The Moon and Blackrock Castle

Picture Credit: Cian O’Regan

This image of February’s Full Moon (the “Snow Moon”) by Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork is by Cian O’Regan. Prints of this and other beautiful images can be bought from his website here.

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An Image For Our Times

Picture Credit: Mark Harrison

I couldn’t resist posting this brilliant photograph (by Mark Harrison) of Jacob Rees-Mogg. I’ll refrain from commenting on the subject, but I think the picture is a work of art!

Anyone like to suggest a caption?

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Henry Draper’s Photograph of M42

I just remembered that last night I happened across an interesting episode of The Essay on Radio 3. It was about the first ever photograph of an astronomical nebula, which happened to be of the Orion Nebula (M42). The programme features Omar Nasim, a lecturer in History at Kent University, and is available on iPlayer or as a download here. It’s only 15 minutes long, but absolutely fascinating.

Here is the photograph concerned, taken by Henry Draper in 1880:

The stars of the constellation Orion are clearly over-exposed in order to reveal the much fainter light from the nebula, and the resolution is poor compared to, e.g., this glorious Hubble Space Telescope image:

The Orion Nebula seen by Hubble. Credit: ESA/NASA/Hubble Space Telscope

Nevertheless the Draper photograph is of great historical importance, as it changed the way astronomers made images of such objects (by photography rather than by drawing) and ushered in a new era of scientific research.

Hat’s off to Henry Draper!

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Back to Brighton Beach

Well, back from Cambridge to Brighton for a very busy working day at the University of Sussex during which I probably won’t have time to post, so I thought I’d just share a picture.This was the view from the seafront as I walked to the bus stop on my way to work this morning…
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Moonrise, Hernandez

During the late afternoon twilight of November 1st 1941, 72 years ago today, renowned American photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams took this wonderful photograph of the moon over Hernandez, New Mexico. It’s such a celebrated image that it even has its own wikipedia page, but because it seems to fit the theme of this blog I couldn’t resist sharing it here:

Click on the image for higher resolution

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Portrait in the Dark

It’s been a while since I updated my photo on this site, so this afternoon I asked a friend of mine to take a picture. It turned out to be more appropriate for In the Dark than I’d expected…

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