As I wrote lately, Zuleikha developed some interest in stars, and in astronomy. So I bought her a little Newton telescope, and some books and a star map. And today there was one of the open door days at our local public peoples’ observatory, or in German, in our Volkssternwarte in Darmstadt. So that is where we went.
And it was interesting indeed. I talked to some people, and learned a lot, while Mitchie and Zuleikha listened to some talk, went into their library, and even had some cake. Later Zuleikha bought a photo of IC 1318, or the butterfly nebula from Mirko Boucsein, one of the members of the society. Mirko took that photo with a modified Canon 500D DSLR camera (minus the infrared filter layer on its sensor), and with a GSO 150/600mm f/4 telescope on a Skywatcher HEQ5 equatorial mount which was guided by a second camera.
I even forgot to take photos inside, and because the sky wasn’t clear, we couldn’t even look at the sun through some of their telescopes. But I was invited to come back on a Friday evening when there’s a clearer sky, and to observe some stars and/or deep sky objects together with them.
Before we left, we had to take a look over Darmstadt from the place which is called Luisenhöhe. We’ve been here, and I’ll definitely come back.
Thanks for reading.