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.
.jpg)
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.
This morning's sol image:
Any excuse to put in a Camille Flammarion quote, he is one of my all time favourite astronomer/poets.
-----------------------------------
Beautifully clear skies last night, probably the best viewing for several months.
It was a wonderful backdrop to display the appulse of Venus and Jupiter.
Many astronomical events need no camera or telescope to elicit that sense of cosmic awe, tonight's appulse of the dancing Venus and Jupiter was one of those events.
The frost was much in evidence this morning. The sparrows are really busy out there at the moment collecting what food they can and making a racket.
Plus the starlings have started to forage for worms, it was only a few days ago that we noticed the blackbird picking up the odd worm in the back garden, a sure sign that the Lunar month of the Worm and Crow are well under way.
With the Crow Moon in mind I managed to capture a half decent gibbous Moon last night.
The image was taken afocally with our trusty old S6 phone camera, through my old 60mm Tasco refractor.
With barely 60mm of crown and flint glass to gather the photons, it's amazing what you can see with a simple old "department store" refractor.
There are countless double stars, the Jovian satellites, craters of the Moon, phases of Venus, star clusters, sunspots,and more.
The list is long .... definitely material for a future blog post.
The last day of February was cold and mostly clouded out; the biting wind from the East was letting us know who was the boss!
Had to be quick to make the most of the solar viewing window. Luck was on my side and I managed to capture the above shot.
These past few days my thoughts have been directed to the unseen astronomy of the Sun, in particular the radio waves and magnetic fields that the Sun produces.
Time to get back into the science books.
As an amateur radio operator I'm confident I will be able to set up a solar radio listening station, albeit a small one. It should add a further colour to my solar astronomy palette.
Then it was back to the Pembrokeshire grey.
It's been a good month for Hydrogen alpha solar observing.
Next month I might invest sometime drawing white light observations to compliment the Ha images.
There was a sizeable aurora display last night, typically I knew nothing about it until this morning!!
Will have to keep a look out for the K- index, which at the moment is at 7 on the scale.
Maybe tonight I will be lucky enough to glimpse an aurora show, if so it will be the first decent one I would have witnessed since June of 1990!
Fingers crossed.
I didn't manage to sketch the recent Full Moon, but I had a go at the gibbous Moon, as seen with my opera glasses. It was a cold night,...
