Stars above Ponta do Sol

25/01/2026

🌠 Clear skies shouldn’t be a luxury.

We’re building Bombol Space — a small, affordable remote telescope hosting site in southern Spain, created by astronomers for astronomers.

This page will follow the project from the first concrete base to the first photons captured under dark Andalusian skies.

Follow us to see how it grows. And support:
https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/pavol-a-dubovsky/telescope-hosting-piconcillo

18/10/2024

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) above my observatory in Slovakia. Still observable with naked eye after the sunset above western horizon. Unfortunately the Moon is interfering.

24/12/2023

Look and relax. Following are some daytime and nighttime time-lapses acquired during the recent visit on Madeira:

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23/12/2023

Here is the short summary of my recent visit on Madeira: http://var.kozmos.sk/2023/12/23/madeira-2023/
Enjoy the gallery
Pavol

Madeira 2023 23/12/2023 by dpv Another full family trip after 3 years long gap. Besides the wellness for the rest of the family, my main goal was to make first steps in the telescope hosting project. Indeed the meetings with president of Ponta do Sol and Calheta municipalities took place. The next s...

10/12/2023

Photo session at Miradouro Molinas
Instead of the canceled stargazing party I went to Paul da Serra to take som photos to record the quality of the sky. The images will be reduced and analyzed later. Here I post some pretty pictures.
Wish you clear skies! Pavol.

01/02/2023

During my last short visit on Madeira I took the picture of Orion from Achada do Teixeira. Few days later, already at home, I did the same. For comparison of the sky brightness. See the result. On the left is Orion from Achada do Teixeira January 14. On the right Orion from Kolonica, January 23, with the exactly same setup (camera, lens, exposure time, aperture, ISO, white balance ...). Kolonica is the darkest site in Slovakia.

28/01/2023

To find the comet, use the following chart. Currently in Ursa Minor constellation, visible all the night at the limit of unaided eye. Small binocular is enough to spot it.

28/01/2023

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is now visible on evening sky. Nice picture a taken at Astronomical Observatory in Kolonica, Slovakia demonstrates division of ion tail and wide tail formed of dust grains

18/12/2021

After some time I made an update on my web. See the new article about fascinating objects on the sky here: http://var.kozmos.sk/2021/12/18/greatest-hits-2021/
The attached picture is for those not interested in the background physics. The most important event is captured here. Outburst of the recurrent symbiotic nova RS Oph. The striking red colour was visible also visually. Why? See one of the spectra in the ARAS database. https://aras-database.github.io/database/figures/asdb_rsoph_20210817_884.png. Almost all visible light is emitted in one line called Halpha. The corresponding wavelength 656.3 nm is in red end of the optical light spectrum.
Finally one note about the author of the RS Oph image. It is Czech astrophotographer Karel Kolomazník. He is observing remotely using the instrument installed in my observatory in Slovakia. His plan is to move the instrument to better conditions on Madeira island. And he is not alone. The number of astronomers interested in exploitation of Madeira sky is rising.

12/05/2021

Nova Cas 2021 - naked eye visibility
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Today I want to point your attention to a rare event in our Galaxy. Classical nova Cassiopeae 2021 (later named as V1405 Cas), was discovered by Yuji Nakamura (Japan) on 2021-03-18. It was quite bright already at this time, but in recent days it further brightened to V = 5.2 mag according to the AAVSO light curve. This means it is in the range of the visibility of the human eye. The limit in dark areas is around 6.0. (Remember the astronomers use strange units for brightness measurements. The scale is reversed - brighter object = lowest number.)
Well it is not a spectacular object like the comet last year or some meteor shower. But think about the physical background. The nova event is the thermonuclear explosion on the surface of the white dwarf. So we can directly see what is normally hidden in the core of a normal star. To be more accurate: the thermonuclear burning produces gamma-rays. What we see in optical are photons reprocessed in the nova envelope. Anyway, it is like looking inside a thermonuclear reactor (not constructed yet on the Earth) from a safe distance of 5500 light years. Novae are the most powerful transient event observable in our Galaxy. Yes there is a chance a supernova will explode. But we have been waiting for 4 centuries. Normally we can observe supernovas only in distant galaxies as faint sources for big telescopes.
V1405 Cas is a slow nova. This means the event will last for months. However the naked eye visibility can be short. Only several days. So if you want to see it without a telescope, use the attached chart and go away from light pollution. Do it in the morning just before dawn. The chart shows the sky at 5 PM. Good luck! The previous naked eye nova was Nova Delphini 2013.