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

2021

January

Messier 17, the Omega or Swan nebula in serpens. This image was taken with the StarGate 500 with a modified Canon 300D DSLR so that the Ha emission is better captured and shows up well in the red nebulosity. It compromises a stack of 140 x 10 second exposures at ISO 1600 processed with Astro Pixels Processor. M17 is a summer favourite of many astro imagers and is not too far from the other popular target, M16, the eagle nebula (and cluster) also in Serpens. M16 was our PotM for October 2019.

February

These are our Star Tulips that used to be next to the small hedge by our house and were always a stunning sight when they flowered in March/April time (this image was taken on April 17th 2004!). Sadly when we remodelled the side of the driveway and removed the hedge next to them, I (Paul) forgot to retrieve the bulbs so we no longer have them. They are officially known as Tulipa saxatilis (Bakeri Group) 'Lilac Wonder’ and we’re hoping to find an outlet selling either the plants or bulbs so we can have them grace our front garden again in the coming year(s).

March

An unusual view of the main stars of the constellation of Orion, the Hunter. With the naked eye Orion appears to be dominated by mainly bright white stars with one exception at the upper left, Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is classed as an ‘M’ type star, a red/orange supergiant star and with the naked eye you can see it does look orange. However the rest of the main stars tend to look white. But technically many are classed as hot blue type stars and one way to bring out their ‘true colour’ is to slightly defocus your camera lens a few times. So most white stars now look blue-ish whilst bottom right Rigel retains its white colour better so defocusing helps reveal the true colours of the stars.

April

We are always glad to see each of the Butterfly species return every year and we’ve featured many of the more colourful Butterflies as POTM images over the years but not really shown many of the White Family. So here are top and side views of a female Small White that obligingly landed on the budding Lilacs in early April and stayed around long enough to be captured with an iPhone XR. We can see it is a female as it has two black spots on each of the upper wings whereas the male only has one. Many of the White butterflies can be hard to properly identify when in flight so it is always best to identify them once they land.

May

Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds was a big influence on me (Paul) when I was growing up with Thunderbird 2 & 3 being the favourites and TB1 & 4 close behind. TB5 never seemed to do much which was a shame. I remember getting TB1 and 5 as models but not the others and they naturally lost the battle with a child’s imagination and much wear and tear. Today there is a new range of ‘airfix’ style plastic models and as I’m back into making them again I was thrilled to be a boy again and build and paint Thunderbird 3 and I think it came out well. It also looks good here with my Elephant Trunk nebula and Garnet star astro image as a backdrop! Oh to be a boy again…

June

The last time a male Orange Tip butterfly was featured as POTM it was October 2004 and the difference in camera technology has come on in leaps and bounds. Indeed as with a lot of recent images, this m-OT was taken at the start of June with an iPhone XR and the level of detail is remarkable compared with the 2004 image. The Orange Tip is a favourite of ours and we always eagerly await the first views but this was a late one but very fresh as it settled on our white Lilac.

July

Sometimes you discover images that you’ve had for many years and didn’t realise their full potential. Take the above panorama, it shows Loch Leven, Mam na Gualainn ridge on the left and Garbh Bheinn in the distance on the right. Loch Leven leads down to Kinlochleven which can’t quite be seen in the image. Garbh Bheinn was photographed from the other side of the Loch and featured as the September POTM in 2003. Lorraine and Paul did a week long touring holiday of central Scotland that summer. The panorama is composed of 4 photographs which caught Paul’s eye recently as he was looking at past holiday’s and was surprised to spot they looked like a sequence and this is the result. The images were taken with Paul’s first digital camera, a Minolta DiMAGE Z1 bridge camera.

August

Messier 76 is a planetary nebula in Perseus which also has the common nickname of 'The Little Dumbbell' due to it's resemblence to Messier 27, the Dumbbell nebula. This image was takein in the early hours of July 17th 2021 and is a stack of 61 images of exposure 10 seconds at ISO 10,000 using the Canon R6 mirrorless camera attached to the StarGate 500 dobsonian.

September

A red full arc rainbow taken on August 12th 2021 at 20:27 BST. This was a pan with the iPhone XR taken from the back door of our conservatory. Compare it with the September 2006 image of a partial red rainbow taken from the back bedroom window at a similar date and time.

October

Surprisingly we've never featured a Brimstone Butterfly as PotM so we make up for it with this image taken with the iPhone XR on September 7th 2021 as the butterfly season was gradually winding down.

November

IC 405, the Flaming Star Nebula in Auriga. The bright star just on its edge is AE Aurigae, a variable star. Taken with the Equinox 80 ED refractor and Canon R6 camera, stack of 48x20sec @ ISO 6400.

December

In late October Lorraine and Paul had 2 weeks at an ideal disabled friendly holiday cottage in the Lake District that had been certified COVID safe. Little did we anticipate that the first week Borrowdale and the Lake District would suffer torrential rain and flooding. As the waters began to recede, this is the view of the enlarged Derwentwater lake taken from 'Surprise viewpoint' with a large portion of the centre left water taking the place of what should be dry land. Compare the view with a previous holiday panorama taken in the 1990's and shown in the September 2004 PotM.