One of my main interests besides chess programming (-and mountaineering, which I have become less engaged in the last years-) is astronomy and space exploration. I am fascinated from all the photos and articles which you find on the NASA , ESA, space.com, SEDS, Comet Observation Home Page, Astronomielexikon, Astronomie.de  and many other related internet pages. You may look at a few photos which I like especially in my favorite astronomy photo album.

As an amateur, I have been looking to the night sky with the naked eye and with binoculars, only since 2/2002 with a Meade ETX 90 EC computer controlled telescope.

Personal experiences with astronomical events

• Venus Transit June 8, 2004
  After many days with rain in Central Europe today we had a perfect sky and the transit was fully visible. Venus moved left to right (E->W) over the lower part of the sun disk from 7:20 until 13.20 CEST.  I was suprised how  large Venus appeared against the sun disc background. 
  See photos Second Contact   Venus Transit and sunspot group # 627
• Moon Eclipse May 4, 2004
  The eclipse (Total eclipse from 21:52 - 23:08 CEST) was fully visible all the time from Ternitz, Lower Austria, although my daughter told me that in Vienna (70m km distance) the sky was partly cloudy.
  
• Giant sunspots # 484 and # 486 at end of Oct.  2003
    

  SEVERE SOLAR ACTIVITY The most powerful solar flare in 14 years, a remarkable X18-category explosion, erupted from sunspot 486 this morning at approximately 1110 UT. An intensifying S3-class solar radiation storm is in progress. The explosion hurled a coronal mass ejection almost directly toward Earth, which could trigger bright auroras when it arrives on Oct 29th or 30th. See my 2 Digicam pictures in my Astronomy Images folder.

• Mars opposition Aug. 2003
  Mars is approaching very close to earth. The Mars disk shows already some detail and the South polar ice cap is clearly visible with  my Meade ETX 90 EC (9 mm ocular).
• Partial Solar Eclipse May 31, 2003
  The partially eclipsed big red sun rose at 5:00 in the morning above the horizon in Ternitz, Austria. The 2 ends of the sun crescent reached above the horizon cloud layer, pointed upwards and were shining  in white light, like light towers - a very unusual view! At 5:20 the maximum occultation with 76 % was reached. I pointed my Meade ETX telescope to the sun and projected the sun disk through the ocular on a white screen as I trained this before with my sunspots and Mercury transit images. Digicam picture   
• Moon Eclipse May 16, 2003
  On the morning of the 16th  May the partially eclipsed moon settled down low in the South Western sky just before it reached the totalitarian phase at 5h14 MESZ. It was not very impressive, the darkened moon did NOT shine in dark red and it was already dawn. I have already seen many more beautiful moon eclipses before!
• Mercury transit May 7th, 2003
  The planet Mercury crossed in about 4 hours in front of the upper part of the sun disk. A very impressive happening!
  Image 1  Image 2
• Sunspot Fotografy
  In preparation for the Mercury transit on May, 7, 2003 I pointed my Meade telescope for the first time to the sun (projection method) and saw sunspots very clearly and easily!  
• 2 new comets visible in January 2003!
  2 recently detected comets, C/2002 X5 Kudo-Fujikawa and C/2002 V1 NEAT, were visible in January/ February.Sadly they remained below expectations for developing to bright objects. I personally only spotted Kudo-Fujikawa on the morning sky around the 14th Jan., passing by right of the star Altair at its descent from NE to SW in direction sun.
• Leonid Meteor Storm (Nov. 19th, 2002)
  "Leonid meteor storms happen when Earth plows through clouds of dusty debris shed by comet 55/P Tempel-Tuttle. Earth is heading for two such clouds. "We'll collide with both of them on Tuesday morning, Nov. 19th," says Cooke. "The first cloud will cause a flurry of meteors over Europe at about 0400 UT. We expect sky watchers in the countryside to see between 500 and 1000 Leonids per hour." 
  Personal sightings: None! (Cloud and rain!)
  
• Venus seen as large crescent at the end of Sept. 2002
  The last weeks before Venus disappeared from the evening sky the Venus diameter seen in the telescope grew larger because Venus was coming closer to the earth. At the same time it became an even smaller crescent, illuminated from the sun from the right (West). 
• Asteroid 2002 NY40 near earth fly by on Sunday, 18th Aug. 2002 
  The asteroid passed by the earth in about 500.000 km distance. I missed this event also, beeing on holiday without my telescope. Gerald Rhemann of Austria shows a photo of the asteroid NY40 on his homepage/Deep Sky Fotos. 
• The Perseid meteor shower peaks this year on Aug. 12th and 13th
  Perseid meteors are fast, bright and colorful. The annual Perseid shower is one of the year's best. This year the moon crescent sets below the horizon early in the night and the conditions for observing in the early morning are good!
  Details see at  the NASA page.
  Personal sightings: 1 "Sternschnuppe" (German word for small meteor), definitely originating from the constellation of Perseus. But I confess I did'nt look very long and the weather was not favorable! 
  
• Venus and Jupiter on the western evening sky early June 2002
  Only 2 planets have been left from the 5 planet parade. But both are quite bright and can be seen early in the dawn.
• 5 Planet parade on  the western evening sky end of April/ early May 2002
  The five brightest planets are converging. Mercury (only for a number of days), Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter are visible with the naked eye in a line stretching upwards from the western horizon, moving relatively to each other in the course of days. On May, 10th Venus and Mars are only one-third of a degree apart, both seen together in a telescope at once.
  Another convergence of the planets like this will happen in July 2060, so we have to wait 58 years.
    
• Planet Occultations by the moon early 2002
  

  Saturn (middle bottom) occultation on April 16th, 2002 (c) Thierry Legault and  Denis Joye (France) Every month the moon passes by from west to east all the planets on its way through the ecliptic. Because of slightly different inclinations of the orbit planes it is not common that the moon crosses directly in front of a planet. There were a number of such rare encounters (the moon hiding Jupiter and saturn) in the last few month.   I tried to take images with my newly bought Meade telescope, but unfortunately the occultations were invisible because of clouds.

• Comet Ikeya-Zhang March, April 2002
  

  Comet 2002 C1 Ikeya-Zhang passing by Andromeda Galaxy on April 3rd, 2002(c) Gerald Rhemann (Austria) This beautiful comet has been clearly visible in the NW evening sky with binoculars and even with the naked eye under good conditions. Currently the comet is "circumpolar" at the lattitude where I live (48 degree North) , so it never sets below the horizon and is also seen in the morning sky in a NO direction. 2 Austrian comet hunters, Michael Jaeger and Gerald Rhemann have made impressive images of Ikeya-Zhang.

 

Goto page 2 (older) astronomy events

Last modified 2004-06-08   Rudolf Posch