Under the water down by the sea

In an Octopus's Garden in the Shade oil and gold laquer on canvas. By George Roberts 2015

A girl with red hair urges her horse backwards in a watery world of seaweed, fish, cephalopods and bubbles.  It's both day and night in this ionic, ironic and damp mermaid's purse. Gee up my little contra-indian! Come on in, the sea is warm and time, tide and buttered eggs wait for no one.

Little Lou

Little Lou and my granddaughter Pixie

On the run up to Christmas, Toot and I had lots of fun making a ventriolquist's dummy for our daughter Alice.  I have to say my late Dad was probably correct when he said I would never make it as a sculptor!  Mind you, he never made a fortune betting on the 'horses' but it never stopped him trying!

Credits: http://www.alstevens.com/ventriloquism/fred.html

The Snowman

The Snowman by the Essex Artist Alice Nielson 2015

A full moon and a night for reindeer.

Already for Santa raring to go!

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; 

Because the cat had eaten it and the neighbours koi carp

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds;

After watching Bruce Willis in Die Hard

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,

That will be the Malt Whiskey then

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Moles

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew

A risk assessment has been filed with the Health and Safety Executive

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, 

No animals were killed or hurt in the lead up to Christmas

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

Sir,would you please get out of the sleigh and blow into this bag?

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

GOVERMENT HEALTH WARNING

Smoking can seriously damage your health

He had a broad face and a little round belly

That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

Poor life-style choices cost the NHS millions of pounds each year.

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk, 

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

 Credits: Thursford Magical Christmas and the Poetry Foundation.

A turkey in Turkey Christmas 2016

 A very Merry Christmas to all my readers where ever you are in the world.  Toot and I have just returned from a week long touring holday with our friends in Turkey.  Since getting back we have been 'Christmas crafting', watched one grandson  be a king and another portray a donkey, met Santa and been to the Circus.

Looking forward to watching Bruce Willis once more throw Alan Rickman from the Takahoma Tower. He might be an exceptional thief but he certainly dies hard every Christmas Eve.

 Toot and I are truly blessed in having friends and family to love and cherish. God bless you everyone!

Stephan's Quintet

My image of Stephan's Quintet- Interacting galaxies some 290 million light years away- image taken using the Bradford Robotic Telescope.

 Some 290 million light years away these galaxies of trillions of stars are locked in a dance orchestrated by gravity. A celestial 'Lobster Quadrille' amongst the constellation of stars us earthlings have named Pegasus.

"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle – will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
But the snail replied "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance --
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

"What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied.
"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France --
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

 

My image annotated to identify each separate galaxy

Galactic Wreckage in Stephan's Quintet. A clash among members of a famous galaxy quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide color range, from young, blue stars to ageing, red stars. This portrait of Stephan's Quintet, also known as Hickson Compact Group 92, was taken by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Stephan's Quintet, as the name implies, is a group of five galaxies. The name, however, is a bit of a misnomer. Studies have shown that group member NGC 7320, at lower left, is actually a foreground galaxy about seven times closer to Earth than the rest of the group. Three of the galaxies have distorted shapes, elongated spiral arms, and long, gaseous tidal tails containing myriad star clusters, proof of their close encounters. These interactions have sparked a frenzy of star birth in the central pair of galaxies. This drama is being played out against a rich backdrop of faraway galaxies. The image, taken in visible and near-infrared light, showcases WFC3's broad wavelength range. The colors trace the ages of the stellar populations, showing that star birth occurred at different epochs, stretching over hundreds of millions of years. The camera's infrared vision also peers through curtains of dust to see groupings of stars that cannot be seen in visible light. NGC 7319, at top left, is a barred spiral with distinct spiral arms that follow nearly 180 degrees back to the bar. The blue specks in the spiral arm at the top of NGC 7319 and the red dots just above and to the right of the core are clusters of many thousands of stars. Most of the quintet is too far away even for Hubble to resolve individual stars. Continuing clockwise, the next galaxy appears to have two cores, but it is actually two galaxies, NGC 7318A and NGC 7318B. Encircling the galaxies are young, bright blue star clusters and pinkish clouds of glowing hydrogen where infant stars are being born. These stars are less than 10 million years old and have not yet blown away their natal cloud. Far away from the galaxies,  is a patch of intergalactic space where many star clusters are forming. NGC 7317, at bottom right, is a normal-looking elliptical galaxy that is less affected by the interactions. Sharply contrasting with these galaxies is the dwarf galaxy NGC 7320 at lower left. Bursts of star formation are occurring in the galaxy's disk, as seen by the blue and pink dots. In this galaxy, Hubble can resolve individual stars, evidence that NGC 7320 is closer to Earth. NGC 7320 is 40 million light-years from Earth. The other members of the quintet reside 290 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. These farther members are markedly redder than the foreground galaxy, suggesting that older stars reside in their cores. The stars' light also may be further reddened by dust stirred up in the encounters. Spied by Edouard M. Stephan in 1877, Stephan's Quintet is the first compact group ever discovered. WFC3 observed the quintet in July and August 2009. The composite image was made by using filters that isolate light from the blue, green, and infrared portions of the spectrum, as well as emission from ionized hydrogen. These Hubble observations are part of the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release Observations. NASA astronauts installed the WFC3 camera during a servicing mission  to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old Hubble telescope.

