Friday 13 April 2012

Unfold the Stars.... Hello to warmer weather...

An old photo of Orion
Tonight Helen and I set up our small wood burning stove out in the garden, and lit a fire.

The hot plate on the stove had a small saucepan of water gently simmering....

......Sitting around a campfire without a cup of tea...!!!! ............. Unthinkable!!

The object of lighting the stove was to simply sit under the stars with our feet warming by an open fire.....

All we had to do now was wait for the night to unfold.....

Venus was first up followed by an aerial display courtesy of our local bats....

Procyon was spotted of to the South West....Castor and Pollux followed shortly afterwards, and Capella was high up to the West...nudging slightly to the North....

Aldebaran decided to make an appearance a little later, no doubt this bright orange beauty was until now lost in the lovely Pembrokeshire twilight still much in evidence...

Jupiter soon disappeared behind the ridge of a neighbouring house..

It isn't that often that we get to sit in the garden and watch the stars unfold, often the weather is cold, it's raining, or the dreaded clouds park themselves overhead.

But tonight the skies were kind...

For me, seeing the V of Taurus and the Pleiades as they dip into the West, washed out as they are in the   evening twilight, signifies a whisper of the Summer ahead..


The next time I see the Pleiades in the East it will be time to put on the extra layers of clothing...but for now it's a welcome five months of possibly good weather...!!!

Also, from now on it's Lawn Astronomy season...

I'll soon be lying on my favourite bit of ground, and just simply staring up at the night sky.....

One hour of Lawn Astronomy I reckon, is equal to a week's holiday...

Saturn..

Later in the evening I slid the roof back on the observatory, and trained the Tal onto Saturn.

Saturn did not disappoint.... I could clearly make out the Cassini Division and some banding was evident in the North Temperate Zone.. to my eye the banding appeared to be slightly grey in colour.

Both A & B rings seemed to be of equal intensity.

I'm looking forward to sketching more images of this gas giant as the weeks go by.....

4 comments:

  1. Great post Pembs... as always. I thought I was reading a paragraph from "The Friendly Stars" by
    Martha Evans Martin! "... the whisper of summer ahead" Nice!

    http://books.google.com/books?id=pxs4AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Drive-by,

      Martha Evans Martin.... I haven't heard of this author.....I'll be checking this out soon ...thanks for the link... :0)

      It's beautiful outside today... the Sun is shining.... time to do some sunspot fishing... :0)

      Hope the Sun is shining with you Mike...... Catch you soon ... :0)

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  2. What a lovely evening out w/ the stars! You have a very rich life Pembs of simple country charm, good company, and the canopy of the sky overhead w/your shed <- little SUG rhyme!

    Lawn astronomy.......a little like SUGO Front Porch Astronomy?

    You must read "The Friendly Stars"!

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  3. Thanks SUG.... :0) I would be lost without the solitude of the countryside. being brought up on a farm left a big impression... Lots of time to think..and ponder, daydream...and simply look to the stars... :0)

    I've ordered the "Friendly Stars" from Amazon.....it should be here in a few days..... looking forward to reading it.... :0)

    ReplyDelete

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