Littlehampton mare's tails

Lovely mare's tails in the sky this evening. Change is on the way ....

We spent a fun time this evening watching the Siding Spring Comet as it grazed Mars. They say this was a once in a million years event. We started with a community group in Italy and relayed the feed from the computer to the TV so we got a better view. The enthusiasm of the astrophysicist was infectious and it was almost like a Skype call as he got the technology working talking directly to us and we got his screen grab. He's running two telescopes but sadly there was too much cloud to get clear pictures of the comet. It was still amazing to see Mars in real time and track the comet path and he had a slide show of some wonderful professional photos. Apparently 100,000 people joined in the community feed. Amazing! We then moved on to the South African telescope feed via a USA community site. Back yard astronomy has fascinated me ever since I was in astronomy club at school almost 50 years ago. We used to go and visit a neighbouring boys school where they had a real mini-planetarium and telescope.