Credits: Wikipedia, "Stephan's Quintet Hubble 2009.full denoise" by NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team - http://www.hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/25/image/x/ (direct link). Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stephan%27s_Quintet_Hubble_2009.full_denoise.jpg#/media/File:Stephan%27s_Quintet_Hubble_2009.full_denoise.jpg

Pixie Self Portrait

Self portrait by Pixie Boon aged 8 years

"Excellent likeness and painterly work Pixie!  Great composition, real life in the draughtsmanship and wonderful use of colour"!
 I wish I could paint as freely, so confidently and with such clarity!" - love Papa!

Fireworks Galaxy on Bonfire Night November the Fifth 2015

The Fireworks Galaxy NGC 6946 in the constellations Cygnus and Cepheus: my image was taken by the galaxy camera on the Bradford Robotic Telescope.

 
NGC 6946 is a medium-sized, face-on spiral galaxy. In the past century, eight supernovas have been observed to explode in the arms of this galaxy. Chandra satellite observations  have, in fact, revealed three of the oldest supernovas ever detected in X-rays, giving more credence to its nickname of the "Fireworks Galaxy."

The galaxy is about a third of the size of the Milky Way and approximately 22 million light years distant from our Solar System. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1798.

 

NGC 6946 lies within our galactic plane and is highly obscured by inter-stellar natter within our Milky Way. You can see this in the above widefield version of my image. The foreground inter-stellar matter is visible as wispy clouds that surround NGC 6946

Each year, on November the Fifth 'Bonfire Night' is celebrated by families throughout the United Kingdom. Bonfires are lit and fireworks are set off to celebrate the foiling of a plot, alledgedly orchestrated by Guy or Guido Fawkes, to blow up the London Houses of Parliament in 1605. 

Guy and some of his co-conspirators were tortured, tried and put to death in a most vile and barbaric manner. Their objectives and assessed guilt were both political and religous. Their chosen means for realising their aims were violent. Nice to see the world has moved on since the 1600s!

Anyway, I like fireworks a lot whether they be terrestrial or intergalactic. So when you look up into the sky tonight enjoy the fireworks but remember Guy Fawkes and the terrible consequences of draconian justice and political and religous intolerance.

Credits: NASA, Wikipedia, Bradford Robotic Telescope, JORVIK Discovering York,

Stars like dust

The Double Cluster and Andromeda widefield: Canon 400d DSLR and EOS lens at f=18mm.

The Andromeda Galaxy flying high above the stars and dust of the Milky Way taken with my Canon 400d DSLR with an EOS lens at f=18mm. Mr Canon makes remarkably fine cameras and lenses!

The twenty or so 30 second exposures were stacked using DeepSky Stacker and finished using Fits Work, Asta La Vista Green and APS with Neil Carboni's actions. Thanks to Olly Penrose for his helpful tips on image processing.

The pristine dark skies of the Haute Alpes-Provence certainly meet all the astrophotographer's needs.

Provence Panorama

Orion rising in the East: tripod mounted Canon 400d DSLR and EOS lens at 18mm

3.00am on a hillside in the Haute Alpes with my only company a wild boar grunting in the hedgerow behind the camera. What a wonderful night in a brilliant location!

From Orion to Cassiopeia: panorama created using Microsoft ICE

Messier 1: The Crab Nebula

The Crab Nebula, M1 or NGC 1952, in the constellation Taurus.  My image, data from the Bradford Robotic Telescope.

I saw the Crab Nebula through a telescope for the first time about a week ago whilst Toot and I were staying with Olly Penrice at Les Granges in the Haute-Alpes.  I was so pleased to see this very faint supernova remnant. The following day I programmed the Bradford Robotic Telescope to photograph it!

