To be or not to be

Ever since my Uni days, Theater has been very important to me. From Dopio Theater at Flinders Uni,  Desert Rose in Saudi Arabia, Lane Cove dramatic group in Sydney to the ESOC theater group in Darmstadt I have enjoyed the many productions and times together with people. More recently I have dabbled in music by joining the EUMETSAT choir and thanks to my dear friend Patty, have started with the Saxaphone.

During her stay Maja has followed me around and is now my greatest critic and friend.

Maja on drums, Ivan on Sax!

We are waiting the piano player....late!

Patty's Sax - thanx :-)

Maja waits for me to finish work and get back to the fun stuff

Rehearsals

Maja makes friends with Anouk

Inseparable!

needs no comment!

So, that's what Maja and I get up to when she isn't answering her fan mail.

cheers
Ivan

Maja checks out MERLIN

Merlin is Skywatcher's new GOTO mount that fits on a table top. Its about 30 cm high and solidly made.


The magic comes in when a camera is attached and MERLIN can goto any object in the night sky. Best of all, it can be controlled by PC.

I configured Stellarium to talk to MERLIN and was surprised how well it works together. Here's a picture of Maja getting a close look at the Moon with the help from MERLIN.

 Of course, the moon is normally pretty easy to find. Here's a view of the Andromeda Galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda.

Maja was surprised that despite it being a huge Galaxy, my picture of it looks very small and faint. Well, its very far away, some 2,500,000 light years away!

So, what else can we see?

 

Jupiter is only 142,800 Kms away, not exactly close but perhaps easier to see.

Getting Jupiter in focus is difficult when using a zoom lens that isn't auto focus. Here's a trick to getting the picture sharp. Its called a Bahtinov mask. I downloaded a template from the internet and cutout the veins to get its special Y pattern. Maja helped of course!

It fits over the front of the camera like this.

The image of Jupiter now looks more like a star!

 

Now all you have to do is focus the camera until the spikes look more centered

So, to finish off, here's a picture of the moon taken 25 Sept 2010 at 23:45. There was a lot of cloud covering the moon but I think its a good shot taken from camera with a zoom lens.

Wishing you all clear skies and happy days!

Ivan + Maja

Maja at work with Ivan

Oh, its really nice to have Maja with me.

So I took her to work and showed her around EUMETSAT. I told Maja about how we manage satellites that monitor the climate and especially the weather.

Maja caused quite a stir by climbing on the models.

Some of the models outside are HUGE!

... and it got a little scary so I took her back inside

... did you know that our satellites can spot fires!

COMING UP NEXT....Maja joins a music practice session

Maja visits us for a few days

I am stacked that Maja can come over and stay with us for a few days! :)

Maja has become quite a local celebrity and when I asked if she could help me out to prepare for an upcoming Jazz event, well, I was overwhelmed that she could stay with us for a few days, I mean, despite her busy schedule, face book fans and calls for appearances.

I picked up Maja yesterday and it seems that it was just in time. Helge was playing around with a sax and made quite a racket. A bit loud for Maja's sensitive musician ears.

So, it was perfect timing to whisk her away.

Luckily I had already arranged for a booster seat and after getting her safely strapped in we headed off.

As we have a few days before Maja returns home, I thought that a nice relaxed evening with Anke will be the best way to start.

It was nice to get some help in putting the telescope together and to share the night sky with Maja.

As the night sky was so clear I asked Maja if she would like to see some stars and in particular Jupiter.
Jupiter's moons were in an unusual orientation last night, all 4 Galilean moon were to one side of Jupiter, something that I had never seen before.