The night of Christmas day

 

This year's Christmas tree

The roaring winds dropped, the clouds parted and the night of Christmas day was cloaked in the light of the nearly full moon.

We had waited weeks for a sky clearing, and here it was, I wasn't about to waste any of it.

Helen and I stood outside for ages, drinking in the stillness of this most Christmas night.

The scudding clouds touched the moon and wiped away the days of wind and rain.

It has been ages since we witnessed a near full moon in such a quiet setting. No cars, no planes, no dogs on leads barking at trees. 

The absence of all 21st century racket and rush was most welcomed.

Not a soul to be seen; all at home enjoying the Christmas evening.

To the South Selene was up high, shining with almost a full December intensity. 

 

Overhead Cassiopeia.

To the West a tall pine tree with a star above (Hello Jupiter) made up completely for our lack of actual Christmas tree in our motorhome.  

To the North, a vixen was calling to the night.

For several minutes she gave out her haunting call.

The cry of the vixen

All in all it was a perfect Christmas night.

Return of the blue skies Sol.

Not much chance of astronomy these past few weeks. 

Partly due to the weather, and partly due to having a stinking cold a week or so ago! 

Thankfully the cold has now gone, and the blue skies are back.

The pst was taken out for a quick peep at Sol.

I only have my small tripod at the moment, so everything is a bit wobbly to say the least.

A few Sol shots were captured, but mainly it was all naked eye viewing this morning. 

The camera I use had a flat battery, so I tried out my other phone camera... nowhere near as good, but it managed to capture two of the major prominence.

Loads of sunspots today, this solar cycle is definitely picking up.

Moonlight over Newgale.

Took a spin to Newgale today, we haven't been for ages, at least not since the pandemic. 

It was wonderful to see the vast stretch of beach. 

Helen and I, and our son Jac spent fifteen years living only two miles from this glorious seafront ( 2001-2016).  

Today, with every footstep we made in the sand, it was a trip down memory lane.

The gibbous Moon was visible over the nearby hill, only the second time we have seen it this lunation, blame the wind and rain!

As the night deepened, I set up the camera phone on a flimsy little £3 tripod I bought a few days ago.

After a bit of trail and error I managed to capture the following. 

Mizar and Alcor (The Horse & Rider)

Amazing that the phone was able to capture Mizar AND Alcor, I didn't expect that.

The view from the camper van of the Moonlight over Newgale will stay with us always. 

Sundogs over Mynachlogddu.

The sky gods behaved today, mo more rain for awhile. 

The last few weeks have been a testing time for any astronomical activities. 

So much rain! So many cloudy nights!

Today all sins have been forgiven, the good weather quietly and calmly returned to Pembrokeshire.

We ventured over to Waldo's stone over at Rhosfach Common near Mynachlogddu.

 Dammit, my finger has photo bombed again!

There was an excellent Sundog event in progress.

Lots of information on the Internet about sundogs, not so many actual displays, it was great to see one today. 

I think the last time we spotted one was back last December. 

They always seem to occur on those most quiet and calming still air days.

The Moon sat on the leaves of a tree.

Last night's Moon emerged from out of a mist bank. 

She totally caught us by surprise, and radiated that warm orange glow that only the Moon knows how to do.

We sat and gazed, and Moon bathed, and  dreamed of past lunations. All those many  Moon rises, lifting out of rock, trees, salt water and earth. 

Not forgetting the eclipses, both lunar and solar,  who could ever get tired of seeing those.

Tonight's Moon was no exception, as always a welcome old friend.

Hello Pleiades, heralding the Autumn

Out and about in the camper van , spent the night at a favourite local dark sky location.

What a beautiful night, witnessed the Moon rosy red and westward bound, melting into the nearby hills near Maenclochog.

Several meteors flashed by, Helen spotted a possible bollide, she mentioned that it left a definite trail in its wake. 

Of course I missed it completely, at the time I was totally distracted by the the Plough asterism!

Out towards the east Jupiter was bright and sharp, and nearby the Pleiades was rising, a sure sign that Autumn is here.

