Orme Art exhibition..

Posted on September 10, 2019September 10, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Abstract, Acrylic on canvas, Art, Astronomy, Design, Flowers, Free, Gallery, Jupiter tryptich, Landscape, Mars, Museum, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Orme Art group, Paintings, Plants, Staffordshire, The BramptonLeave a comment

I got my paintings up at the Brampton museum and art gallery now until the 10th November. I’m part of a group exhibition with fellow artists from the Orme Art group based in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

I’m quite happy that they have hung my Mars painting upside down! After all in space there is no right way up! The art is along a corridor in the museum but they are well displayed and lit. If you are around you can always take a look. It’s at the Brampton museum and art gallery in Newcastle-under-Lyme .

Trying to paint Mars

Posted on August 27, 2019August 27, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Astronomy, Carbon Dioxide, Craters, Mars, Painting, PoleLeave a comment

Mars is often shrouded in planet wide dust storms, its rusty red colour is due to just that -rust. Did you know that the sunshine turns the sky pinkish in the daytime on Mars then bluish at sunset?

The painting is one of Mars poles, it’s just a generic photo of Mars that I’m trying to work from. I’m not sure which ole it id. The ice is carbon dioxide. I don’t know if it contains water ice?

The detail is quite hard but I hope I can capture it. Wish me luck!

Been to the studio.

Posted on August 22, 2019August 22, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Astronomy, Design, Environment, Jupiter, Life, Planet scape, SpaceLeave a comment

I’ve been back to my studio after a couple of months being too busy and hot to go there. This is my Jupiter tryptich which might be on show in the Brampton museum and art gallery soon, as part of the Orme Group of Artists exhibition.

Art and astronomy seem to be getting under my skin. I have tried to accurately depict the planet Jupiter, but I don’t use airbrushing so everything is hand painted with various sizes of brushes.

It’s not perfect, I can see where I’ve gone wrong, but the whole point is that these are paintings, and I love patterns so trying to depict the fluid dynamics of Jupiter’s atmosphere is a real challenge.

I like the idea of having a tryptich. It can be hung vertically or horizontally, or as in this case on the diagonal. I also like using the floor at Spode. I think it makes a great background.

Shouting in the dark

Posted on August 16, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Astronomy, Galaxy, Infinity, Is anyone out there, Planet, Poem, Poetry, Space, Universe, VoidLeave a comment

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I’m too small

The world’s too big

Shouting in the dark,

The world’s too small

Solar system so big,

Shouting in the dark,

Sun’s system is small

The galaxy is big

Shouting in the dark –

The galaxy is small

The universe is big

I’m shouting in the dark.

Shouting into infinity.

Is anyone out there –

To hear?

Shumaker-Levy 9

Posted on July 18, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 25 years ago, Astronomy, Blogging, Comet, Courtesy nasa, Hubble, Jupiter, Life, Memory, Science, Shumaker-Levy, SpaceLeave a comment

25 years ago comet called Shumaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter and the world watched as 20 cometary fragments hit the giant planet.

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Hubble space telescope saw the first large impact, then watched as the fragments continued to collide.

The planet was affected and material from below the cloud layers was thrown up into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.

Scientists are looking for comets and asteroids that might hit Earth not Jupiter. We are lucky to have the outer gas giants because their gravity can stop some of them getting through to us!

A place to visit

Posted on May 17, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Astronomy, Cheshire, Jodrell bank, Photo, Places to visit, Radio astronomy, Stars, Stoke urban sketchers, Stoke-on trent, SunsetLeave a comment

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I must go back and visit Jodrell bank again. Maybe its somewhere to get Stoke urban sketchers to go to. I know it’s in the Cheshire countryside but it’s not too far away at Holmes Chapel. It’s certainly a challenging draw. I know I had a go ages ago. If my hubby was here he would be explaining how parts of it are off a battleship or something, I don’t remember…. So anyway yes it’s a fascinating place to visit, although I think it’s half term next week so it might be very busy.

