Astronomy in Belgium

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Apr 08

2017

by Raoul Lannoy

Hello,

I'm the belgian AWB coordinator, president of an amateur astronomy club at Gembloux (frenchspeaking side). We do take part to GAM events when it's possible (it might be the case tonight!)..The weather is very umpredictable, though.

Since late 2014, thanks to one of our members, Serge, we've been able to use a place for astronomy at a village called Ramillies (it was a battlefield in 1706 between the forces of Duke of Marlborough and the forces of Louis XIV (the latter lost)). We see hikers, bikers, horseback riders, drivers crossing our area and when we are there, they come and have a look at the daylight objects we can show. The place is just perfect (parking place, hard ground, a table, a panel to show our club and another we cooperate with) and many wind turbines are working around but they emit red lights and are far enough to be just above the horizon and are therefore not much of a nuisance (Many planes are flying high above and they show in all our long exposure pictures). The place made the buzz and there are even astronomers from Flanders who come to observe. My life has changed since we can use this place (it's public, belongs to the town of Ramillies). 

We can see the Milky Way from there....That is why I love the place so much...We truly have an idea of where we are, how insignificant we are and yet can see things happening minutes, hours or millions of years in the past..We also see the products of our civilization: satellites, the ISS and planes (well, not always welcome :-( ) . The site made our club and activities more interesting to the members, the visitors..We even have the media sometimes coming to share an event (like the Moon eclipse in 2015).