The supernova which created 'The Crab' is believed to have occurred in AD 1054, there are records from the the Far East and the Middle East of  the appearance of a bright star in that year.  At maximum the supernova would have been brighter than any night sky object other than the Moon.

In visible light, the Crab Nebula consists of a broadly oval-shaped mass of filaments, about 6 arcminutes long and 4 arcminutes wide (by comparison, the full moon is 30 arcminutes across) surrounding a diffuse blue central region. In three dimensions, the nebula is thought to be shaped like a prolate spheroid (a rugby ball). The filaments are the remnants of the progenitor star's atmosphere, and consist largely of ionised helium and hydrogen, along with carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, neon and sulfur. The filaments' temperatures are typically between 11,000 and 18,000 K, and their densities are about 1,300 particles per cm^3.

In 1968 a pulsar, a fast spinning neutron star, was found within the nebula.  At the centre of the Crab Nebula are two faint stars, one of which is the star responsible for the existence of the nebula. It was identified as such in 1942, when Rudolf Minkowski found that its optical spectrum was extremely unusual. The region around the star was found to be a strong source of radio waves in 1949 and X-rays in 1963 and was identified as one of the brightest objects in the sky in gamma rays in 1967. Then, in 1968, the star was found to be emitting its radiation in rapid pulses, becoming one of the first pulsars to be discovered.

The Crab Nebula in a wider field and much like the view throgh Olly's ' big Dob' telescope

 Credits: The Bradford Robotic Telescope and Wikipedia

The Milky Way from Cassiopeia to Perseus

The Milky Way roughly centred on the Double cluster last night with my tripod mounted Canon 400d DSLR with an EOS lens at f=18mm. (30x30 sec lights and 10 darks taken at ISO 1600. stacked using DeepSkyStacker)

Last night the sky in Provence was particularly transparent. The Double Cluster in Perseus was so bright that it was clearly visible to the naked eye. Far away an electrical storm flickered on the horizon and as I stood waiting for the shutter on my camera to close, out the corner of my eye, I witnessed the silent fall of a bright green meteor. Thank you Toot for a wonderful holiday under the stars!

The Milky Way en Provence

The Milky Way from Etoile St Cyrice, Haute Alpes

The weather improved and the stars came out and oh there are so many!  The above image was taken with my Canon 400d DSLR camera with an EOS lens at f =18mm.  The constellation Sagittarius, in the shape of a 'teapot,' can be seen centre-left just above the horizon.  The Milky Way is quite bright and broad at this point. The massive blackhole at the centre of our spiral galaxy is just above and to the right of Sagittarius. You can clearly see the central bulge of the Milky Way galaxy. How good is that!

I enjoyed the stars so much, I decided to paint the scene in astronomical twilight! Thanks Olly and Monique for making this possible.

View from the front door of Les Granges (mixed media)

Just after sunset and before the sky became dark

The Salamander at the door.

A Salamander just outside the front door

Having never seen a salamander in the wild, we were very impressed to find one just outside.  Salamanders have permeable skin and love damp environments. We saw this little fellow the morning after a fierce electrical storm and a biblical downpour. 

The salamander is unique amongst vertebrates in being able to regenerate lost limbs.  Eveyone loves an amphibian!

Falling asleep in our cereals

 

The Total Lunar Eclipse at Totality. Canon DSLR 600d, EOS telephoto lens at f=300mm mounted on a Star Adventurer mount. Taken from our backyard in the early hours of 28th September 2015. Note the stars which, would normally be invisible in the moon's glare, are clearly visible in this image.

Last night Toot and I came home from Southend after a wonderful weekend with our children and grandchildren. We were a bit tired but wanted to see the lunar eclipse and if possible photograph it. It had been a lovely sunny day with beautiful blue skies so we thought we would stay up late, 3.00 am., to watch the moon grow dark and glow blood red.  But oh no!  The clouds came rolling in from the North Sea and one by one stars and then the moon disappeared from view.

Not daunted I set up my astro kit in our backyard and sat myself down in the dark. Every now and then the clouds would break and I would catch glimpses of familiar constellations and the 'super moon'.  In my opinion the moon always looks super and I must say Toot and I always like to go out and look at the full moon, wink at it for Neil Armstrong and call it Cosmo's moon like in the film 'Moonstruck'.

Last night the moon was at its nearest to the earth, so it appeared larger in the sky. The moon and earth form a binary system and as a consequence both the moon and the earth revolve around the common gravitational centre of their combined masses. As the earth has a mass much greater than the moon, this common point is within the earth's volume but it is not at the earth's centre.  From our position on the surface of earth, the moon appears to circle the earth but in actuality it follows the approximate path of an ellipse. It is therefore some times nearer to us (perigee) and sometimes further away (apogee).

