Donât forget the partial lunar eclipse today from 2000 utc. Jupiter at the bottom left of the photo is also watching.
73 Chris
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As usual whenever there is an eclipse, an aurora or an outbreak of noctilucent clouds - it was cloudy here! I am sure that if Betelgeuse goes supernova in my lifetime all I will see is the clouds getting brighter!
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I got a brief glimpse of the Moon with a flat edge through the patchy fast-moving clouds. Enough to tick the âseen itâ box, but not worth staying out to watch. Thatâs often the way. These days I like to leave most of my contribution to astronomy to automatic systems. The two meteor cameras on the end of the house stare un-blinking at the night sky, and even on a night like last night they often catch a few meteors. Of course, some nights thereâs just no hope. 
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Even the clear nights are disappointing nowadays, I canât remember the last time I walked into the garden and could see the Milky Way. I remember it slowly emerging out of the smoke and haze of industrial Birmingham back in the '60s as the smokeless zones started to take effect but in the last few decades the street lighting has become brighter and brighter and nowadays I feel lucky if I can see magnitude 4 stars without aid. At least I can say that I have seen every major comet since Arend-Roland 1956h until this year!
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Sadly, yes. The old sodium lighting chewed enough power that there was some incentive to get the light directed as effectively as possible. The present generation of LED lighting doesnât provide the same incentive, so poorly directed light is far more common, and privately-installed LED âsecurityâ lighting is pretty much out of control, with lights often installed so that half their light output goes up into the sky. I eventually managed to get one particularly bad one a hundred metres away down hill adjusted enough that it didnât light up my house every time it came on, but even that was a struggleâŚ
Tonight, of course, a day past full, the Moon and Jupiter are rising in an almost clear sky, and looking very pretty.
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This evening the sky was very clear again. I couldnât help it and pointed my Panasonic Lumix G9 towards Jupiter again with the Leica 50-200mm zoom.
And suddenly Jupiterâs moons appeared.
73 Chris
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It is rumoured that you have seen Halleyâs comet twice 
Actually, that is possible in a normal lifetime!!!
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No, but actually my Dad did!
There were two particularly spectacular comets in 1910. The second was Halleyâs Comet. The first was C/1910 A1, otherwise known as the Great January Comet of 1910 - Wikipedia
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Better known as the âDaylight Cometâ. I havenât seen a really decent comet since Hale-Bopp but I am crossing my fingers for C/2023A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS next year, we must be about due for a big one!
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