Dear visitor!!

Thank you for visiting our weblog.

Although we live in Belgium, one of the most illuminated sites in the world, we are brave and love spending our free time under the stars. We are a local astronomical society in the Flemish part of Belgium and we are lucky to have a relative dark sky in our region. This is one of the reasons why we invested in a real observatory. We are the proud users of a observatory sitting on top of a 43 feet high steel tower. High enough to reach over the treetops! If you want to “Google” to our observatory, just enter “Domein de Bever Hamont-Achel” and Google will guide you to an arrow shaped pond in the middle of a vast forest. At the tip of the arrow you will see a white dot. This is our domed observatory!

Inside the observatory ends a massive 49 feet long pillar on which we can mount several telescopes. Some of our telescopes are way too heavy to carry up the tower. When we are working with these telescopes we used to setup on the field before the observatory. Last week we enjoyed a testrun with a brandnew 12 inch Ritchey-Chretien on a Mesu 2-friction mount. In this weblog you can find evidence of this  and other happenings. Try our albums!

Besides working with the telescopes, we organize gatherings on an monthly bases. During these meetings we study astronomical subjects. This can vary from astronomical to historical events, lectures on scientific research, geology, we keep a close watch on space exploration, we give lectures to the local fifth grades in school, and so on….

In these times were there are one-thousand-and-one things to do in our free time, we manage to keep a group of twenty-four “diehards” together. All twenty-four of them with an profound love of the stars and all the other things “out there”! Our motto:

Once possessed by astronomy………. lost for life!!!!

If you support our efforts, please leave a comment in our mailbox (use the button “contacteer me” on top of the right column). If you feel the need to communicate about astronomy, don’t hesitate! We will appreciate it highly. Keep visiting us!