Category Archives: Astronomy

This category is for all things relating to astronomy and astrophotography.

Stargazing Live in York January 2012

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Julian Kay

This year York took part in the BBC’s Stargazing Live by getting the public out to meet astronomers, look through telescopes, and try space food. The event was extremely successful, bringing around 1500 people to the Museum Gardens.

While the weather was very cold (my toes were actually frozen) the sky was clear, and lots of people got a very good view from the telescopes that had been set up for them.

Venus (shown above) was quick to disappear, but Jupiter was one of the stars of the show. With lots of people seeing it for the first time, or seeing details that they’d never seen before – like banding and the Galilean moons.

There was plenty of news coverage of the event too, The Press wrote an article and Glen Berry and Martin Lunn from the York Astronomical Society were also interviewed on BBC Look North.

The York Astronomical Society has been no stranger to the BBC recently; offering up interviews for The Sky at Night while at enjoying the best of a clear sky at Kielder Star Camp, as well as a couple of interviews on BBC Radio York in the run up to Stargazing Live.

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The Moon, Jupiter and Venus in January 2012

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Julian Kay

As the sun was starting to set this evening, I thought I’d quickly pop out and take a photo of the Moon and Jupiter next to each other. Jupiter is the few pixels of light in the bottom-left of this photograph.

While I was out there I was also on the lookout for Venus – which is a little more tricky to spot so early in the evening, but once you see it it pops right out at you.

Here’s a photograph of Venus with an aircraft flying under it. There’s no way I can get any detail from Venus with just my camera, but it’s a nice sight to behold at sunset.

Venus is the couple of pixels of light in the top-left of this photograph.

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Jupiter in December 2011

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Julian Kay

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Jupiter in November 2011

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Julian Kay

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Kielder Forest Star Camp October 2011

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Julian Kay

Twice a year astronomers head north to Kielder Forest to enjoy the dark sky as part of the Kielder Forest Star Camp. This year was no exception, bringing us the 9th Autumn Star Camp which included talks from a couple of members from our York Astronomical Society, a BBC television crew filming for The Sky At Night as well as some interest from The Guardian.

Unfortunately, as is usually the case with these things, the weather was not ideal, but I did get one good night of seeing on the Thursday.

Even the dark sky of Kielder is subject to light pollution, but here you can make out a very prominent Jupiter, the Pleiades and a rising Orion.

Here I just pointed my camera up towards the Milky Way, where there is far less light polution.

You can see a close up here of the Andromeda Galaxy. This photograph really reminds me of the early pictures I took of Jupiter. Just imagine the detail I’ll be able to get in the years to come! (If I ever get equipment like the very impressive telescope shown below…)

The larger versions of the pictures above have been uploaded to my Flickr page if you want to see the details.

For myself, no trip to Kielder Forest would be complete without a walk up Deadwater, which has some of the most amazing views! *

* and mobile phone signal…

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The Moon and Jupiter in September 2011

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Julian Kay

Yesterday there was a rather impressive storm around here, but one of the great things about storms is their ability to really clean up all the rubbish in the atmosphere and make everything super clear.

So I set out to do some stargazing in York and managed to take a couple of snaps of both the Moon and Jupiter.

The moons from left to right are -

While I don’t think it’s the best photograph I’ve ever taken of the moon, it did look rather pretty through one of the telescopes we had out.

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Half Moon in August 2011

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Julian Kay

As my last couple of attempts to take a photo of the moon ended up with cloud, I thought I’d show what my camera can get when there aren’t any.

And here’s a close up of the moon, shown at full resolution.

Not bad eh? I wonder what I can get with a telescope.

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The Moon with Saturn in August 2011

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Julian Kay

After my previous attempt was clouded over, I thought I’d try again to photograph the Moon (shown above) and Saturn together. Unfortunately this wasn’t meant to be – however I did manage to snap a photo of each separately, as well as a couple of rather nice sunsets.

Here’s Saturn (you might have to take my word for it) just before it set behind the tree line. I took this photo on the night of Thursday the 4th of August 2011, but I didn’t get any close-up pictures of the moon that night (even though it was clear!)

On Friday night I returned to photograph a better picture of the Moon itself. As you can see above, the clouds were back. But I didn’t mind too much, as having the clouds sticking around did result in a rather pretty sunset.

Here’s the Moon I was after, just peaking out from behind the clouds. I ended up with this rather pretty glow effect which you can see on the full resolution picture below…

As usual, I’ve uploaded the full resolution versions to Flickr.

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Clouds

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Julian Kay

I wanted to take a photograph of Saturn and the Moon last night. However all I got was clouds. Hopefully tonight will be better…

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Weekend Sky Photos

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Julian Kay

I took a few interesting photos over the weekend and I thought I’d share them with you here, as well as upload them to my Flickr account.

This photo of the sunset on Friday night was taken with my Canon 7D – as you can see it’s rather pretty looking! I used my ND filter here to get a long exposure, and then slightly modified the contrast using the ever-helpful Windows Live Photo Gallery.

The two photos above were both taken during the lovely sunshine of Saturday, with my Samsung Omnia 7 – and the HDR mode turned on. Nice effect to have really!

These final photographs were taken on Saturday night. My plan was to take some photographs of the constellations, but unfortunately the high up cloud didn’t clear while I was out there. I thought I’d share these attempts anyway.

I especially like this photo of a couple of contrails with Ursa Major in the distance.

Feel free to check out my other Sky Photos!

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