Here's a picture I managed to capture with the phone camera. 

A perfect night for all astronomers, hopefully the first of many in this new autumn astronomy season. 

This Universe we all share has such wonder.

Today's Sol images, via the Coronado PST.

I've been waiting patiently these past few days, observing a giant filament slowly walk its way to the Sun's limb. 

Finally it crossed the threshold and transformed into the beautiful prominence you see below.

No matter how many times I view these prominences, be they massive, middle or minnow size, I am always in awe at the feeling of wonder they elicit.

The  unfulrling of a solar prominence is a sight worth seeing, astronomy and poetry are joined in such events as these. 

Be it a total eclipse of the Sun (which I still have yet to see), or the rising of the Moon, to the fleeting trail of a shooting star. 

Oh and those comets!  such ghostly apparitions, passing fleetingly through our solar system, probably never to be seen again. 

This Universe we all share has such wonder. 

Return of September Sol.

It's been at least ten weeks since my last solar observation photo.  

The weather in that time has not been kind for solar observers (at least where I've been located), and the night skies have been much devoid of star light, or in other words crap!

Strange weather indeed, probably the worst summer weather since about 2012, as far as Pembrokeshire astronomy is concerned.

Return of September Sol.

Finally, this morning the Sun was parked in a beautiful blue sky, and I was able to capture old Sol, resplendent with a chain of prominences. 

Above is this morning's picture, captured with the trusty old PST. 

Measuring the filaments.

Today's Sol image revealed a beautiful snake like filament. 

It got me thinking... How long is that filament?

With the help of the laptop software, I decided to have a go at making a rough guess.

By placing a grid over today's Sol image I was able to "very" roughly figure out the filament length.

As the Sun is around 865,000 miles in diameter, and the grid took sixteen squares to cross the Sun's diameter I figured that each square was roughly 54,000 miles wide.  

865,000/16 = 54,062 miles.

The filament in question, down near the 5.00 clock position on the image easily stretched some two squares.

By my "very rough" reckoning today's filament was around 108,000 miles from end to end!

If you ever decided to walk the length of that filament, at a speed of five mile per hour, without stopping, it would take you just under two and a half years to reach the other end!

How long would it take to walk from one end of the Sun to the other end ? How long would it take to walk from the Sun to my back  garden? 

I think I'll leave these questions for another time.

........

After some photoshop tweaking of today's image I found a new way (for me) to display the solar detail. 

It needs further work to be of any use, though for now I am pleased with the results.

That snaking filament shows up much better in this new image format.

Summer Solstice Sun

HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTICE EVERYONE

Much cloud in evidence today, though a few gaps did occasionally appear.

The final image wasn't that brilliant, though it did allow for a few pictures with hints of plages and filaments.

Below is probably the best of the lot.

The view through the eyepiece was much better than the photographic image, filaments clearly showed better with the naked eye. 

Maybe I should try sketching some of those camera shy filament features...  I'll have a go soon.

Below is a sketch I made of a sunspot group, roughly ten years ago! I have the date somewhere, now lost in the labyrinth of my external hard drive.

The observation was made with my old 110mm reflector, mylar filter and a 12mm eyepiece.

It goes to show solar observing doesn't require huge apertures to be fun.

No Meteors ~ Hello to HIYA (revisited)

Back in August 2009, whilst camped out on the Preseli Hills, awaiting the main Perseid shower maximum, I had an idea...

I had an idea for a poetry form that might be of interest to poets, 

I later called it HIYA.

Firstly you make a chart, as follows:

Then you choose any word you want to make your poem.

For example I will use the letters of my name: MARK.

Look up each letter of your word on the above chart.  

Write down the corresponding number you see above it.

My word MARK would read as follows:
M=4, A=1, R=9, K=2

Once you correspond a number to each of your letters. 

You then use this number as a syllable count for each line of your poem.

Poem for the Perseids

                                                                                               Syllable Count

Throughout the night                 4         M

Clouds                               1         A

Rest upon the Preseli hill tops      9         R
I sigh.                              2         K

Any word or combination of words can be used, plus the poem can be split up into any length verse you see fit. 

