astronomy – Graeme Skinner

Another light night

Graeme Skinner — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 13:26:36 +0000

Unusual for us to see two good auroral displays in the same year, but this year has been rather good for solar activity, last night was rather nice to see

It was nice to capture the aurora along with M45 (The Pleiades) and Jupiter in the same photo.

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.

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

Stars over Castlerigg

Graeme Skinner — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 15:20:45 +0000

I decided to paint a Castlerigg Stone Circle night scene, to make it a bit more interesting I decided to paint a fairly accurate night sky, so I worked out how the sky would have looked the from the day we got married and painted that

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…

Planetary Magic

Graeme Skinner — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 14:35:27 +0000

Whilst out for an early morning wander with Hugo I noticed Venus, Mars and Jupiter rising above the Pennines with the almost full Moon illuminating the foreground, so I wandered back to the house for the camera and tripod and went back out

There’s a larger version with labels here > link.

Stars and Fells

Graeme Skinner — Fri, 11 Sep 2015 15:38:13 +0000

We had a run out last night to have a starlit drive through the Lakes, okay, I turned the headlights on when it became dark as driving by starlight was proving difficult We did pause a couple of times, and I liked the look of the stars just starting to appear in the sky above Buttermere and Crummock (photo from halfway up Honister).

Then there was the stars above Blencathra…