On January 18, 2025, we at kosmos-os, together with the Museum Industriekultur, invited to the Sternstunden on the Vosslinke at the Piesberg strating at 5:30 p.m.. After a long time of cloudy skies and weather-related cancelled dates, clear, albeit cold weather was predicted for 18.01.. And although there was ground fog locally in and around Osnabrück, we were lucky on the Vosslinke and had an almost unclouded view of the sky. About 30 visitors accepted the invitation and had the opportunity to look at the planets Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars with us in the telescopes. Due to the high number of registrations, we (Thomas G., Gerold, Olaf, Wilhelm and Achim) had set up several telescopes and binoculars of different designs, so that the optimal view upwards was possible, depending on the object. There was a Newtonian telescope on an equatorial mount, a Maksutov telescope and an APO refractor together on an altazimuthal mount, a spotting scope, a tracking Dobsonian telescope and a smart telescope that photographed various deep sky objects during the evening.
And yes, there was Venus with its phase, which was about 50% illuminated, and directly southeast of it Saturn with its wonderful ring system and the clearly visible moon Titan. If you looked closely, you could also discover even more moons – Rhea, Dione and Thetys were also recognizable. From Venus and Saturn in the southwest we then went to Jupiter in the southeast. The Galilean moons IO, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto could be admired as well as the coloured bands of clouds on the gas giant, which was just preparing to wander through the "golden gate of the ecliptic".
From Jupiter we went on to Mars, which stood in the east and reflected the incident sunlight with its "rusted" surface shimmering reddish. A wonderful evening where you could focus on four clearly visible planets! But of course we also looked at the winter constellations, talked about Betelgeuse in Orion, looked at the winter hexagon and the still clearly visible Great Square of Pegasus, admired the Pleiades and last but not least observed the double star Almach (γ And) in the constellation Andromeda in the telescope.
Despite the low temperatures around freezing point, our visitors bravely persevered and, just like the kosmos-os team, had an interesting and inspiring evening, which came to a nice end at about 8:00 pm.
