Today is Amnesty‘s "Freedom of speech day": A movement to illuminate the lack of freedom of speech around the world. They encourage everybody to do something related to freedom of speech on this day, and this is my contribution. Freedom of speech is one of the most important liberties in our lives. If we did not have the right to express our opinions, our lives would be radically different from what we are used to today. I doubt we would even have the ability to go to space if it wasn’t for freedom of speech. That does sound a bit too far fetched, but let’s think about it for a minute. In the middle ages the church was the de facto governing administration. They followed […] Read more

Last night at around 11pm I went to a dark place. Not the dark place in my mind, but the dark place where I took the Aurora photos a few years back. This was another space hunt. Not for Aurora this time, but for comet C/2007 N3 Lulin.The comet was just barely visible to the naked eye. I could see it a few times, but it was very very hard. When I looked at it through my binoculars it popped right out, so even if you can’t see it with your naked eye don’t let that discourage you from a similar excursion.My only failure on this excursion is that I don’t have a telescope… or a motorized and tracking tripod. The photos would have been […] Read more

I hope 2009 will bring joy and good times to everybody. Make it a good one.

At the exact moment of this blog entry the Winter Solstice is a fact. We up on the northern hemisphere can finally look forward to gradually more sunlight as the days up to the Summer Solstice (in June) pass by.I will celebrate this day of darkness with lots of lights, food and with my family around me in 3 days, on December 24th: Yule Evening.