Owen Gwynne

The solution to the Parthenon Marbles issue could be simply that the British Museum opens a branch in Athens. They could call it the Attic

A reminder that the next Total Solar Eclipse visible in Europe is on 2nd August 2027. Make a note in your colander.🔭

A collage from the Eclipse, as seen at the village of Ariza in Aragon. Many thanks to them for organising a number of observing spots. 🔭 The partial Sunset was an extra special bonus.

One of the great things about France is that they have a nation-wide Nuits des Etoiles - over a weekend early in August, where local Astro societies have astronomy events🔭 Last night was at St Claud in Charente, lots of families and our SmartScope could show a variety of targets.

I'm not sure my SS50 🔭 has ever done such a 'sharp' image of a the Veil Nebula. A particularly clear night in Confolens tonight, after all the gunk from the fires recently. No additional processing, just 45 m of data

A mucky moon from last night

Not only is the Moon in one of the lower 'summer' zodiac constellations, Capricorn, it's also tracking below the ecliptic because of the angle of it's orbit, so it'll not reach much above 15 degrees. Having to look through the mucky, atmosphere with all these wildfires. Seestar 🔭

Took the SeeStar 🔭 out last night to capture the North America Nebula NGC 7000 for about 40 minutes. Stacked in Siril and a Histogram Stretch brought out more detail than I expected to be honest .

Looks like someone's doing interferometry 🔭

A great photo-op when leaving an event at Jodrell Bank. 🔭

Just the Moon through a 🔭

People may have heard of the recent discovery of a Supernova in the galaxy NGC5907 - an edge-on Spiral Galaxy in the constellation Draco. The supernova (called SN2026kid) is still visible - here is an image taken this evening with a SeeStar50 over about 20 minutes. #astronomy

Mixed messages

@herring1967.bsky.social 's #Taskmaster record gets a Strong Message from @nataliehaynes.bsky.social and @aiannucci.bsky.social on #StrongMessageHere on #BBCSounds.

#Artemis Possibly a good day to show this bargain we found in a French bric-a-brac shop last year

Given it's #FossilFriday, I thought this might appeal to someone like @davehone.bsky.social Available in your nearest #Lidl

🔭 I've known in principle that the different colours of aurorae are due to different elements at different heights, but the facts have never really 'stuck' in my mind. So I made this chart to help me remember.

Perilune yesterday, and Apolune last April. Cloudy yesterday, so this is 20 hours later, but only about 800km further away than the closest approach. 13.6% larger #astronomy

Ah, I see why people use things like StarNet to make #astro image processing easier. Here's my first use of it. Target is IC5146, the Cocoon Nebula in Cygnus. 225x10s Seestar images, stacked in Siril before having stars extracted. The starless image processed in Affinity and recombined. Left/Right

@robinince.bsky.social - if we'd had more time, I'd have asked if you'd come across RIchard Ayoade's "The Unfinished Harauld Hughes'; a narrative on making of a documentary about a fictional author? Of course, Ayoade felt obliged to write his fictitious complete works in three accompanying volumes.

Was doing some #astronomy outreach at a local school, showing them the Sun and sunspots. Lots of things crossing its disc, some will be birds, but I think some might be satellites. Any thoughts? Oh, and stay to the end!

Considering Lunar #Astronomers: having observed the Earthshine on the 2 day old Moon last evening. As seen on the Moon, the Earthshine has almost 30x the overall brightness than the Full Moon gives on Earth. If there were any Lunar Astronomers, they'd really hate the Earth!

Sidewalk #Astronomy for the Partial Solar Eclipse in NW England. Obscured by clouds, but you can see the dark side of the moon. More than 40 pairs of eclipse glasses given away.

Rather than imaging a 'target' last night, I asked my #seestar50 to look at a relatively nondescript 'NGC' things in Coma Berenices: NGC 4274 and NGC4278. In only 65 minutes I imaged the home of billions of solar systems

Love this - I'm pretty sure that geologists will agree, yes? @seismatters.bsky.social xkcd.com/3068/

Catching up with the latest Lovell Lecture at Jodrell Bank (Chaos at Cosmic Dawn) with Phil Bull - and we come out to this... #astronomy at top level photogenics

Science with the SeeStar, the advantage of having a fixed format rig. The observed size of the Sun's disc near Perihelion (375 pixels) and near Aphelion (363 pixels), demonstrating that the Earth's orbit is not circular. #astronomy

The nice thing about the SeeStar is that it allows you to image things you've not heard of before. Last night's example being the Flaming Star Nebula IC 405

@bot.astronomy.blue signup

Hi @sainsburys.bsky.social - I was in your Cheshire Oaks store yesterday when you decided to play a promotion for a new book by David Walliams over the tannoy. Please don't - he's an author that has consistently punched down on the poor, the old, the fat and the different. We do not need that.

A view of Venus just before the Moon moved in front of it. A fortunate gap in the clouds