astrophotography – 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.

Northern

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

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

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.

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….

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…

Yay!

Graeme Skinner — Fri, 28 Feb 2014 12:04:59 +0000

I was half dozing last night, the fire was crackling and hissing as the logs slowly burned and I was pondering an early night. Then Julie pointed out there was an Aurora alert and quite a lot of talk on Twitter about it being a ‘good one’ so I wandered outside expecting to see cloud – which is normal whenever there’s an Aurora alert. For once however the sky was fairly clear and I tried a couple of snaps from the lane, it looked interesting enough to bundle a few bits in the car and take a quick trip down to Long Meg. I’ve always wanted to see Long Meg silhouetted against an Auroral display and as luck would have it I managed it, well, I managed a few photographs before remembering we’d be getting up in only a few hours.

Stars & Planets

Graeme Skinner — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 14:24:37 +0000

I set out this morning to take a couple of early photographs, it wasn’t too early to be out but it was cold. Still, I ended up getting carried away just a bit and decided to try for a panoramic of the stars & planets above the Eden Valley. There was the odd bit of cloud about but not enough to stop me trying, photographing the panoramic took only a few minutes, stitching it together was another matter

click on photograph above for larger version.

Weolcan

Graeme Skinner — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:45:34 +0000

I woke fairly early and decided to check the sky, as it was clear I popped out into the garden in the hope of photographing comet Ison. I managed a few ‘star’ photographs before the cloud started to play games, the horizon was clear one minute and obscured the next. I’ve yet to check all the photographs for Ison, but I did like this one star pic.

In between looking for Ison I turned the camera towards the Moon.

After a while I watched the clouds more than the stars or Moon, the highlight and shadow play was quite interesting to watch

Fast forward a couple of hours and we’re on our way to collect the animals from their pet hotel and I stopped to take a quick panoramic.

There’s a zoomable version of the panoramic here.

Oh yes, the animals were staying in their hotel as we took a brief trip to Shropshire and while we were there called into Hay-on-Wye…

Sadly the castle is no longer a bookshop

Searching

Graeme Skinner — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 10:36:16 +0000

Early start today which was handy as it gave me chance to take a couple of astrophotography shots as comet Ison is up and about as well