Tiny dots in the sky

We had plans for today, but the approaching weather front approached faster than we'd anticipated and plans were put away for another day. It's now rather grey and chill out there. We're staying in!

But late late last night it was still summery warm, and we sat out on our new pagoda drinking tea and watching the stars above us. I decided to grab the wide angle and tripod and blew off a few random shots. This is one.

You can, just about, discern the Milky Way vertical in the middle of this image. In the middle is the constellation Cygnus, described by Ptolemy in the second century. 

The variation in star colour is delightful and I'm afraid I didn't make it a mono. I've picked out Vega and Deneb and sketched the constellation. I think that's about all I can identify without a starmap.

I'd love to get more into astrophotography, but it's almost always late at night and I don't really do late at night any more. I don't actually do early in the morning either. 

As we pass through the autumnal equinox, we've had our first covid outbreak at the local primary school, and a whole year-group is now in isolation. I'm more and more resembling a bear in search of a dark cave.

In my cave I can sit out the Covid debacle, sit out Brexit, wait for the revolution to take place and take over. I'll pop back out when it's all gone quiet again (just in time for climate chaos!)

Hey ho. I can dream.