Night & Morning

With so much happening in the heavens, and a beautifully clear night last night, the Diary was out between 11.00pm and midnight making the first, faltering attempts to capture photographs of the stars.  This is the best of the resulting pictures.  The brightest 'star' is Jupiter, sitting in Taurus - the bull's head is immediately to the right of the planet.  At top right are the Pleiades, a star cluster within the constellation of Taurus.

The stars are a bit blurred because they kept moving during the 30-second exposure, but the biggest problem were the slugs, which seemed determined to climb onto the camera and take over the photography.

Dawn this morning arrived misty and damp, with the sun doing its best to fight its way out from behind the clouds.  This picture, taken at about 8.30am looking southeastwards down the Sound of Mull, shows the CalMac ferry the Clansman with, to its left, the Scottish Fisheries Protection vessel the Minna and, to its right, the Raasay, the CalMac ferry that's currently on the Kilchoan-Tobermory run.  To the right is Tobermory lighthouse.

Half an hour later the mist began to rise and the sun came out - picture shows Cruachan croft house and the heights of Glas Bheinn.