Astronomy

Besides the sights of Africa and the total eclipse we wanted to include observations of the southern sky and of planet Mars, which could be seen in the zenith at opposition at that time.

A simulated view of the southern sky in June 2001, seen from southern Africa around midnight ...

For this reason several telescopes were taken along. Among them

12,5" Mag1 Instruments Portaball (Dobsonian in the form of a sphere) of Gerhard Bachmayer
10" Meade LX-200 including a ST-8 CCD-camera of Wolfgang Weiser
Meade ETX 125ec of Ardjan Besse
Celestron C5+ of Georg Zotti
4" Celeston NexStar 4 of Robert Edelmaier
3" Bresser Newton of Doris Istrate - beat all the others by being easily protable; absolutely the best for camping!

Many binoculars and telephoto lenses which were used as telescopes top off the list of instruments.