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.

Sunlight on the edge of crater Halley.

This photo taken way back in 2009, with a 6 inch refractor, a wonderful telescope for imaging the Moon. 

Having viewed the Lunar features with several telescopes I have to say that six inch refractor was the favourite. 

Why I ever sold that refractor is a mystery!

 Skywatcher 150mm/f8 refractor - Nikon D50 DSLR

Here is a close up of sunlight on the edge of crater Halley, from the above photo.

Even though the telescope magnification was low on the original photo, I was able to further increase magnification via some simple software.  

A bit of tweaking with copy and paste can have many uses when it comes to chasing down the craters of the Moon. 

Tonight's Moon.

Went for a stroll tonight, just before nightfall.  

The Moon was most evident over towards the Preseli mast. 

Loads of rooks were circling nearby fields. The stars slowly made their appearance.

It was one of those memorable Pembrokeshire evenings, great to be outside, and part of the slowly darkening night. 

I grabbed myself a photo of the Moon, framed in the branches of a nearby tree.  

No telescopes this evening, none were needed, the naked eye views alone had this astronomer mesmerised.

The Plough.

 

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.

Moonrise & Bats over Pembrokeshire.

Harvest Moon - 20h17m BST

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.