori-College in Arnhem this last fall of 2008. With the group our teachers also visited the observatory Sonnenborgh in Utrecht.
Lessons on astronomy given at a highschool in the city of Arnhem.
Sky High
Sky High is the name of our new clubmagazine (written in Dutch). This year we will publish two full-colour editions to celebrate the publication of the 100th edition of the magazine as well as the international year of astronomy and the fact that we are building a new observatory this year.
Astrophotography workgroup
Edwin van der Sijde: I could not resist the clear night to take a picture of M42, the Orion nebula. I took this picture with a 250mm Meade Schmidt Newton F4 and Atik4000 ccd camera. RBG = 10/10/10 minutes of exposure (5 x 2 min per colour). The total exposure time was only 30 minutes.
The Orion Nebula - M42
More pictures taken by Edwin can be found in his photoalbum.