No observing this past week, the weather stopped play!
Though I am hoping to observe a few Galilean shadow transits sometime over the next couple of weeks.
For the remainder of November Io and Europa will be visible for evening viewing.
Here are the dates & times to watch out for:
Typed on my 85 year old typewriter ! -
Still going strong after all these years.
Our village was cloud free for several hours last night, this gave me the opportunity to go outside and observe.
The Moon was bright, Jupiter, and Saturn were high up, plus Mars would be around later in the evening.
I was spoilt for choice.
Jupiter first, not the best of seeing conditions, but the Newtonian returned a fair view of the Great Red Spot.
The gibbous phase, (my favourite), was just at the right position to show off the Moon Maiden.
She is always a welcome sight. I first made a post about this Clair-Obscur effect back in July 2012.
Just after 7pm Mars could be seen climbing from behind the Frenni Fawr to the north east.
I did briefly observe Mars later in the evening, but there was no discernable surface detail, though the North polar cap was in evidence.
Around 19h30m UT last night the clouds parted long enough for me to set up my new 150mm reflector (Thank you Nick).
A quick equatorial setup and straight over to Jupiter. Speed was of the essence as clouds were loitering over towards the south west.
Jupiter stood out really well through the 10mm ep (plus the x2 Barlow).
Both the South Equatorial and North Equatorial Belts were easily seen.
There was a transit of Io in progress, the shadow of Io was inky black and stood out well on the South Equatorial Belt. I didn't see any sign of Io itself.
Those clouds were getting closer!
Time to have a quick look and La Lune.
The f8 reflector returned beautiful images of the craters near the terminator.
Simple afocal camera photography gave me the picture that you see below.
The day started well enough, blue sky and a promise of sunshine.
By 9.00am the clouds rolled in.
Between the gaps I managed a couple of photos.
"A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness."
Albert Einstein
Daybreak this morning the weather looked cold and eclipse miserable, it looked as if I might miss out on today's Sun and Moon waltz.
My village and the surrounding area is renowned for more than its fair share of cloud cover and rain.
Its a pretty good bet that, if its raining in our back garden it will be dry and blue sky nine miles down the road in Cardigan.
So with telescope in suitcase we headed northwards to Cardigan town.
I had packed the telescope, two eyepieces and tripod. The Samsung S6 was to be my imaging device.
Spode's Law was in action, and as we arrived in Cardigan, the clouds rolled in to greet us.
No matter, soon we parked, and set up the telescope.
We were in luck, within five minutes the clouds parted and the eclipse was upon us.
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I could see the Sun above, but had to wait for the showers to stop before I could properly take out the telescope.
Eventually patience paid off and several photos were taken of the eclipse.
Initially I was going to image with a mylar filter on my refractor, but the little Ha telescope did a great job, and it managed to capture a couple of prominences.
Yesterday afternoon I had a quick peep at old Sol, it looked as if a big chunk had been taken out of its limb.
For a moment it surprised me, then I quickly realised what was going on.
A passing aeroplane contrail was slowly drifting across the Sun, blocking out a portion of the limb as it slowly drifted by.
I'm glad to report that Douglas Adams' Enormous Mutant Star Goat had not started to devour our Sun, which had been my initial thought!
Worst still those dotted craters have been given the name of its parent crater with a letter of the alphabet stuck on the end.
For example, crater Gassendi has an array of alphabet craters scattered all around, a quick look reveals a, b, e, g, k, m, n, p, .... etc! where's the poetry in that!
My main interest in this blog post is the crater Gassendi A, there is a contender for a permanent naming of this crater, a very worthy contender. Clarkson!
As far as I know the IAU is responsible for naming the Moon features, if so, IAU please can you come up with more interesting names than Gassendi a,b,c,d,e,f..... etc!
I'm not advocating for the crater "Donald Duck", or crater "BigHolePieFace" just a simple nod toward many of the amateur astronomers who spent countless hours mesmerised by the light of Selene.
Here's an old newspaper clipping to further my case for Gassendi A to be renamed Clarkson crater.
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It was a quick walk this evening, out and about before the mist rolled in.
In that time I did manage a few attempts at photographing the Plough.
This is my first attempt at imaging with our Samsung A71. So far so good, the results are promising.
By setting the camera to four second exposure, and an ISO of 3200 I captured the above image.
I will have to make myself a tripod for the phone, that way I'm sure the images will be a lot sharper.
Can't wait to try my hand at capturing the Milky Way.
Oh boy was this Moon a wonderful sight to behold!
This year's Harvest Moonrise near Crymych was exceptional, luckily I was prepared.
My trusty 42x12 binoculars were sat on a nearby fence post, trained on the Moon, and the phone camera was placed (afocal) near the eyepiece.
A couple of seconds later the rising Moon was captured.
Some nearby bats were enjoying the Harvest Moon as much as Helen and I were, their presence was confirmed on our bat detector.
The sky was now dark, and every so often a bat silhouette could just be made out swooping towards and then hastily away from us.
The Moonrise was beautiful and the nearby bats added to the magic of the night.
The bat detector's squeeks and chirps made it all the more fun.
This morning's partial solar eclipse was predicted to be a disaster, with a rain, cloud and misery forecast to be spread over much of Pe...
