Welcome to this site dedicated to Astronomy
The reason that I have set up this site is that I have a
long time passion for astronomy.
It probably started with the
Apollo 8 flight around the Moon during
Christmas 1968, and the Apollo 11 landing
on the Moon in July 1969. In
1973 I got my first little telescope, a 40mm zoom refractor that enlarged
between 13 and 40 times. With this telescope
I could see the moon, double stars, the moons of Jupiter, the rings of
Saturn, and I also could see the planet Uranus. I also
used it to observe the solar and lunar
eclipses during that period.
During my
days at school I swallowed popular
books and
magazines as shown below:
I later went to university to study
physics and astronomy.
In 1984 I graduated in astrophysics on the
University of Utrecht.
My
MSc paper (1MB) was on
coronal physics,
more specifically on the possibility of ultra thin coronae. At the time I was
also extremely interested in
general relativity, neutron stars, and
black holes and attended an advanced programme on
general relativity
led by prof. Gerard 't
Hooft (Nobel Prize winner Physics 1999).
After graduation I found a job outside the world of science and went to work
for a major oil company. In the
nineties I worked in the Sultanate of Oman, and became fascinated by the extremely dark
skies in this beautiful country. With other enthousiastic people, all
keenly interested in astronomy, we founded the
Ras al Hamra
Astronomical Society (RAHAS)
that organised star parties, and lectures, several of which were given by me. On
this website I will post picture of eclipses, and other subjects of my
personal interest. The site is
not aimed to become a
full resource on astronomy. There are many sites who
already cover the subject excellently. I will focus on eclipses,
occultations and I recently started collecting olds maps showing solar
eclipses. Hans van der Meer June 2006
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