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Lecture at XPOSE

I had the opportunity to get to know the members of Photo Club XPOSE in Landen, and to talk on Astrophotography. Great people and lovely experience. It seems AP presents it very specific technical and optical challenges wrt ‘regular photography”.

Posing with members of the XPOSE photoclub @ Landen
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Lunar craters

Some details that stood out last night on the waxing Moon. Craters Posidonius, Theophilus & others. All images under pretty bad seeing, with the 180mm SkyWatcher Maksutov @ F15. ASI290MM.

Posidonius
Again Posidonius, a bit harder processed
Wider area around Posidonius
Theophilus and Catharina
North side of the Moon with Hercules (top right), Lacus Mortis (basin right bottom) and Gartner (sunken demi-crater bootom left of the center)
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Dwarf Planet MakeMake

Pronounce as “makimaki”. Nothing to see folks! only a very very dim and small star-like object. However, Makemake is the third largest Kuiper belt object, after Pluto and Eris. Makemake is smaller than our moon. Sunlight travels 6hrs and 20 mins to reach this object of only 1430km diameter. It was first observed at Palomar observatory in 2005 and recognized as a Kuiper belt dwarf planet in 2008.

Hubble discovered in 2015 a moon next to MakeMake, “MK2”. This moon has a diameter of 160km and turns around Makemake in 12 days at a distance of 21.000 km. It is definitively out of reach at magnitude 25 !