The lunar eclipse passes through different phases. The penumbral phase occurs on either side of totality and shows as a gradual darkening, and after totality lightening, of the moons disk. During the period of totality the moon can be seen with reduced luminosity and often shows a range of colours.  These colors are created by the sunlight that passes through and is diffracted by the earth's atmosphere. The colours are predominately in the red range because red light is diffracted and absorbed less by the earth's atmosphere than light in the blue frequencies.

The early penumbral stage before totality. The image is a composite of six images which in turn were derived from six video clips taken with my QHY 5v colour planetary camera fixed to my Star Adventurer mount. The clips were taken during a longish break in the clouds. Sadly the clouds were not so kind during totality so I was unable to use this much better technique. But that's the wonder of astro-imaging and the British weather.

Anyway, Toot and I had a great night watching the eclipse and went to bed at 5.00am.after 'hot chocolates' all around.  So no wonder we were falling asleep in our cornflakes!

The Triffid Nebula, Messier 20 or NGC 6514

My image of the Triffid Nebula in the constellation Sagittarius taken with the Bradford Robotic Telescope

The Triffid Nebula is approximately 5200 light years distant and is located in the Scutum spiral arm of our galaxy 'The Milky Way'. It is a stellar nursery and a rare combination of an open star cluster, an emission nebula (red coloured clouds) and a reflection nebula (blue coloured clouds).

A nebula is a region of interstellar gas and dust. Emission nebulae are clouds of ionized gas that emit photons at a range of frequencies. They are ionised by the radiation from nearby stars. Generally, these nebulae appear reddish.

Reflection nebulae are clouds of dust that simply reflect the light from nearby stars. The dust particles of reflection nebulae usually only scatter blue light, so appear blue.

Other types of nebulae don't reflect light.  Dark nebulae such as the 'lanes' you can see in the above image are so dense that they block light from other sources, such as background emission nebulae, reflection nebulae, or other stars.

Credits: Wikipedia and the Bradford Robotic Telescope

Ageing Gracefully

The Helix Nebula in the Constellation Aquarius. My image taken with the Bradford Robotic Telescope on Mount Teide, Tenerife.

Planetary nebulae are the remains of stars that once looked a lot like our sun. When sun-like stars run out of their hydrogen fuel, they fuse helium instead, get hotter and puff out their outer gaseous layers. Once the helium for fusion runs out, these same layers are heated by the very hot and dense original star core.  These cores are called white dwarf stars.  Our own sun, after it leaves the main sequence, will first become a red giant star and then, some five billion years in the future, blossom into a planetary nebula. Once a star becomes a white dwarf  all nuclear fusion ceases and the star radiates its residual heat slowly to space until it finally becomes a black dwarf.  The White dwarf star starts off very very hot and consequently it is estimated that the journey from white to black dwarf  for an average star may take as long as 10 billion years.  As the Universe is 'only' some 13.7 billion years old it is unlikely that there are many if any black dwarf stars currently anywhere in the cosmos.

Image I created in APS by overlaying my image with data provided by the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope

The intense ultraviolet radiation from the white dwarf star heats up the expelled layers of gas, which shine brightly in the infrared.  In this image: blue shows infrared light of 3.6 to 4.5 microns; green shows infrared light of 5.8 to 8 microns; and red shows infrared light of 24 microns.  The red color in the middle of the eye denotes the final layers of gas blown out when the star died. The white circle in the very center is the glow of a dusty disk circling the white dwarf star (the disc itself is too small to be resolved and is probably about the same size as the planet earth).

Credits: Bradford Robotic Telescope, NASA/JPL-Caltech and Wikipedia

Three Degrees of Separation

Don't you just love Science and Technology?

My above graphic shows the route taken by the photons of light from Pluto at the edge of our solar system, 4.67 billion miles or 7.5 billion Kilometres, to our home in Oulton Broad. This represents only half the journey.  These photons had already travelled from our Sun out to Pluto to be reflected back towards Earth.  Plucky little transcendental massless particles!

I created the following image from the data set I received from the Bradford Robotic Telescope.

Combination of two images taken on two nights approximately 5 days apart which shows Pluto moving along its elliptical solar orbit infront of the more or less static backdrop of stars in the Constellation Sagittarius.

Now I'm sharing the impact of those photons with the peoples of the Earth via the Internet.  How fantastic is that?

Credits: NASA, The Bradford Robotic Telescope and Wikipedia