Paul & Lorraine's Picture of the Month pages

Our Picture of the Month page began with the June 2002 image of a Peacock Butterfly and each month a picture taken by one of us (mainly by Paul but occasionally taken by Lorraine) is selected to be the current months image. The pictures can be of a wide range of subjects but as you can imagine Astronomy, Nature and Butterflies do tend to dominate! The current months image is below and and below that lies the current years images as a slide show. Past years can be viewed by the buttons at the side of the current months image or in mobile view .

We hope you enjoy the many images and continue to watch out for what images we select for future months and years to come.
Paul & Lorraine

Current: April 2025

This patch of nebulosity lies in Cepheus and was imaged with the RedCat 61 WIFD Refractor, Canon R8 and Quad filter, stack of 178 x 1 minutes exposures @ ISO 10000 taken on March 28th 2025. The bright nebula at left is Cederblad 214 (NGC 7822) and the arc shaped nebula to its right is NGC 7762 including a star cluster at the lower end of it in this image. At bottom left is a small nebula nicknamed the Little Rosette nebula and all together some reckon it all looks like a cosmic question mark but I think a deeper image may show more of the nebulosity that gives it that nickname.

2025

January

Moss Force Waterfall, Newlands Pass, central Lake District. Two views, left hand view is from close to the car park where you can then walk and climb up the path to see the rest of the higher sections of the waterfall and the right hand picture is when I (Paul) did that walk up to the first bend shown in the first picture as the path reaches the waterfall and walking just round the bend gives the second view of the higher sections.

February

February

Our Jade plant, also known as the Money plant (no relation!) surprised us by showing signs of flowering back in November and by January 2025 we had multiple flower heads blossoming as shown here. Very subtle colours on what initially looks like delicate white flowers.Our Money plant acts as a nice reminder of our former neighbour, Paul, who passed away suddenly in March 2022. It was from a small piece that had dropped off his plant and he let me have a couple, this one survived as they are pretty good at being left alone as I (Paul) am usually hopeless at looking after house plants!

March

March

At the feet of Castor. As the heading implies, this region of space is found where the stars of Gemini form the feet or in this case, foot of Castor, the twin of Pollux. It is a deep image showcasing the various nebulae in the region including a section of Orion at the bottom. The two orange looking bright stars are Propus (Eta Gem) upper centre with the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 433) to its left and further to their left Tejat Posterior (Mu Gem) which has several fainter patches of nebulosity above it. At the very top, half in the shot is M35 and it's smaller companion cluster, NGC 2158. Towards the bottom right is the bright nebula called the Monkey Head Nebula, NGC 2174, technically the monkey head is upside down! Image taken with the RedCat 61 WIFD Refractor, Canon R8 and Quad filter, stack of 208 x 1 minutes exposures @ ISO 10000 taken on Feb 2nd 2025.

April

April

This patch of nebulosity lies in Cepheus and was imaged with the RedCat 61 WIFD Refractor, Canon R8 and Quad filter, stack of 178 x 1 minutes exposures @ ISO 10000 taken on March 28th 2025. The bright nebula at left is Cederblad 214 (NGC 7822) and the arc shaped nebula to its right is NGC 7762 including a star cluster at the lower end of it in this image. At bottom left is a small nebula nicknamed the Little Rosette nebula and all together some reckon it all looks like a cosmic question mark but I think a deeper image may show more of the nebulosity that gives it that nickname.

Current and previous years

Current 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
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