JanJans Blog

Heute sind wir mit unserem Trekdinner in der Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn gewesen und haben uns die Ausstellung "Outer Space - Faszination Weltraum" angeschaut. Da uns das empfohlen wurde, haben wir auch direkt eine Führung dazu gebucht, die kostet 65€ zusätzlich; da wir 13 Leute waren, hat uns das also pro Person gerade mal 5€ mehr gekostet. Außerdem haben wir Gruppenrabatt bekommen, sodass der "normale" Eintritt bei nur 7,50€ und der ermäßigte bei 5€ lag. Daraus ergibt sich, dass wir nachher für's Parken - 1,50€ pro angefangener Stunde - mehr bezahlt haben als für den Eintritt! Hätten wir doch besser die Bahn genommen!


Aber zur Ausstellung: Soweit eigentlich eine ganz nette Veranstaltung mit diversen interessanten Exponaten. Leider hätte das Ganze etwas wissenschaftlicher sein können. Die Texte an den Ausstellungsstücken waren teilweise doch etwas dürftig. Da war zum Beispiel das Original-Modell der Enterprise-B aus "Star Trek - Generations" zu bestaunen, aber warum das gute Stück nicht mit NCC-1701-B beschriftet war, sondern mit NCC-42768 USS Lakota, das stand da nirgends. (Übrigens, weil Paramount wahrscheinlich die 1701-B umlackiert hat, um sie in DS9 benutzten zu können. Die Lakota, eine erweiterte Excelsior-Klasse, wurde übrigens von Admiral Leyton der Defiant entgegen geschickt, um diese abzufangen, weil sie Beweise für die Verstrickung des Admirals in einen Staatsstreich gegen die Föderation... WER HAT DA "NERD" GESAGT?!?)

Genau so verhielt es sich mit den meisten anderen Stücken auch: Ein kleines Schildchen für die notwendigste Beschreibung, sonst weit und breit nix! Ohne unsere Führung wären wir ziemlich aufgeschmissen gewesen. Und die gute Frau hatte bereits ganz am Anfang ihr Fett weg, als sie sagte, dass "der Weltraum bei 100 Kilometer, äh, Entschuldingung, 100 Meter" beginnt - das hat sie übrigens konsequent bis zum Ende durchgezogen: Alles, was eigentlich hätten Kilometer sein müssen, waren bei ihr nur Meter. Jaja, wenn man Geisteswissenschaftler über Technik referieren lässt.

Alles in allem hat sie sich aber durchaus Mühe gegeben, auch man wenn durchaus gemerkt hat, dass sie auch nur mal eben den Crash-Kurs mit gemacht hatte und dann auf die Meute losgelassen wurde. (Ja, die Mercury-Redstone 4 hieß natürlich "Liberty Bell", weil das Ding wie eine Glocke aussieht und Liberty - die Freiheit - natürlich eine Ansage gegen die bösen Sowjets im Kalten Krieg war, aaaaber vielleicht hätte sie auch noch diese komische Glocke in Philadelphia erwähnen sollen.)

Fazit: Wer sich gerne Sachen anguckt, ohne zu sehr mit Hintergrund-Informationen abgelenkt zu werden, für den ist diese Ausstellung durchaus geeignet. Alle anderen sollten sich einer Führung anschließen, um zumindest etwas mehr zu erfahren. Am Besten wäre wahrscheinlich ein Ausstellungs-Katalog, den ich allerdings nirgends gesehen habe.

So, und zum Schluss noch ein paar Fotos:


In der Ausstellung durfte man leider mal wieder nicht fotografieren, aber im Foyer schon. Und draußen vor der Tür natürlich auch.

It was a clear night after all and so I took some more picturs of the sky. Here is what I got:


Here we have Lovejoy again. This time I combined four separate images into one and reduced the background noise a bit. Still no tail, though. In the middle we have Jupiter, again, this time with only three moons visible. Two of them are very close to Jupiter itself. The last image is of Sirius. Not that spectacular, but a nice image I think.


Next we have two very long exposed images just to get a feeling for how many stars there are not visible to the naked eye. This time I took equipment to the countryside - if you can call a two kilometre car ride that - but as you can see there is still some mist in the atmosphere that gets illuminated by the surrounding cities. On the first image, by the way, there are the Plejades in the centre and the bright star to the left is Aldebaran. The second image is of Ursa Major.


