Author Archives: mj

Gamsberg Drive

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Driving Namibia – Gamsberg 2022

Back on the Gamsberg, Namibia after a long CoViD hiatus. After the heavy rain season in spring 2022, the access pad (gravel road going up the mountain) was severely damaged and not passable for even a 4WD. During summer Nic of adjacent Farm Weener and his workers did a superb job in repairing the pad. So in August we went up …

The video shows uphill and downhill on the challenging access pad.

If you want to get a glimpse of the night sky on top of Gamsberg, have a look at my latest astro time-lapse video.

Special thanks to:
Nic for getting us safely up and down,
Sunja, Michael, Irene, Thomas, Sigi, Günter, and Toni
Internationale Amateursternwarte e.V.
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

An mj’s photography production, Copyright © 2022 Martin Junius
Music “Descent Part 4“, Copyright © 2022 Martin Junius

The Dragons of Ara

20-inch keller-cassegrain, NA, altar, ara, astrofotografie, astronomie, astronomy, astrophotography, deep sky, emission nebula, emissionsnebel, hakos, hakos guest farm, ias, ias observatory, ias observatory hakos, khomas, namibia, ngc, ngc6188, ngc6193, open cluster, star, star cluster, stars, stern, sterne, sternhaufen, world
Dragons of Ara – NGC 6188 and 6193 – Emission Nebula and Open Cluster in Ara – IAS Hakos, Namibia – Apr/May 2022 v1

Final installment of the OSC data from April/May, taken at the IAS Observatory Hakos, Namibia. Somewhat well-known objects in the southern sky, NGC 6188 and 6193, imaged as a two panel mosaic.

All details at Astrobin.

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RCW 32 – Gum 15

20-inch keller-cassegrain, NA, astrofotografie, astronomie, astronomy, astrophotography, deep sky, emission nebula, emissionsnebel, gum, gum15, hakos, hakos guest farm, ias, ias observatory, ias observatory hakos, khomas, namibia, rcw, rcw32, star, stars, stern, sterne, vela, world
RCW 32 – Gum 15 – Emission Nebula in Vela – IAS Hakos, Namibia – Apr 2022 v1a

Another image from April at the IAS Observatory Hakos, Namibia. Designated RCW 32 or Gum 15, an emission nebula in the constellation Vela.

Meanwhile I started using PixInsight’s new Weighted Batch PreProcessor (WBPP), with the option to split the R, G, B channels in the Debayer process and align / integrate the channels separately. This really improves image quality with OSC and using WBPP takes over the otherwise tedious manual process.

All details at Astrobin.

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A New Elephant Trunk

astrofotografie, astronomie, astronomy, astrophotography, b&w, black and white, bw, cepheus, elefantenrüsselnebel, elephants trunk nebula, emission nebula, emissionsnebel, fotografie, ic, ic1396, kepheus, photography, schwarzweiß, sw
IC 1396 – Elephant Trunk Nebula – Jun 2022 Ha BW v1

A quick capture during a clear mid summer night. An “advantage” of the light polution here: even so astronomical twilight isn’t reached, the sky brightness is for approx. 3 hours in the range of SQM 19.5 to 19.9. SQM 20.0 is the maximum I measured in my backyard in spring 2020 with the excellent “lock-down” skies.

Hopefully a break in the currently cloudy and rainy weather for some additional O3 und S2 data during the next days before the moon returns.

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