Instruments
Telescopes
ASA Astrographs on German equatorial mounts are used for CCD imaging and an apochromatic refractor is used for visual observations. We use a roll off roof observatory and a rotating dome observatory.
Meteor camera’s
We use about 25 photographic and video camera’s. The dedicated CCD and CMOS camera’s operate every night and cover the whole sky at the Oostkapelle location.
All-Sky camera EN907
Oostkapelle has been an all-sky station since 1979. The dedicated fish-eye camera covers the whole sky and is focused on catching fireballs.
We cooperate with other all-sky stations in our part of Europe. Occasionally we also capture re-entry’s of satellites or other space debris.
SQM Lightmeter
This instrument operates at the observatory since 2005. Every night this calibrated instrument measures the darkness of our local night sky. Our goal is to map the local light pollution.
In order to guarantee the continuity of the nighttime darkness measurements in Oostkapelle after the national Night Monitoring Network has been discontinued, the Astronomy Project Oostkapelle has joined in 2020 the night measurement project of the Kapteyn Institute and ScienceLinX of the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen, initially mainly focused on the Wadden Sea area and surroundings.
See: https://www.washetdonker.nl/
The new setup consists of the SQM meter coupled to a Raspberry Pi. This fixed meter next to the Cyclops Observatory on the Duinbeekseweg has been the linchpin in the regional night measurement work for many years and since 2017 also on behalf of the Municipality of Veere to support the dark and light policy in the coastal area.
Contact
Duinbeekseweg 22a
4356CE Oostkapelle
Netherlands
apo@zeelandnet.nl