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!

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

2018

January

Lincoln Cathedral taken at 4:42pm on December 23rd 2017 as Paul was Christmas shopping and had just walked up ‘Steep Hill’. iPhone 6+ picture.

February

Two views of the ‘Blue Snowball’ planetary Nebula, NGC 7662 which lies in the constellation of Andromeda. The left, wide field view, was taken with the BT10 inch Newtonian reflector and GPCAMv2 290C, stack of 199 images. At right is with the same instrument but now with a x2 barlow added for extra magnification. Both taken on the night of October 22nd 2017.

March

One from the archives that we’ve remembered - Montgó is a mountain in Alicante Province, Spain which rises to 2,470ft (753 mtrs) and this view looks due north towards it. It was taken when I (Paul) was invited out to Spain back in April 2010 to talk to the Ex Pat Brits living in and around Denia which lies to the north of Montgo. It is very distinctive in this view as it resembles an elephant lying down with its trunk off to the right towards the coast. The area surrounding it forms the Montgó Nature Reserve.

April

The open star cluster M45, Pleiades or ‘Seven Sisters’ cluster in Taurus is a favourite amongst astrophotographers and with good reason. The surrounding interstellar dust reflects the blue light from the hot blue type stars of the young cluster giving rise to the nebulosity we see. Visually the brightest patch is the teardrop shaped patch associated with the star Merope. Traditionally most people under good dark skies can count up to seven stars with the naked eye, hence the popular common name of the cluster. However keen eyed observers can spot more with Paul able to count 11 stars before he had to wear spectacles. Apparently the record is 18 stars with the naked eye! This wide field view was taken on November 17th, 2017, with a 100-400mm Canon lens set at 100mm at f5.6 and is a stack of 49 x 1 minute exposures at ISO 1600, processed with APP and final processing with PSP2018 and the AstroFlat plugin.

May

This is part of the East Gate of Roman Lincoln with the remains of an earlier wooden structure (the wooden posts). The wooden gatehouse was built around AD60 whilst the more impressive stone structure was built in the AD200’s according to the info on a plaque affixed to the wall surrounding and protecting it. There were two such semicircular towers either side of the eastern entrance and this one was excavated in the mid 1960’s and is preserved for us all to enjoy. Silly thing is that I (Paul) have walked along the roadside on the other side of the street for years and not noticed it but back in April for some reason walked on the other side and saw it close up for the first time and was impressed!

June

Messier 64, the Black Eye Galaxy taken on May 7th 2018 with the Canon 50D DSLR attached to the StarGate 500P (20 inch) Synscan Dobsonian telescope. The StarGate 500 is a GoTo Alt-Az system but cannot take long exposures of more than 10 seconds as there is too much trailing. However with today's cameras able to reach high ISO values, it is possible to take short, 10 second exposures and lots of them, use staking software that can de-rotate the images to produce deep sky images and this image of M64 is an example. 154x10 sec exposures at ISO 2000 stacked using APP and post processed with PaintShop Pro 2018. M64 is estimated to lie around 17 Million Light Years away and is in the constellation of Coma Berenices.

July

A view taken of the Valley of the Rocks which lies on the coast of North Devon close to the village of Lynton. The rock exposures are of the Lynton Beds, some of the oldest Devonian rocks with lots of fossils. It is a stunning location with a dry valley and costal rocks but only the English could put a cricket pitch in such a marvellous location! This is part of a panorama taken by Paul whilst he was on his SW astro speaking tour back in May when he gave talks to Wiltshire AS, North Devon AS and Tiverton and Mid Devon AS.

August

The ‘Pillars of Creation’ that were imaged and made famous in 1995 by the HST. This image was taken with the StarGate 500P half metre telescope from our back garden taken with a GPCAM290C camera. It is a stack of 128, 5 second exposures (total exposure time of 10m 40s) stacked and processed in Deep Sky Stacker with final processing in PaintShop Pro 2018. It lies in Messier 16, the Eagle nebula, but for most observers the nebulosity is faint whereas the star cluster at top right is easily viewable in small telescopes. It is amazing to think that amateur astrophotographers now have the tools to emulate what only a few years ago was the professionals domain. Image taken on the night of August 4th 2018.

September

A wide view of the ‘Little Orme’ from the beach at Llandudno taken on the afternoon before my talk at the North Wales Astronomy Society back in late June 2018. The Little Orme is one of two headlands either end of Llandudno bay with the larger one the Great Orme.

October

Messier 11, the ‘Wild Duck’ cluster in Scutum. Taken on August 4th with the StarGate 500P Dobsonian and GPCAM290C, it is a stack of 81 x 1 second exposures with a gain setting of 10.

November

Clouds, light and shadows: The interplay between sunlight and clouds casting shadows and creating crepuscular rays, shows up well in this picture taken with the iPhone 6S+ from our back garden in 15th July 2018. Purely coincidentally a passenger plane was also travelling in the same direction leaving a contrail parallel to the rays.

December

Four of the five main moons of Uranus are captured here in an image taken on November 11th 2018 using the StarGate 500P and GPCam290C and a stack of 34 images. Miranda is the closest and faintest of the classical five moons and as such is the hardest both to see and image due to the glare of Uranus itself.