Click on the image for more information!

"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." - Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)

Welcome! I built this astrophotography website to keep track of most of the images I made during the past few years. All astronomy pictures on this website were made using the Meade Starfinder 10" EQ telescope on the original mount. Autoguiding and periodic error correction are not possible with my setup, so the exposures times are very limited. Because astronomical deepsky camera's are rather expensive, I mainly use several SC modified webcams to make deepsky exposures. Some of these webcams are modified for long exposure only, but some webcams have also been equiped with a more sensitive black and white CCD. For some more information on my setup, you can check out my equipment page.

As of June 2009 I also own a dkm21au04.as camara. This camera is far superior to the b/w Toucam Pro camera when it comes to planetary imaging. The DMK is also capable of long exposure images, but since it has no cooling and the ccd is extremely tiny, it's not very useful for most deepsky imaging. Nevertheless it can produce really nice images of bright and small deepsky images like M57.

The banner at the top shows the northern sky on an early summer morning seen from my imaging location (52°42'N, 6°16'E). From my main telescope location I can get decent views on the eastern and southern part of the sky, but if I move the telescope around a bit, the western and northern sky are also quite possible.

If you have any questions or remarks about this website, my imaging techniques, or images, feel free to contact me.

(update April 25 2011) AutoStakkert! v2 has been delayed until further notice. It's not being canceled, it is actually pretty close to a finished product, it's just that I want to do it right, or not at all. And at the moment 'not at all' seems a bit more realistic. The next two months I'm way too busy with non-astronomy related stuff, and I'd rather make some recordings once in a while, instead of programming on AutoStakkert! v2. I'll report back in a couple of weeks.

(update April 1, 2011) The weather has just been too good lately, so the april 2nd 'deadline' will not be made. Really, it's no joke.. Expect more information next week.

(update February 22, 2011) I know I probably said this before, but this time it's for real. Really... If everything goes well, within a couple of weeks a new version of AutoStakkert! will be released. ETA +- April 2, 2011. It doesn't included all the features I had planned, but I probably was a bit too optimistic about some. The new version will still be optimized for speed and easy handling. But it also has some nice new features, including:

• Support for color recordings in both debayered as well as raw format.
• 12 bit .SER support (Thanks to Heiko Wilkens for letting me use this format!)
• Animation building has never been easier with the new sub-pixel drift compensation. Multiple stacks of the same recording - and subsequent stacks of multiple recordings - will fit perfectly on top of eachother without having to realign the images.
• Planetary offset to have more control of the FOV of the final stack. Simply drag the planet to your desired location (to include that tiny moon that would otherwise not be included in the stacking process)
• More robust detection and centering of the planet
• And many many more little tricks and fixes that I will discuss in the following weeks.

What it probably will not have is multipoint alignment, as I find this a bit too tricky to be honest. I have been working on this, and have gotten good results using it on my own recordings, but it was slow and buggy. If I have some time left, I'll try to include a prelimary version of this in the next release (but then you shouldn't count on miracle results.. yet..).

More information will follow in the next few weeks!