Astronomy – Graeme Skinner

As the song goes….

Graeme Skinner — Sat, 11 May 2024 09:55:46 +0000

….to light the night for our delight

We saw the alerts that there was quite a bit of solar activity which may give us a nice aurora display, popped outside and could see activity with the naked eye which is unusual, after a while we could start to see colour forming which is really unusual for us to see with naked eye. The best display we’ve seen to date.

Northern

Graeme Skinner — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 14:24:41 +0000

Popped outside last night for a quick snap of the aurora borealis…

Quick snap

Graeme Skinner — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 09:51:51 +0000

There was an alert last night that there was a good chance of aurora, sadly I was weary having had a busy shift at work that came after a poor nights sleep, so I ended up popping out with the camera and taking a quick snap.

I did have to take a photo of M45 (Pleiades) and Jupiter popping over the Pennines, with our neighbours stone circle in the foreground

Leaving Bag End

Graeme Skinner — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 16:47:25 +0000

I came up with this idea of painting scenes from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings with the night sky as it would actually appear on that date and time, so I went through LOTRs and marked up all the references to when the night sky was visible, there’s quite a few references Anyway, I decided for the first illustration to work out how the sky would have looked as the left Bag End, then I painted the scene – the sky took far too long, then, I realised I’d messed up my plot of how the sky would look and gave up for a while. In the end I added a digital sky (with accurate star positions) onto the original illustration.

There’s a clearer image and an explanation of the stars/constellations here… http://www.graeme-skinner.co.uk/2021-img/Leaving_Bag_End_v2b.pdf

It would have been unwise…

Graeme Skinner — Sun, 12 Jul 2020 08:34:18 +0000

We decided to stay up a bit later than usual last night to catch a glimpse of C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) – hereto known after as Neowise, or Neo the Wise. Anyway, we sat and watched the sky change and the stars slowly appear, it became a little chilly so I grabbed a glass of whisky (I’ve got to consider my health after all ;-)). The horizon where Neo the Wise would be putting on its show was cloudy, the cloud gradually built up so we retreated inside. Scroll forward a couple of hours and I popped outside again to see how the sky was looking, most of the cloud had moved and we stood for a while watching Neo the Wise play hide and seek with a little bit of cloud, as the temperature continued to drop we decided to call it a night, it would however have been unwise to stay in bed when such a display was going on outside.

It’s full of stars…

Graeme Skinner — Sat, 05 Oct 2019 15:53:37 +0000

On our trip over the border we were lucky enough to have a couple of nights where the sky was amazing clear, it would have been wrong not to take a couple of photographs

Getting together

Graeme Skinner — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 08:38:12 +0000

I managed a quick couple of photographs of Venus, the waning crescent Moon, and Jupiter this morning. It was rather cold out there so I didn’t linger

On the Moon…

Graeme Skinner — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 13:11:12 +0000

Started off working on a Tolkien themed Moon illustration and ended up doing a pen & ink Lunar lander with a bit of text added on

Coming together…

Graeme Skinner — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 08:59:12 +0000

I went out early to see the coming together of Jupiter and Venus, okay, they didn’t quite come together but they were quite close from where I saw them from anyone, before they popped over the Pennines I took a photo of Orion over the pond…

Nice way to start the year

Graeme Skinner — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 17:03:53 +0000

The 1st of January saw a nice alignment of Mars, Neptune and Venus along with the Moon just to keep them company. Not sure I picked Neptune up on these two shots, I didn’t enlarge and tweak them to see

Last night I tried for a little Moon-shot….