A Trip to Rapa Nui
My daughter and I spent wonderful days on Easter Island (Rapa Nui in the indigenous language). This truly felt like paradise. For those interested in the history of the island, there is a a movie Rapa Nui, co-produced by Kevin Costner in 1994, which focuses on the destruction of the forests and the birdman cult.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Mars and friends
Currently Mars is shining brightly in one of the most intriguing parts of the Milky Way. The picture shows Mars (the orange dot in the left hand corner) along with the Lagoon Nebula ( red cloud below Mars), the Trifid Nebula (small red-blue dot to the right of the Lagoon Nebula), the Omega Nebula (red dot to the far right) and the Eagle Nebula (in the lower right corner). Also
Waxing Moon
Tonight I caught the waxing moon, 6 days after new moon, with 14% of the disk illuminated. This shot was taken through a telescope with at a focal length of 1600 mm.
Meteor and Zodiacal light
I was taking images of the zodiacal light or false dusk (a triangle of light that is visible in the West just after sunset during springtime in the Southern Hemisphere), when a bright meteor illuminated the scene, only missing Saturn by a hair.
Picturesque flowers
These flowers are part of the beautiful gardens at the Augustusburg Palace (a UNESCO world heritage site). More pics
Wedding pictures
I had the opportunity to shoot some wedding pictures for the production design of a movie that is currently shot in Cologne. The images will be part of the interior decoration in one of the houses that are used in the movie. The movie itself is a family roadmovie starring among others Corinna Harfouch, Meret Becker and Karl Kranzkowski.
Scorpius and the planets
Scorpius and the planets Mars (brightest dot in the upper left hand corner) and Saturn (bright white dot almost straight below Mars) one day after full moon. The image was taken with a special diffuser filter to highlight the colors of the stars and planets.
Wide-field view
Finally El Niño gave us a break and we had a spectacular clear night, which I used for some wide-field images of the Milky Way. The bright red dot above the Milky Way is the planet Mars, the fainter red dot below it is Antares (the main star of the constellation Scorpius), and the brighter dot to the left of Antares is the planet Saturn. The images were taken with
Transit of Mercury
On May 9, 2016, the planet Mercury passed directly in front of the sun (visible as a small black dot on the sun's face). The whole event lasted seven and a half hours. However, in this part of Chile the initial stages (first and second contact) took place shortly before sunrise, and were therefore not visible. We had quite some clouds on that day, but I was lucky and could