Cloudy skies

10.08pm. After dinner was over, Simon Green stood up and made a little speech. He thanked all the observatory, planetarium and other local staff who have made this week possible, including the director, Salvador, who joined us for dinner. Simon also thanked the tutors, and made a special mention about Avon, whose son is apparently better, out of hospital. Avon was all set to come back to Mallorca, but he was dissuaded.

Simon also thanked Anne-Marie, who got a great round of applause. She has been terrific this week. I felt a lump in my throat at thinking that tonight is the last night at the observatory.

Right now I am outside with our half of the group, which tonight is me, Steve, and Norman. We are in the Tycho dome tonight. It's fairly cloudy, I can see the moon, which is two-thirds full, along with a really vivid 22 degree halo. We have taken our dark, bias and flat calibration frames, and we are currently waiting for the sky to clear sufficiently around Arcturus to enable us to synchronise the telescope. We haven't even been able to start locating the binary star that we need to study. Still, the night is very young, and there are still a good two hours before we should even consider abandoning the dome.

Our tutor for this activity, Ian, is a really interesting and engaging man. He is a geologist by trade, and works full time for the OU. He's had a fascinating career, he studied at the University of Western Australia, and he appears to have travelled all over the world.

More later - I think the sky is clearing a bit.