Nacht van de Nacht bij de radiotelescoop

© CC-BY-4.0 Tammo Jan Dijkema

In the national 'Nacht van de Nacht' (night of the night), many events are organized to raise awareness about light pollution, and celebrate darkness. Of course stargazing is one of those activities. CAMRAS organizes a stargazing event around the Dwingeloo telescope every year.

This year was extra special, because in the ASTRON building, NMF Drenthe organized an event with lectures by Vincent Icke, André Offringa (astronomers) and Mans Schepers (archeoligist). All attendees of the ASTRON / NMF event were also invited to visit the Dwingeloo telescope afterwards, which led to many visitors.

Unfortunately, no stars were visible in the optical domain: it was completely cloudy. So visitors could only see stars through their radio emission - we showed live PSR B0329+054 signals and hydrogen lines. Also we presented the meteor scatter live stream.

The image - arguably not the sharpest image, but hopefully GDPR compliant - shows 30 people waiting to get into the telescope. We welcomed 112 visitors, with a group of 14 enthousiastic volunteers.