Alexis Wilke

2020-07-222020-07-29

Lucky Luke — “man who shoots faster than his shadow”

As a kid, I would read many French and Belgium cartoons, such as Lucky Luke, the lone cowboy who can shoot faster than his shadow and his horse, Joly Jumper.

Of course, this is a joke for the character has to be really fast to draw and shoot at bad guys so he can win all battles. The whole cartoon has many jokes, with, for example, the Daltons who just can’t do anything right and always end up in jail (well, the real Daltons did not really do much properly either…)

2018-01-022020-05-16

Handheld Telescope (a.k.a. Pirate Brass Telescope with a Wooden Box)

With Pirate Movies we have seen a come back of those old Telescopes that navigators used for centuries before the GPS was publicly available.

Although often referenced as Pirate Telescope, those were regular captain navigation telescopes and pirates happened to steal them along other treasures. Not like pirates invented them… Continue reading “Handheld Telescope (a.k.a. Pirate Brass Telescope with a Wooden Box)”

2017-12-082018-01-20

Why Do You Want a Case for Your Telescope?

Cleaning a Telescope Mirrors and Eye Pieces

As I explained in my post Advice on Buying a Telescope Online, there are two types of telescopes. Both have a different set of needs when it comes to maintenance.

The maintenance is an important part if you do want your telescope to continue to perform well and who wouldn’t want such?! In most cases you’ll just have a small dust problem, but dust on your mirror is not easy to clean (well… it’s not that hard, but it’s a bit of work) so if there was a way to make it easy on you, wouldn’t that be great? Continue reading “Why Do You Want a Case for Your Telescope?”

2017-12-052020-07-14

We can now show star motion in another Galaxy!

The Sculptor Dwarf Galaxy is a small galaxy close by the Milky Way. We can see other galaxy through it as its stars are quite sparse. Image Credit: ESO

Source of the Observation of Moving Stars

From data that we gathered about 12 years ago (2005) using the International Space Telescope (IST) and data being gathered now (2017) by Gaia, some astronomers calculated the motion of various stars in the Dwarf Galaxy named Sculptor. Continue reading “We can now show star motion in another Galaxy!”

2017-11-272018-01-02

Advice on buying a telescope online at Amazon

For quite a few of us, amateur star gazers, buying a telescope is a relatively rare event and thus you want to make it right.

Here I’d like to talk about what you want to look into before you purchase your own telescope. In another post, I also talk about binoculars (if you want to also have binoculars for nature trips…) Continue reading “Advice on buying a telescope online at Amazon”

2017-11-132021-03-16

What’s the difference between Astronomy and Astrology

I have always thought that the word Astrology should be the one we use instead of Astronomy. Unfortunately, history decided otherwise and made the wrong choice way back when the science was given a name by the Greeks. Continue reading “What’s the difference between Astronomy and Astrology”

2017-11-122017-12-06

Stargazer Definitions

Someone looking at stars

The primary definition of Stargazer is: Someone who looks at the Stars, although it now includes all sorts of celestial objects including constellations, planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, comets, quasars, galaxies. Pretty much anything one can see with the naked eye. Continue reading “Stargazer Definitions”