Astronomical Update

Monday 10th August, soon after midnight – Clear skies: Milky Way, 3 satellites, no Perseid meteors.
Tuesday 11th August, 2am – Crystal clear skies: Milky Way as good as we have ever seen, 9 satellites, no meteors.
Tuesday 11th August, 4.30am – Cloudy: couldn’t see the 6 planet alignment.
Wednesday 12th August, 1am – Clear skies: 3 satellites, 3 aeroplanes, 7 meteors in 5 minutes, including one that streaked right across the sky with a long tail and another very large and very bright.
Wednesday 12th August – Cloudy most of the day but 28°C: at 5pm we considered driving south as far as we could get but quickly decided against it (dinner and wine in the orchard watching the new children and the western horizon trumped lots of driving with no guarantees), then the skies cleared high up at 5.45pm, but were still cloudy lower down, obscuring the view as the Sun descended, and so it was cloudy for the The Crucial 15 Minutes around 7.00pm. The Big Telescope with Sun filter tracked the Sun, but refused to focus through the cloud, the eclipse glasses proved far too dark (they were made in the US where litigation is a big thing, rather than in China where it isn’t), so the rectangles of welding glass saved the day after all. It got noticeably cooler, and slightly darker, but the hens didn’t seem to notice and weren’t fooled into going to bed early. The Unspeakable started shooting the Inedible part way through (it is The Glorious Twelfth after all, although I doubt there are any grouse in those woods), and two combine harvesters clattered by on their way to harvest the wheat fields a couple of miles away. The Sun attempted to redeem itself by trying a nice sunset but the cloud intervened again. Nevertheless, we saw most of it and had a very pleasant evening.
What about you?