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I had to work New Years Eve again, not that I mind missing out on a hangover Well, the last time I was off work for New Years Eve I didn’t see midnight anyway as I fell asleep early in the evening. Anyway, I was getting my gear together for a night at work and I looked out of the window, the sky was half clear and the wind was dropping. So, as I’d not had many opportunities to take photographs recently I loaded the camera and tripod into the back of the car. Once at work there wasn’t time to take any photographs and midnight was rapidly approaching, then there was a nice gap both in cloud and work allowing me five minutes to set up and take a few snaps.

I’ll only post one photograph, it’s my final 2012 image which is a bit different from the first photographs of the year. Anyway, here’s Jupiter sitting just above Taurus (above the big chimney) to the left is Orion, and to the right still one of my favourites the Pleiades.

I took a few photographs looking North and East before turning to photograph Jupiter above Orion.

When I looked at the photographs a while later on the camera’s LCD screen I noticed a bit of glow on some of the photographs, which became much more noticeable when I put them on the computer at home, I had captured a bit of aurora after all

So, I managed a few photographs – mainly of Venus & Jupiter above the stones.

This morning, before the Sun had decided whether she was going to put in an appearance or not I was out in the lane watching the clouds flit by and stars appear and vanish. Rather than just stand and watch I decided to grab a couple of photographs, the first is of Jupiter above the trees (it’s the brighter dot lower left).

And then I turned the camera towards the Plough.

After this I went for a bit of a wander and as I returned to the house decided to watch the Sunrise, as the sky brightened I spotted a bird having a morning flight and managed a quick photograph.

Yesterday I was having problems, nothing serious, but I was struggling to take a photograph to Blip. I took a few photographs on our morning walk but when I looked at them on screen none of them were any good. I took a cobweb, but there was no spider in it and the light wasn’t exciting; I took some shafts of light in the wood, but when I looked at the results it was a dark mush of nothing; my photographs of birds on the wires looked like dots on a string, I decided to wait and see what would happen. Well, nothing happened and I had to go to work. In desperation I took the camera and tripod to work with me, and it was lucky that I did.

I started with a photograph of things close by, so the fields in front of the box with the Pennines in the distance seemed like a good idea for a snap –

Then, a little later I spotted the sky changing nicely as the Sun started to set –

I’d not intended taking landscapes or Sunsets however, earlier in the day there had been a Tweet that the ISS (International Space Station) would be making a bright pass at 2104hrs and so I set the camera up on the tripod and waited, eventually the ISS rose above the factory buildings and I took a photograph. Happy that I finally had a photograph to Blip I stood back to watch the ISS pass overhead, then I spotted Jupiter was just starting to rise above the Pennines and I quickly pointed the camera in that direction –

That would be it for the evening I thought, then the Moon popped up above the hills and I grabbed a couple of lunar shots –

As I’d taken the Moon, a planet, and the ISS that night it felt appropriate to take a few star photographs as well

Finally, the dot…

It’s hard to believe that this tiny dot of light is actually another planet, and not just a tiny little piece of rock, it has a radius 11 times (or so) that of Earth, yet we see just a dot of light*. So the next time you’re outside at night and the sky isn’t either covered with cloud or flooded with light pollution have a look up, that dot of light may just be another World

*okay, you can see more than a dot of light with a telescope, but let’s not be too picky