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.