Short introduction
My name is Robin. I am a student (Electronica – ICT) at the Odisee Gent college.
This WordPress site is an assignment for the “Web Fudamentals” course. With this website I hope to use a variety of templates, settings and options to build a decent looking website.
The subject? One of my favorite hobbies: astrophotography
Why astrophotography?
As a child I was always fascinated by the typical kid stuff: astronauts, dinosaurs, planets, knights, etc. Out of all of these things the planets are (ironically) the easiest and most within reach.
Current technology allows astronomy fans to make stunning images quite literally from their own backyard. Observing planets visually is fairly easy, even in light-polluted areas. The relatively low cost of this equipment has opened up the hobby to a lot of people that previously would never have the chance get into it.
It is a breathtaking sight to see Jupiter being orbited by the four Galilean moons with your own (well, enhanced) eyes.
Live. No screens, no digital enhancement. Just floating up there, for us to see.
Inspiration
This picture of Earth was taken by the Voyager 1 probe before it’s camera’s were shut down to preserve power. It shows a small white dot, about the size of a single pixel.
That small dot is Earth.
The “Pale Blue Dot” picture as it is called has been a major inspiration for many aspiring (amateur) stargazers and inspired a well know (albeit a bit lengthy) quote:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (1994)
