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

2022

January

Following on from the December 2021 PotM of the flooded Lake Derwentwater, the weather turned really good for the 2nd week of our holiday and incredibly we managed to coax Lorraine's town and city mobility scooter to go up a field to visit Castlerigg Stone Circle!

February

At the risk of boring everyone with pictures from our Oct-Nov holiday in the Lake District in 2021, here is a view of a waterfall spotted across Lake Thirlmere from a car park near to Dobgill Bridge. It was taken with my 100-400mm lens and Canon 50D DSLR with the lens set at 400mm. The waterfall lies above a place called Straining Well on the OS map and the late afternoon sun really brought out the autumn colours!

March

This is the Rosette Nebula which lies in the constellation of Monoceros, the Unicorn. There are actually two deep sky objects here, a star cluster, NGC 2244 just offset from the centre of the nebula and the nebula itself, NGC 2237. Under dark moonless skies part of the nebula can be glimpsed with a pair of binoculars as a subtle lightening of the background sky, hence requiring dark skies to pick it up. This is image was taken on February 7th 2022 and is a stack of 590 x 10 second exposures at ISO 10,000 using the Canon R6 camera, Equinox 80 ED refractor and a William Optics Field flattener.

April

This is Messier 78, a reflection nebula in Orion which was originally featured as our February 2012 POTM but taken with a Canon 50D and the SkyMax 180 pro maksutov telescope. This new view was taken with the Canon R6 mirrorless camera and the StarGate 500 and is a stack of 170 images, ISO 20000 and 5 second exposures. It shows more of the fainter nebulosity along with at top left, NGC 2071, also a reflection nebula.

May

Having found a disabled friendly holiday cottage ideal for Lorraine right in the middle of the Lake District it is no wonder many of our recent POTM’s have featured the Lake District and this one is no exception. A panorama composed from 4 iPhone 13 Pro Max images taken on April 7th when a snow storm had swept through that day leaving Skiddaw and neighbouring peaks white. Skiddaw is the sixth highest peak in England and well seen from Borrowdale.

June

I (Paul) don’t spend enough time imaging our Sun but made an exception on April 22nd 2022 when the day was gloriously sunny and simply begging for me to image it in Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) using the Solar Scout 60 solar telescope and the Canon R6 mirrorless camera. Shortly after, I used the Equinox 80ED refractor and a safe white light filter to also image the sun in ‘normal’ light. The white light image (stack of 356 images) was scaled and rotated to match the Ha image which itself was a composite of 118 images taken to show the prominence’s and 283 images to show the solar surface in Ha.

July

Wide field image of the starfield surrounding Sadr in Cygnus showcasing the nebulosity in the region. SkyWatcher Evolux 62ED refractor (on loan for review) stack of 128x30sec exposures @ ISO 6400.

August

It’s been many years since Lorraine and I last visited the Algarve but having a nostalgic look back at the 2005 images, Paul remembered the flight that he took with Bev from COAA in a light aircraft as we toured along the coast. This is the view of Point Sagres and Sagres Fortress, an unusual sea fort with a single fortified wall & 3 natural cliffs providing protection for defenders.The Romans called this area ‘Promontorium Sacrum’ meaning ‘end of the world’ as this is the most southwesterly point of Europe. Close to the bottom of the promontory is a lighthouse, Farol de Sagres, and the whole promontory is a popular tourist spot.

September

A 3 pane panoramic view of Borrowdale seen from the holiday cottage we visit in the Lake District showing how dark the night skies are. This was taken on April 2nd 2022 and shows Cygnus and Lyra rising in the NE. Canon R6 with 18mm lens, 10 seconds exposure at F1.5 and ISO 20,000. Light pillars of red and green can be seen at far left which are from bright lights in Keswick at the time and in the foreground the bright patch is due to car headlights! The light pillars are an atmospheric effect due to ice crystals in the atmosphere which tied in nicely with the sleet and light snow showers we’d been having that day and partly into the night.

October

A male Common Darter Dragonfly taken back in 2009 and although the image was added to our PoTM list somehow it was never included so we make up for it here. Flight period is from June to November and is usually associated with wet areas and garden ponds but can often also be found resting on the tops of plants in woodland or shrubbery as was the case with our visitor.

November 2022

On October 25th 2022 the UK experienced a partial solar eclipse where the moon just covers a section of the solar disk as the moon reaches 'new' phase. This was the first eclipse where Paul decided to only image and view using the Solar Scout 60 Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) telescope which can view features on the surface of the sun which in white (normal) light cannot be seen due to the intense brightness of the surface. Ha telescoeps can also see the prominences around the limb of the sun and we were treated to several easily visible during the eclipse. The image above is a composite showing the surface and the prominences taken with the telescope and a Canon R6 camera taking lots of images at two different exposures then stacking them in software before the final composite being completed using PaintShop Pro 2021.

December

In October we had to find accommodation in the Forest of Bowland with disabled access and facilities due to the sad occasion of burying Lorraines beloved Stepfather, Colin. From Stonefold Holiday Cottage I caught this wonderful Lunar Halo on the night after the funeral with my iPhone 13 Pro hand held.