Pembrokeshire Astronomer

On my bookshelf sits a small little blue book titled  "Peeps at the Heavens" This book was printed in 1911, by the Reverend James Baikie F.R.A.S One of the highlights in "Peeps at the Heavens" has to be on page 41, where the Rev Baikie talks of the Moon Maiden, and I quote: "But perhaps the most interesting of all the faces is that called the "Moon Maiden," which is shown in plate VIII. It can only be seen with the telescope, and only when the Sun happens to shine upon it in exactly the right way.  I have only seen it twice myself in twenty- five years.; but perhaps some fine night you may get a chance to see  this face of the Moon Maiden, with her long hair floating behind her, looking out from the cape of the Bay of Rainbows across the Sea of Showers." Plate VII  "The Moon Maiden" Well tonight I managed to catch a glimpse of that most beautiful of maidens. Tonight's Lunar viewing was timed ju

The Summer Skies..   Thanks to the recent warmer weather (at last!!) Wednesday evening was perfect for some Lawn Astronomy. Out came a blanket and a good sized cushion to prop my head against. I made myself comfortable by lying on the warm garden path, and with my 7x50 binoculars beside me I began my tour of the Summer Triangle, and it's surrounding companions. I spent a while bino viewing Deneb, though I was soon mesmerised by the bright lights of the surrounding star fields, it was time to venture along that Milky expanse.... It is always wonderful to see the Milky Way, ethereal and ghostly, as it snakes its way towards our Galactic Centre. Last night's view of our Galaxy was particularly magical,  I spent ages just simply drinking in the galactic photons. They renergised my astro batteries beautifully. As part of my astro tour, I stopped off at Aquila, and was able to capture Altair and it's companions of Tarazed and Alshain in the same field of view

June the 5th 11.00 pm  First Contact via Hawaii......... Both Helen and I were looking forward to seeing the transit, but due to cloud cover, Pembrokeshire was wrapped in a thick blanket of the grey stuff...   Also our part of the planet was badly placed for the beginning of the event, so we watched First Contact via the webcam at the  Mauna Loa Observatory Exploratorium Fascinating imagery and the background music and narration were almost hypnotic...   Thank you to all at the Mauna Loa Observatory for putting on the Live show.... Up at 04:15am - Off to find the Transit Show..... Looking Southward... The alarm went off at 04:15. Outside the grey clouds were still smothering the Pembrokeshire skies. Helen and I got on the motorbike and went out looking for some hopeful gaps in the early morning sky. We drove maybe two miles, and yes the clouds were beginning to thin...but still no clearing in the East.....however there was a lovely early morn

Goodbye Venus ..See you in 2012 Yesterday I was looking through one of my old astronomy log books, and I found the above picture. I've always thought I had just the one picture of the 2004 Venus Transit....It looks like I was wrong...  :0) Time to attack it with Macintosh software........ After a bit of photo manipulation using iPhoto... I managed to obtain the following image... Hidden in a drawer, I have some video footage of the 2004 transit. In total I think I have the last 15 minutes of the transit.   If I convert this footage from analogue to digital I will be able to exam more closely the individual frames.. It seems yesterday morning I had one photo of the 2004 transit....  this morning I now thankfully have two....  If the video footage can be transferred to the computer ... I'll hopefully have a lot more images of the event to look through.... Fingers crossed that the video footage is salvageable....  :0)