A Moon Corona

Yesterday evening, we sat a round the campfire with our guests. It was almost full Moon but it was quite clouded. A little later in the evening the sky became clearer, except for some fast moving, high clouds. Then we saw something beautiful; as the thin clouds passed the Moon, a darker ring formed around it at a little distance. At some point the ring had even some colours in it and almost looked like a pale, circular rainbow. When the clouds moved on, the corona disappeared again.
Corona’s are produced by refraction of the moonlight (which is of course reflected sunlight) from ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. The hexagonal (6 sided) shape of the ice crystals focuses the light into a ring. If there are few ice crystals, you will see no clouds but a thin ring

The edge of the universe

Distance does strange things to our perspective. Astronomers have found a galaxy at the astonishing distance of 13 billion light years. It was born soon after the Big Bang and since its light has travelled so long to reach us, we see it as it was just after it was born. So the image we see is of a very young galaxy, at the same time it is very old, 13 billion years to be precise. Viewing galaxies so far away in our ever-expanding universe, introduces several bizarre twists in understanding. The very old, yet young galaxy is one of the least bizarre. Another thing that happens when you look at something that far away is that it looks bigger than it should at that distance. At the same time it looks dimmer than one would expect. The reason for this is

Our closest neighbour, the Moon

The Moon is our only natural satellite. Despite its proximity to Earth and the fact that man has visited the Moon, there are still many questions about the Moon. Scientists still struggle to answer some fundamental questions like: What is the nature of the Moon’s core? What is the structure of the mantle? And, despite recent evidence of substantial water on the Moon, why is there so much less than on Earth? According to the most accepted theory, the Moon formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, when a large body the size of Mars hit the young Earth. The debris of both the impacting body and the Earth’s outer layers formed our Moon. Almost immediately, gravitational forces

Breathtaking stars

As a child I already had a fascination for stars. I think I was about nine years old when my brother in law pointed out the Big Dipper to me for the first time, and from that moment I was hooked. Although I already owned a book about astronomy when I still lived in the Netherlands and had looked up to the breathtaking sky of the southern hemisphere during our travels, the real fascination came when I came to live here in South Africa. Especially in winter the sky here is so clear that you can see the Milky Way beautifully.

Corné also got interested and

Saturn, Lord of the rings

The planet Saturn can be seen beautifully now in the night sky. Saturn is one of the most fascinating planets because of its rings. Through our 10 inch telescope you can clearly see the rings sticking out on both sides of the planet. Some of the larger moons can be seen as well. Saturn is one of the gas planets and the second largest planet in our solar system, after Jupiter. The planet is about Milky Way. You can see Scorpio beautifully and Sagittarius is rising. The Southern Cross is getting lower now and Arcturus in the constellation Bootes is one of the brightest stars in the sky. It is a great time of year if you love astronomy like us.