Sol - 10/03/23 - Camille Flammarion

 This morning's sol image:

Any excuse to put in a Camille Flammarion quote, he is one of my all time favourite astronomer/poets.

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What intelligent being, what being capable of responding emotionally to a beautiful sight, can look at the jagged, silvery lunar crescent trembling in the azure sky, even through the weakest of telescopes, and not be struck by it in an intensely pleasurable way, not feel cut off from everyday life here on Earth and transported toward that first step on celestial journeys?

Camille Flammarion

Some years ago I wrote a blog post about Mr Flammarion, here is the link: 

https://pembsastronomer.blogspot.com/2012/04/astronomy-and-poetry-go-hand-in-hand.html

The Crow Moon and the Appulse.

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.

When the east wind blows.

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.

Sol - 27/02/23 - The Aurora is lurking.

Today I managed a quick observe, unfortunately the blue sky didn't last long, maybe ten minutes. 

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.

Sol - 25/02/23 - Alexander Graham Bell

 Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. 

The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

Alexander Graham Bell

Sol - 23/02/23 - Albert Einstein

"The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits"

Albert Einstein

Sol imaging in January

Considering all those cloudy days of January, I was more than pleased to capture the following Hydrogen alpha images.