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
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.
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.
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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.
In Memory of
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.
It had been a beautifully hot day, the Sun was relentless, happy, strong, and chromium yellow in a big blue cloudless sky. Our motorhome &qu...
