Pembrokeshire Astronomer

The Teapot: July 2006 : View from nr Wolfscastle It's that time of year when the teapot comes around. The teapot is an asterism found in the constellation of Sagittarius . It contains many interesting objects, so many infact that I will be re-studying the teapot for several weeks to come.  Tonight I'm hoping to catch a few of the Messier objects that are scattered in and around the teapot. Screen Shot : Stellarium If I stay at home tonight, my only real chance of seeing the teapot will be at around 23.45 BST. As you can see from the screenshot the asterism fits pretty much within the confines of the trees at the end of the garden...   Those trees are a real pain for extended observing of southerly objects... I really now need to go mobile...! Talking of mobile astronomy, does anyone fancy doing some stargazing evenings around the county of Pembrokeshire? I cannot do any mobile observing for the next few weeks, I'm still recovering from shingl

Waiting for the sky to clear... These past couple of weeks have been terrible for viewing here in south Pembrokeshire.  There has been almost constant cloud cover on practically every night for the last fortnight.   I haven't been able to make observations with the big Dobsonian since June 8th.  Though, due to some strained abdomen muscles, followed by shingles I reckon I wouldn't have been able to observe, even if the weather had been kind..!!  Over the next week I hope to at least observe Saturn, which will be near due south at around 11.00pm for the next week... Thanks to the nearby ash trees 11.00pm is perfect for Saturn watching in our garden....   View southwards from our garden. photo: Stellarium The above photo is a screen shot from the excellent Stellarium astronomy program. It just happens that the "trees" template in that program looks exactly like the south side of our garden... At this time of year the gap in ou

The Plough - Join the dots. I set the telescope up at about 10.30 p.m. and waited for Mars to show its face from behind the trees at the end of the garden. While waiting I trained the scope on to a few Messier objects around the Plough. It would be the first time I had used this scope (305mm/f5) from my home location. Here are some of the observations I made last night: M-97 - The Owl Nebula . Stands out easily as a faint fuzzy patch!, though no doubt a darker sky background will add to the overall contrast. M-108 - Easily spotted in the 30mm eyepiece (x50) plus M97 was spotted in the same field of view. Move M108 to one side of the 30mm eyepiece field of view and you will find M97 at the other side of the field of view. M-51- The Whirlpool Galaxy . Considering that the sky background was not totally dark the whirlpool was easily found. Both fuzzy patches noted, with a hints of added surrounding nebulous detail. After spending some time circling the Plough, I s

Conversations with Selene extracts from my poetry journal ---------------   It is midnight and the culminating Moon looks down at me with inquisitive eyes. I stare back and shout "Shwt mae, Hello, how are you tonight?" The Moon whispered her reply ~ "You are such a tiny speck, a mere grain of cosmic sand in the ever present Galactic hour glass.. how is it that you are so small?" "But Moon", I replied "I am a GIANT!.. a COLOSSUS.. YOU to ME are small..  why, I can even place your full Moon face upon my thumb, and flick it like a coin" The Moon sulked.  I simply drank my chai tea, whilst overhead countless stars ebbed and flowed across the sea of the sparkling Milky Way. Sometime later I awoke to the sight of a red faced Moon dropping slowly into the west.  The darkened Moon smiled and whispered  "So long tiny speck of sand, see you later tonight, we will continue our talk then." "So lon

Jupiter and the Moon 17/04/16 I was feeling the cold tonight, so I decided to light the fire and grab myself some dandelion coffee.   Observing Luna would have to wait another night. Though I didn't entirely abandon the Moon. Before packing away the telescope I captured a few images of beautiful gibbous Selene. 17/04/2016 The above image is a bit blurred at the edges, this is due to the method of photo capture that I use. namely afocal photography. Best described with this photo: afocal photography Afocal photography is a brilliant way of capturing astro images, all you have to do is simply place the camera lens over the eyepiece of the telescope.  Though sometimes it can be a bit hit and miss. Tonight's lunar image was a bit miss around the lunar limb.  Blame it on camera shake from cold hands.   As I was packing away the telescope ominous dark clouds to the west were gathering and slowly rolling in for the night. Maybe si