A busy week!

So after a busy week it was good to see a clear sky at last, just in time to catch this conjunction of the 3-day old Moon and Venus. The star below the Moon is thrid magnitude Mebsuta in Gemini.



Before the sky started to haze over it was possible to see the very first traces of Noctilucent Clouds on the northern horizon. These clouds, 55 miles high, are formed of ice crystals and are illuminated by the Sun over the pole. There seems to be an inverse relationship between sunspot activity and the displays of these clouds. Last year I caught a particularly good image of them shown here...

I was also intererviewed on the radio about them - mp3 here...

This is last night's shot which shows just the beginnings of a display - there should be more to come between now and the beginning of August which generally marks the end of the season.



Other news - I visited Armagh Planetarium last weekend with my new astronomical society, The Irish Astronomical Association

This was to see a talk by internationally renowned astrophotographer Dr David Malin. This was a marvellously informative and entertaining talk with Dr Malin explaining how he has imaged far distant galaxies using the Anglo-Australian Telescope and processed the images using techniques such as unsharp masking to reveal detail in the images not immediately apparent - and all done on film!



Also part of that outing was a talk by Dr Andy McCrea who outlined Meade's latest telescope lineup including the new 16" Lightbridge which is quite a spectacular piece of machinery, and a talk on astrophotography by David Stewart of the IAA. Here's David looking somewhat dwarfed by the Lightbridge!



So there it is!