Today's Partial Solar Eclipse.

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. 

One thing I hadn't accounted for was the frequent rain showers. 

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.

Contrails & Enormous Mutant Star Goats.

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!

Clarkson crater vs Alphabet craters.

If you look up any Moon map or lunar software program, you can't help but notice that many of the main craters have smaller craters dotted around them with no names. 

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. 

At the end of the day I don't expect that any of the "alphabet" craters will be officially renamed. 

Though there's nothing stopping me making a personal Moon map, complete with several worthy amateur Moon watchers added.

Roland Clarkson definitely fits the title of worthy amatuer Moon watcher.