CLOUDS foiled the borough's astronomer’s attempts to get a glimpse of the rare super blood wolf moon.

The astrological phenomenon, caused in part by a lunar eclipse, makes the surface of the moon appear a reddish hue while seeming brighter and closer to earth than normal.

Stargazers set their alarms to prepare for the spectacular sight, but were dismayed to discover cloud cover blocking their view.

Paul Smith from Highworth is a keen astronomer and

He said: “It's not unusual for the hobby - you get used to disappointment, sometimes you're lucky with the weather and sometimes you're not.

"You learn to be patient and just live with it, but when it works and everything goes well, it's brilliant.

"We had lovely clear skies at around 10pm but clouds drifted over during the night.

"I got up before 4am to set up the telescope and let it cool down - it has to be a certain temperature - then went back to bed for a bit, woke up at 5am, went outside and it was just solid grey skies.

"I waited for 20 minutes to see if the clouds would clear but after that I just gave up."

AJ Thomas, also from Highworth, tried to photograph the eclipse after taking impressive pictures of the super wolf moon a few hours beforehand.

He said: “I was gutted, I took all my gear out and walked around for an hour trying to find a good vantage point but the moon was completely indistinguishable.

“It’s so annoying, the cosmos is aligning briefly in an amazing display and we can’t see it because of a floating puff of vapour!”

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A super blood wolf moon occurs when a blood moon and supermoon happen simultaneously and was best seen from the UK at around 5.10am on Monday morning if the skies were clear.

The supermoon and blood moon titles come from the brightness and reddish hue respectively - the wolf name comes from the term used to describe full moons in January.

The optimum viewing time was at around 5.12am when the eclipse was at its peak.

The eclipse was visible in Kent, Brighton, Liverpool and Edinburgh., and the next blood moon like it is two years away.

Hopefully next time, Swindon space fans will have better luck with the weather.