Have a go, see what you think.

Have a guess what my initial word was in this poem. 

Tea Party for the Perseids

We sit so patiently waiting

Surrounded by clouds

Time for tea

Time for cake

Time to talk with old friends.

That evening back in August of 2009 may not have revealed any meteors (it was clouded out most of the night!), but I'm glad to say it revealed the HIYA.

Where are the Noctilucent clouds?

So far this month I haven't spotted a single Noctilucent Cloud.

Looks like ten years ago I was saying the same thing. 

Here's one of my old blog posts from "ten" years ago today!

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Tuesday, 18th June 2013

Night time Daylight - NO NLC

Saturn has finally disappeared behind some rather large ash trees at the end of my neighbour's garden..

Not much astro activity at the moment, these past few evenings have been spent spying the waxing moon and glimpsing the odd double star through my powerful 40mm refractor. 

It's such a small scope, but it's fascinating to see how much of the night sky it can reveal. 

Here's an afocal image of the Moon from a few nights ago.. taken with the tiny 40mm refractor.

afocal image: 40mm "Leviathan" refractor.

Still no Noctilucent cloud sightings. 

It helps that the street lights to the North of our property now switch off after midnight. 

The picture below was taken a couple of evenings ago, at about 11.30pm. 

You could easily be fooled into thinking it was 11.30 am. 

Thanks to the county wide streetlight switch off, I now stand a better chance of seeing those beautiful ethereal Noctilucent Clouds "NLC".

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https://earthsky.org/earth/night-shining-clouds-noctilucent-clouds-how-they-form-how-to-see-them

Venus and the Beehive dance.

The Beehive cluster and Venus dance together in a few days time.

Keep a look out towards the west on the evening of the 13th and 14th. 

Around about 10:30 - 10:45 BST

Get out the binoculars, deck chair, tea and cake *

It should make for an interesting astro event.

* Tea and cake are optional, but very much appreciated if the weather misbehaves!

Astro maps ~ Stellarium software

Pollen ~ Contrails ~ Pembs Sunset

Today's Sol picture wasn't up to much, so I had to be content with poor contrast prominences. 

Infact, the past few weeks has consistently returned poor solar images in both naked eye and camera.

There's so much pollen floating around at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised that degrades the seeing.

Though my main bone of contention has to be those jumbo jets travelling their transatlantic flight path. The contrails they leave in their wake often form a veil of cloud that sits over the county for hours at a time !  

The past few weeks I have noticed a big increase in the "across the pond" traffic, add that to the last few weeks of poor prominence seeing... I wonder if there's a connection?

Last Night.

Last night I called in to my local astronomy club,  The Preseli Astronomy Group. It was great to catch up with old friends and to meet new members. 

There was a white light solar telescope setup and I had also brought along my Ha PST.

A brilliant evening, with lots of astronomy talk and a great observing session of old Sol in both white light and Hydrogen alpha.

On the way home Helen and I stopped in a layby and watched the Sun bid us goodnight.

What better way to finish the day, than with a great Pembrokeshire sunset.

Retro Sol imaging - Ranting about the lights.

Yesterday's solar image, in the style of an old 1970's amateur solar picture.

If you were an amateur astronomer back in the 70's it must have been difficult to capture any images of solar prominences. 

I wonder what the amateurs back then would have made of the humble 40mm Ha  telescope?  it would no doubt have raised a few smiles.

Take that same PST back to William Herschel's time, and it would have had him dancing around the garden!  There's never a TARDIS around when you need it.

Ranting about the lights.

The state of the night skies has been much on my mind of late.

Unfortunately much of Pembrokeshire now suffers from the creeping lights disease. 

Artificial night lights are cropping up everywhere in this beautiful county, and completely destroying that inky night blackness I remember so well as a kid.

I keep reading reports that Pembrokshire is one of the least light polluted counties in the UK, this is utter nonsense, as anyone can tell you who has lived here long enough.

