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Went to a place called Swinley Forest yesterday. Just south of Bracknell. Huge vast array of land with walking routes. Barely covered it even though we walked around for a good two hours.

@nudge, get your telescope ready and as @MUFC would say "any pics?" Edit: Shite, just spotted this below... They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Nov. 25: The waxing, gibbous moon will be in conjunction with Mars at 2:46 p.m. EST (1946 GMT). Look for the pair above the eastern horizon after sunset. The Moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter, with the Very Large Telescope in the foreground. Image © Y. Beletsky, ESO, 2009. The Moon and Mars will make a close approach, passing within 4°27' of each other. The Moon will be 11 days old. From St Helens, the pair will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 16:28 (GMT) as the dusk sky fades, 19° above your eastern horizon. They will then reach their highest point in the sky at 20:50, 42° above your southern horizon. They will continue to be observable until around 02:32 when they sink below 8° above your western horizon. The Moon will be at mag -12.4 in Cetus, and Mars will be at mag -1.3 in Pisces. They will be too widely separated to fit within the field of view of a telescope but will be visible to the naked eye or through a pair of binoculars. At around the same time, the pair will also share the same right ascension – called a conjunction. A graph of the angular separation between the Moon and Mars around the time of closest approach is available here. The positions of the pair at the moment of closest approach will be as follows: Object Right Ascension Declination Constellation Magnitude Angular Size The Moon 01h06m20s +01°56' Cetus -12.4 29'27"6 Mars 00h58m50s +05°59' Pisces -1.3 15"4 The coordinates above are given in J2000.0. The pair will be at an angular separation of 131° from the Sun, which is in Scorpius at this time of year. THE SKY ON 25 NOVEMBER 2020 Sunrise 07:54 Sunset 16:01 Twilight ends 18:07 Twilight begins 05:48 Waxing Gibbous 83% 10 days old Planets Rise Culm. Set Mercury 06:33 11:03 15:33 Venus 05:03 10:04 15:05 Moon 14:44 20:51 01:51 Mars 14:13 20:49 03:29 Jupiter 11:43 15:39 19:35 Saturn 11:50 15:51 19:51 All times are shown in GMT. Source The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location. Related news 14 Oct 2020 – Mars at opposition 13 Jul 2021 – Mars at aphelion 20 Sep 2021 – Mars at apogee 08 Oct 2021 – Mars at solar conjunction https://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20201125_15_100

For a start I think being an island makes a big difference, and we are very low on flight traffic now compared to before so we can control the 14 day quarantining of all new arrivals into the country and that stops a big source of the spread. Then really its just been that we stayed locked down until we had zero community transmission, and then reopened and used contact tracing to contain new outbreaks. Melbourne's situation was the biggest test of the resolve but ultimately they stuck to the strategy and appear to be back on course now. That meant pretty major lockdowns in Melbourne for longer than what most other places have endured.

Me and the monster from a couple of weeks ago.

Took these photos in 2013, on top of Arthur's Seat here in Edinburgh, that's my other half looking far and yonder on top of the seat, I went there to scatter some ashes for a friend of mine in America who's father died and he always said he wanted his ashes scattered on top of the seat when he died as he was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, so my mate sent me the urn with his ashes and I climbed on top of the seat and scattered the ashes, my mate in America appreciated that and I sent the urn back to America empty with his ashes blowing in the wind on top of Arthurs Seat.

It was baltic to be fair. Her nipples could have cut glass apparently

Melbourne was the source of Australia's only significant Covid outbreak which peaked at 800 cases a day in July but then we locked down very hard (schools shut etc). Today we clocked up our 20th day in a row with zero new cases from 10k daily tests, and the only positive cases around the country came from airport quarantine centre's. Likely this weekend we will fully reopen everything such as being able to have full stadiums again and restaurants back to their original capacity. We're finally in good spirits again. I think Covid is a lot easier to keep under control in summer.

Had some nice weather last week, albeit bloody cold, so took a trip down to Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove on the Jurassic coast of Dorset. Always looks amazing in the sun.

Weather conditions have been too poor lately anyway, cloudy, foggy and raining all the time, can't see shite!

Two Moon shots I took last month using a friend's scope.