Stargazing – 17h30 departure! Final spots

Overview

This trip is open for actual reservations. Please note that you cannot pay immediately online but you either make an online bank transfer on your own (BE89.3630.8012.6585, Xross Global Group BV, comment: STARGAZING), or you can request a payment link for a card payment.

UPDATE 13 AUGUST: Already 75% of the spots are booked! FINAL SPOTS

UPDATE 16 AUGUST: WE DEPART AT 17h30 FROM SCHUMAN (followed by other points)

EXTRA BUS PICK-UP AND DROP-OFF IN ANTWERP (Binnensingel / Grote Steenweg)

EXTRA bus boarding and drop-off points upon return.
Outbound: Schuman, La Chasse, Delta, Hermann-Debroux
Inbound: as above + Merode, Montgomery, Roodebeek (or at busstops along route)
Many would like to take a cab, and Expat Club will coordinate this upon arrival in Grapfontaine.

This is a great trip for adults and children. Child tickets available until Tuesday (€50)!

In case of bad weather the trip will be cancelled and you will receive a full refund.

It’s time for some serious stargazing! After several successful and fun visits to the Planetarium in Brussels and the Public Observatory in Grimbergen, we take things to the next level again. Join us on this trip to the Ardennes to enjoy the celestial spectacle of the Perseids Meteor shower. Summer evenings are always nice for watching the skies, but we choose this date because our Planet Earth is passing through the Perseids meteor field, resulting in countless shooting stars in the sky. On top of that we will enjoy a presentation in a special domed planetarium and we will be able to watch through several professional telescopes (e.g. to look at planets, nebulas and other celestial objects). For this trip we maintain a good-weather guarantee. If it is too cloudy we will cancel the trip. But be aware we had to disappoint dozens of people in previous years because it was fully booked, so reserve your spot on time.

Weather

We will keep a very close eye on the weather. If a few days before it is certain that it will not be a good time to look at the stars, then we cancel the trip and you will get a refund. However, out of the 5 years we have had 3 times excellent weather conditions, once pretty good and only once we had to cancel. One of the excellent times we saw the conditions in Brussels were not good but very good in the Ardennes. We don’t just follow the regular forecast but take a close look at the actual cloud movements in Belgium / Luxembourg / France. We simply want to make sure that we are not looking at clouds, you can be assured of that!

Program

This mid-summer date is quite remarkable because around this time Earth passes through the Perseids meteor field, resulting in dozens of shooting stars in the sky. We will travel by luxury coach towards the Ardennes. We depart at 17h00 from place Schuman, so you can still eat something at home, and we stop at a highways service station, so you can buy something there as well. Since this is after the closure of public transportation we will not only stop at the pick-up points Schuman, La Chasse, Delta, and Hermann-Debroux but also at Merode, Montgomery, Diamant and possibly also Meiser and Evere). We can also coordinate shared-taxi/Uber rides (not paid by Expat Club, but for most people not more than a few euros if shared, or €10-15 if alone to many places in Brussels).

We arrive from Brussels at the Observatoire Centre Ardenne after an estimated 1h45 driving. The staff will tell a bit about the observatory. There will be a short presentation in the planetarium (max 25 per shift). Also you can look through various telescopes, both outside and inside the domes, and observe various celestial objects including planets, clusters and nebulas. The best part of the evening is that you can look up into a clear magnificent Ardennes sky and observe the shooting stars yourself! This is the darkest area in Belgium and we had 4 amazing evenings here already in 2020, 2019, 2017 and 2016. In 2018 we had to cancel the event due to too many clouds. If that happens again in 2021, we will fully refund you.

We’ve been able to spot pretty remarkable things in our previous trips, including planets, nebulas, and star clusters, and of course planets like Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. We don’t know what will be best visible on our night of visit, so we leave it up to the OCA experts to decide where the aim the telescopes.

Location

Far away from the light-polluted Brussels area, the Observatoire Centre Ardenne is a place to learn more about the stars. There will be a presentation in the planetarium (dome-shaped theatre) for to groups of max 25 people, and you will be able to through three telescopes. Our guides will show you various celestial objects. Please note that we have to wait our turn and that our guides may not speak English flawlessly. They are local astronomers but do their very best to show you what the sky has to offer and in previous years nobody had problems with this (we always have great translators in our midst).

Comments

It is possible there are many clouds when we travel to the Ardennes. On Wednesday 18 August Expat Club will take a final decision whether the event will take place or not. Please, do not delay your registration, though. If the weather does not permit this experience, you will, of course, be refunded fully.