News From the Hill

Posts Tagged ‘Night Sky’

We have had a few beautiful days of sun, light winds and starry clear nights. This week in August every year there are amazing night skies with shooting stars (Perseids) in the northern sky. Check out the Astronomy Ireland website for more details.

If you are blessed with clear skies then you owe it to yourself to go out at night, bring a rug, wear a warm hat and settle into your favourite deck chair to watch the show. If you have binoculars they may add to the fun however I often find it less frustrating to just gaze upwards and let the magic unfold.

I don’t think that I will get to see any stars tonight as we had a day of rain, all day…

I decided to make use of the rain to wash the outdoor bathtub so I put the plug in this morning to allow it to fill. After a few hours I went out to check on progress. Imagine my surprise to find two fine frogs swimming about in the tub…

A pair of happy frogs

Here is a close up of one of the swimmers, handsome fella isn’t he?

An Irish frog enjoying the rain

Are you interested in seeing the International Space Station as it flies overhead?
I have been lucky enough to see it twice recently.

Just last week I was camping at a beach on the west coast of Ireland and happened, by chance, to see the space station pass overhead. I was really amazed at how fast it was as it moved steadily over my tent.

For a moment I thought that it might be a aeroplane however I realised that it was moving far too fast and was also too bright to be an aeroplane.

Anyhow, now that I am wandering through twitter-land I found a great site that will tell my twitter account when the space station is flying over.

I have yet to find out how accurate it is however I will let you all know how it turns out…