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 curent 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: May 2024

Looking forward to the summer astro targets and this region is always worth going back to. It's the North America nebula (NGC 7000) with the smaller Pelican Nebula to it's right and to their upper right the brightest star in Cygnus, Deneb.
Taken on July 8th 2023 with the WO RedCat 61 refractor on a Star Adventurer tracking mount, 103 images @ ISO 3200 and 20 seconds exposure with the Canon R6 camera.

2024

January

We had a stunning display of Nacreous Clouds on December 21st 2023 and this is a panorama stitched from 4 iPhone 13 Pro images. I (Paul) even got several neighbours out looking and some passer-bys walking their dogs!  Nacreous Clouds (also known as Mother of Pearl) or more properly Polar Stratospheric Clouds form in the lower stratosphere over polar regions when
the Sun is just below the horizon. They can only be seen over the UK when a large mass of extermeley cold polar air moves south over us.

February

February

With light pollution slowly eroding the night sky to the south, it was time to invest in a Quad band Astrophotographic filter from Altair Astro and this is part of the frame from an image taken on January 30th 2024 using the RedCat 61 WIFD refractor, Quad filter, Canon CR6 mirrorless camera on the Skywatcher Star Adventurer II tracking mount. It is a stack of 298 x 30 second exposures @ ISO 3200 stacked with AstroPixels Processor and post processed in PaintShop Pro 2023.

This has, to date, to be the best image Paul has taken of the Horsehead and Flame Nebula region!

March

March

After the wonderful Nacreous Clouds display in the afternoon of Dec 21st, reports began circulating on social media on the evening of December 24th that there were Nacreous Clouds affecting the moon and creating an unusual and rare spectacle. This is the view taken with an iPhone 13 Pro Max of the colourful display. The green dot just lower right of the overexposed lunar disk is a reflection of the moon in the camera lens whilst the bright star to the upper centre right is actually Jupiter.

April

April

This is a recovered image from a hard drive crash a few years ago which I thought I'd never see again. I lost 2 years worth of astro images for 2012/13 and in that selection were also daylight images taken when I was away doing the Northern Lights Flights with Omega Holidays.

Recently I was able to retrieve some images and low and behold, there was my panorama of the two original Forth Bridges taken on March 21st 2012. The construction of the latest bridge, the Queensferry Crossing, was just in its initial stages so only the two original bridges can be seen here. On the left is the Forth Road Bridge whilst on the right the iconic Forth Railway Bridge.

May

May

Looking forward to the summer astro targets and this region is always worth going back to. It's the North America nebula (NGC 7000) with the smaller Pelican Nebula to it's right and to their upper right the brightest star in Cygnus, Deneb.Taken on July 8th 2023 with the WO RedCat 61 refractor on a Star Adventurer tracking mount, 103 images @ ISO 3200 and 20 seconds exposure with the Canon R6 camera.

Current and previous years

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