I doubt that there’s anyone out there it’s been so long since I wrote anything, meaningful or not, on this blog. However it’s not that I’ve lost interest in blogging here, rather that I’ve lacked for motivation and particularly timely content.

You see, my health got much worse even that the last time I posted. I now have a diagnosis of Axial Spondyloarthritis which fortunately means that, at last, I also have some treatment.

I’m back again after yet another long break, but honestly I haven’t done anything much astronomy related since my last post in 2020; the only observing I’ve done has been two minor solar eclipses I think. Still, I have to admit that I’ve enjoyed the extra sleep that the lack of observing has provided.

The reasons for my lack of progress are broadly the same as last time, except that the health issues have taken the headlines. Unfortunately they’ve left me with some permanent issues that will affect my astronomical activities in the future.

It’s been a long time hasn’t it, and honestly observational astronomy has taken a back seat. This is a post to fill in what has been happening.

Health

Health issues with my shoulder and, more importantly last year, with my leg have meant that I couldn’t shift my usual heavy kit. That limited the kind of observing I could do. So it was mostly lunar and double star sight-seeing with small scopes and a manual alt-az mount on a photographic tripod.

I think it’d be a good idea to explain my absence over the last three months, I feel suitably contrite.

Summer isn’t a great time for UK observers as the Sun stays in the sky far too long, and never dips all that far below the horizon. Worse yet, as noted in my last post, we’re due a Solar minimum, and frankly the Sun’s been behaving that way. There have been a few interesting spots, but mostly when it was cloudy.

My solar observing season tends to run from about February to the end of October. As I’ve noted before the Sun is too low to clear the roofs of the surrounding houses.

For the last few seasons I’ve been sketching the view of the solar disc through my Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope) and occasionally augmenting that with white light details of Active Regions (ARs).

I thought it might be interesting to compare the views from this time of year. I only started seriously recording at the end of the 2016 season, so the record isn’t a long one, but at least both the images below were made using the same equipment and are limited to Hα views.

It’s been a while hasn’t it, so I’ve decided that a short update on my progress with the Herschel 400 – or 281 since I can’t see anything below 0º declination – is in order now that the season’s drawn to a close with the approach of Summer Solstice.

Sadly it seems that I’m down to only fifteen more open clusters, three globular clusters, a pair of emission nebulae and a solitary planetary nebula to observe. That’s just twenty-one more of my favoured celestial deep-sky objects. I say sadly because that means there a colossal one hundred and sixty more galaxies to hunt down and this is bad news for a couple of reasons.

Previously most of my lunar observing had been limited to the spectacular array of impact craters. Yet most of these contain details that passed me by until I was told to really look, and they only scratch the surface (so to speak) of what the Moon has to offer. Now I’ve surveyed 90% of the sights listed in the Lunar 100 list, what were the highlights?

Discovering Lunar domes and dark halo craters has lead me to consider lunar vulcanism more closely. The latter were completely new to me despite being easily visible under bright illumination. These are long extinct volcanoes or vents and probably a result of the impacts in the early life of the Moon.

When we imagine early astronomy from ancient times to the medieval we assume that lacking optical devices they would see only pinpoints of light fixed in their place all eternity. Sure they would have noticed that the Sun and Moon moved across that backdrop, and these stars would make interesting patterns, but that’s about all the naked eye could show you, after all we wouldn’t see much more today.

Then I realised that until relatively recently the skies were really dark. Consequently the night sky would have been far more dramatic and dynamic to the ancient eye than it is to our own. Modern skies are so bright that it’s easy to fail to notice there’s anything up there at all, and most don’t even bother to look.

I think it’s fair to say that I was more active on the blogging front in 2017. Unfortunately I appear to have fallen off the wagon again, so I’ll try to get things rolling with my traditional summary of the last year. I’ve a few more ideas after that so who knows?

The results for 2017

Going back over the diary for 2017 shows about a third of the nights to be observable based on my loose definition.

Back in February I noted that most of the remaining Messier Objects were too low to be seen from my back garden. Well I managed to fit an observing session in during one of our Society meetings to observe the Perseid meteors this August.

As it turned out it was cloudy most of the time, so very few meteors were seen, but during the early part of the night, before the Moon rose, I stuck my 10×50 binoculars on their monopod and pointed them low to the South in the direction of Sagittarius.