My name is Franky Dubois, I live in Langemark, this is a small village in West-Vlaanderen, Belgium. I work as a foreman in a safety belt company. I am dedicated to astronomy for almost 30 years now. I had several instruments in this 30 years of observing, first of all a 60 mm F/15 refractor, with this instrument I saw for the first time the surface of the sun. After this I used a 20 cm ( 8 inch ) F/6 Newton.Due to my interest of solar observations, I bought a 102 mm F/15 refractor, with this instrument I made more than 3000 solar observations and many beautifull photographs of the photosphere of the sun.In 1996 I build a complete new observatory and bought a new instrument especially made for solar observations and photography. With this instrument I hope to make a lot of usefull observations.From january 1996 I took the leadership of the Belgium Solar Observers, about 20 observers send in their observations monthly. If you are a amateur solar observer and you have a website, please let me know, if you are interested in the monthly report of the Belgium solar observers, send me an e-mail.
The observatory is a small building of about 5.4 X 3.2 meters and is divided in three places. The greatest room has a doom of 3 meters on top, it contains the 125 mm refractor. The dome is made of iron and aluminium and rides easily on five wheels on a concrete base. The slit is about 0.8 meters wide and can be opened in two parts. The second room has a roll-off roof and contains a 75 mm F/1000 mm prominence telescope provided with a 10 Angstrom Ha passbandfilter. The third small room can be used as a computerroom.
The main instrument in the observatory is a 125 mm (4.9 inch) F/20 refractor with a focus of 2500 mm. The lens is a Fraunhofertype. The telescope is provided with a 2 inch Herschell optical wedge, used as well for direct observing as for photography. About 95% of the incoming light and heat is reflected outside the prismhouse, the remaining 5% is reduced bij using a set of neutral density filters. The prominence telescope is a 75 mm refractor with a focal length of 1000 mm. The telescope is provided with a 10 Angstom Ha passband filter and at the moment only available for visible observations.