These five images are of Orion. It is really prominent in the winter sky so it makes for a good motive. In the first image there is Betelgeuse at the bottom left as well as the "head" - Lambda Orionis - and the "right shoulder" - Gamma Orionis. These stars are the top half of the mythical hunter, while the lower half is visible in the second image: Orions Belt and the two "feet" - Kappa Orions to the left and Rigel to the right. The third picture features the three belt stars, while the fourth and fifth show the stars around the Orion Nebula.

There were many more stars visible that I wanted to photograph, but sadly at this point my tripod broke, I guess the cold was too much for the tilt locking mechanism. There is a little metal ring that acts as a bracket around the tilt axis which splintered into five parts. I guess that's it for this tripod, I probably won't be able to find a replacement part for something like that any time soon.

Yesterday was a clear day and it turned out to be a clear night as well. So I once again took my camera and put it on a tripod in our garden and pointed it at the sky. And this time I was able to find Comet Lovejoy! Here it is:


As you can see, there is a dim blueish spot about 10° to the right of the Plejades. That's it. Sadly no tail. The right image is the sharpest I took but at the cost of heavy noise because of the high ISO value.


These two images are detail crops of pictures taken at reasonable ISO values, but noise crops up after increasing gamma. I've tried to gently de-noise these images, but it is hard to do so without removing too much. The left is at 300mm, the right is taken with my 500mm mirror lens and a bit less sharp but one can see the coma a lot better.

My fingers were already freezing off when I was finished with Lovejoy. But then I saw that Jupiter had made it's way over the horizon and was climbing up into the sky. So I pointed my camera to the east and was not disappointed as I was able to see all of the four Galilean moons. Only I don't know which is which!


As you can see, Jupiter is very bright in comparison to a comet. That's mainly because is a lot bigger and not as diffuse as a comet. (By the way: The strange colours around Jupiter - reddish to the left and blueish to the right - are due to the crappy lens I use. It's called "chromatic aberration" and originates in the fact that different wavelengths get refracted differently inside the lenses. More expensive lenses show less of these errors but you can't get rid of them completely.)

At this point I was ready to become a block of ice. Nonetheless I took some pictures of Orion, especially the Orion Nebula.


On the first image you can see just how much diffuse light is around in this small village I live in. Next time I go hunting for celestial objects I have to take my car and drive out into the wilderness. Sadly, Germany (and especially North Rhine-Westphalia) is rather densely populated, so there isn't much wilderness around.

So, I found it. I already had pictures of it from the last time I went comet hunting, but than I didn't know for sure if that blue-green blob was what I was looking for. As weather conditions are getting bad again, I don't think I will be out tonight. The forecast for the next week is not very encouraging. I guess I'll have to wait until February. Maybe when the comet gets nearer to the sun it will finally develop a tail.

For the last week I've been trying to get a decent image of C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy but, alas, the weather is bad: Too many clouds, to much mist in the upper atmosphere and additionally I'm too close to the city. Nonetheless I've made some nice pictures of other objects, Jupiter and some of it's moons for example.


On January 7th you could not have missed Jupiter as it was just to the right of the Moon. It is fairly bright and it sported two of it's moons very prominently. I took these pictures with my new Nikon D610 (cranked up to ISO 3200) and an rather old Tamron 28-300mm lens, so anyone with a pair of binoculars could have seen almost the same. The image on the right shows the region where Lovejoy should be visible if there was less mist. On the left you can see the very prominent constellation of Orion, the bright star in the centre is Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Taurus, and further to the right the Plejades are visible. Lovejoy should be somewhere on the bottom of this image taken on January 10th, when I tried to find it for the second time.


On the same day I took another photo of Jupiter, this time with three moons visible. (The third one is rather faint but visible nonetheless.) Then I went looking for the comet again but could not find it. The centre image shows the same constellations as before, but as you can see, there is still far too much humidity in the atmosphere (and too much diffuse light). The last picture was taken on the 12th and shows a (shaky) image of the Orion nebula (diffuse spots in the middle).

So, no luck seeing Lovejoy. But I have not given up - it will still be visible for the rest of January and as it climbs higher over the horizon it might even get better. So, you can expect more photos of stars and planets from me!