My night sky observing goes back to 1975, and I can confidently say that in all those years since that time, the damn light pollution has done nothing but steadily grow and paint the night sky with its sickly pallid artificial glow...!

As Arthur C. Clarke says in one of his short stories. "and one by one the stars went out". 

Enough moaning about light pollution... for now.

For information about light pollution and possible ways to curb its spread, take a look at the following link:    https://britastro.org/dark-skies/

In Memory of 

BOB MIZON

It is with sadness that I report that the man responsible for founding the Campaign for Dark Skies (now renamed The Commission for Dark Skies) recently passed away. 

Bob Mizon was a great promoter and champion of all things astronomy. 

He was well known throughout the world for his efforts into tackling the light pollution problem. 

I met him just the once, though brief, he left a lasting impression of a great communicator and a gentleman.

He will be much missed.

Sol - 10/03/23 - Camille Flammarion

 This morning's sol image:

Any excuse to put in a Camille Flammarion quote, he is one of my all time favourite astronomer/poets.

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What intelligent being, what being capable of responding emotionally to a beautiful sight, can look at the jagged, silvery lunar crescent trembling in the azure sky, even through the weakest of telescopes, and not be struck by it in an intensely pleasurable way, not feel cut off from everyday life here on Earth and transported toward that first step on celestial journeys?

Camille Flammarion

Some years ago I wrote a blog post about Mr Flammarion, here is the link: 

https://pembsastronomer.blogspot.com/2012/04/astronomy-and-poetry-go-hand-in-hand.html

The Crow Moon and the Appulse.

Beautifully clear skies last night, probably the best viewing for several months. 

It was a wonderful backdrop to display the appulse of Venus and Jupiter. 

Many astronomical events need no camera or telescope to elicit that sense of cosmic awe, tonight's appulse of the dancing Venus and Jupiter was one of those events.

The frost was much in evidence this morning. The sparrows are really busy out there at the moment collecting what food they can and making a racket. 

Plus the starlings have started to forage for worms, it was only a few days ago that we noticed the blackbird picking up the odd worm in the back garden,  a sure sign that the Lunar month of the Worm and Crow are well under way.

With the Crow Moon in mind I managed to capture a half decent gibbous Moon last night. 

The image was taken afocally with our trusty old S6 phone camera, through my old 60mm Tasco refractor.

With barely 60mm of crown and flint glass to gather the photons, it's amazing what you can see with a simple old "department store" refractor.  

There are countless double stars, the Jovian satellites, craters of the Moon, phases of Venus, star clusters, sunspots,and more. 

The list is long .... definitely material for a future blog post.

When the east wind blows.

The last day of February was cold and mostly clouded out; the biting wind from the East was letting us know who was the boss!

Had to be quick to make the most of the solar viewing window. Luck was on my side and I managed to capture the above shot.

These past few days my thoughts have been directed to the unseen astronomy of the Sun, in particular the radio waves and magnetic fields that the Sun produces.  

Time to get back into the science books.

As an amateur radio operator I'm confident I will be able to set up a solar radio listening station, albeit a small one. It should add a further colour to my solar astronomy palette.

Sol - 27/02/23 - The Aurora is lurking.

Today I managed a quick observe, unfortunately the blue sky didn't last long, maybe ten minutes. 

Then it was back to the Pembrokeshire grey.

It's been a good month for Hydrogen alpha solar observing. 

Next month I might invest sometime drawing white light observations to compliment the Ha images.

There was a sizeable aurora display last night, typically I knew nothing about it until this morning!!

Will have to keep a look out for the K- index, which at the moment is at 7 on the scale. 

Maybe tonight I will be lucky enough to glimpse an aurora show, if so it will be the first decent one I would have witnessed since June of 1990!

Fingers crossed.

Sol - 25/02/23 - Alexander Graham Bell

 Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. 

The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

Alexander Graham Bell

Sol - 23/02/23 - Albert Einstein

"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits"

Albert Einstein

Sol imaging in January

Considering all those cloudy days of January, I was more than pleased to capture the following Hydrogen alpha images.