Space Clouds

 

clouds that wander through the sky
sometimes low and sometimes high
in the darkness of the night
in the sunshine warm and bright
ah! I wonder much if you
have any useful work to do
-anonymous-

 

The telescope points at the night sky and finds a giant molecular cloud hundreds of thousands of light years away. A  camera, mounted on the telescope gathers photons and squashes the cloud into one small magnificent and colourful image.

My adventure to these far away clouds began with less sophisticated equipment. I saw no colour just faint smudges and in some I could detect dark blotches, bands or filaments.

Maybe my first observations, without modern interventions were closer to what they might look like if we could one day travel so far.

One thing is for sure. Molecular Clouds have useful work to do. They are the stellar incubators and nurseries. They are the reason we see stars.

The Sun – has it or has it not

The Sun June 25, 2025. Slooh Canary Five Solar Telescope
While I was observing our glorious Sun from a wet and windy Western Cape, South Africa, I wondered: has it or has it not?
The ESA Solar Orbiter spacecraft has revealed images of the south pole of the Sun. For the first time scientists will be able to unravel the mysteries of the Sun’s poles.
The first observations show a chaotic magnetic field at the Sun’s south pole. Maybe from now on we will know for sure whether the Sun’s magnetic poles have flipped, are flipping or are about to flip, which happens at solar maximum every 11 or so years.
Flippen awesome!

The Okavango Delta. Botswana. Africa

Inspired by Slooh‘s Parts of a River Quest, I became curious about inland deltas. I set up several satellite missions to get images of the great expanse of the Okavango Delta.

The Okavango River does not flow into the sea but spreads fanlike into the Kalahari Basin which is a very large lowland area (endorheic basin) These are called closed basins as they collect water but have no water flowing away from them.

This Delta is formed by seasonal flooding from March to June.

I have also learned that the Okavango Delta has important carbon sinks (pools) which take up more carbon from the atmosphere than is released.

Climate change is having a detrimental effect on the delta.

Slooh’s space exploration and Earth Sciences platform features an interface to satellites and online telescopes

Messier 32 Slooh Art-Listen to the Rain

On 2020.11.03 at 02:21:51 a gust of wind or something that went bump in the night sent a shudder through Canary Two’s spine.
My mission to M32 was there to capture that moment.
This resulting beautiful image, we call it Slooh Art, took me way back to days of vinyl records and José Feliciano. I had to frame it.
Listen to the pouring rain,
Listen to it pour,
And with every drop of rain,
You know I love you more.
Let it rain all night long,
Let my love for you go strong,
As long as we’re together,
Who cares about the weather…..”