Red sky morning

Posted on April 9, 2019April 9, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Astronomy, Creative writing, Humour, Nova, Red Dawn, Science, Short story, Star, Very short storyLeave a comment

How odd, she thought. The sky was just red in one patch. The rest was grey. And the red was in the wrong place. Not easterly where the sun rises but north easterly.

She went downstairs to make a coffee. The red glow had increased in the few seconds that it had taken to get to the kitchen. She looked out over the garden The leaves on the trees were tinged with red.

What was going on? She turned on the radio. It crackled to life but the reception was really bad. She heard the announcers voice through the hiss.

“The star we.. Nova…. It is about …. Milli… Miles away……….. No threat to life but…. .May see two shado…… The eff… Ct on Radio and TV… Ignals is ex… Ted to worsen…… Gamma Ray’s hav… Ready hit.

Small loss of…………. Expected. Stay . Uned.

She switched off the radio. We’ve been star struck she thought irreverently.

Stars?

Posted on January 31, 2019August 22, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Astronomy, Moon, Night, Photo, Planets, Sky, StarsLeave a comment

No, this is a blurry picture of Venus, the Moon and Jupiter. Somewhere nearby was also Mars.

This was the view looking East from our house about 6am this morning.

You can’t see it but the sky was crystal clear and the planets and moon were twinkling behind the tree branches. My camera phone is good in low light levels but it has over exposed this. Add my hand shaking and it is not very clear. However it might make for an interesting painting.

There are various astronomy sites where you can find information about conjunctions of planets. I like the sky at night on the BBC. Also I have spaceweather.com on my mobile so I can see things like comets, auroras and near earth asteroids.

Our little solar system is tiny compared with the Galaxy and then the universe, but its quite an interesting place even so.

Blood moon

Posted on January 21, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Astronomy, Blood moon, Earth, Eclipse, Life, Lunar eclipse, Moon, Stars2 Comments

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Tonight there is a full lunar eclipse which is when the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon and the earth casts its shadow on the moon.

As it progresses first there is shadow on one side of the moon. Gradually. Like a solar eclipse the curve of the Earth cuts into the Moon. As it progresses the white light from the sun is cut out by Earth’s shadow until only red light passes through Earth’s atmosphere and the Moon turns orangey red. Then the Moon starts to pull out of the shadow and gradually returns to normal

Tonight the moon is at its closest approach to earth so it is known as a super moon.

As a matter of interest I decided to try and draw what a flat earth would look like…. It would cast a flat shadow.. When it was fully eclipsed the moon would appear to be cut in half. Possibly by a red line? Other effects of a flat earth would be daylight all over the upper side then darkness all over the upper side as we tumbled through space. Also what is on the underside and is there a Trumpesque wall round the edge to keep the water in? I recently read an article about gravity. On a flat earth the people on the edge would be lying down as the gravity would be pulling everyone towards the centre of the disc……

Anyway enough rambling

Ultima Thule

Posted on January 13, 2019 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Astronomy, Blog, Blogging, Learning, Life, Science, Space, The sky at night, TVLeave a comment

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Excuse the picture. I tried to draw what Ultima Thule looked like.

I just watched a programme called “the sky at night” a BBC programme about the Nasa New Horizons mission that flew past a tiny planetoid called Ultima Thule (pronounced Thooley) on 1st January 2019. This was the same probe that sent back beautiful photos of Pluto a couple of years ago. Ultima Thule is only 21 miles long and the probe showed that it is made up of two lumpy spheres of material stuck together at a neck. There is only one clearish photo so far but they also know that it probably is a red colour. The pictures they published have been brightened to show details but the thing is probably a dark red colour.

The probe was apparently travelling at around 15 kilometres a second so it sped past Ultima Thule and is now several hundred kilometres past it and travelling further into the Kuiper belt (a ring of debris spread in a flat layer around the outer edge of the solar system). New horizons is nuclear fueled because solar panels would not work in the darkness so far from the sun.

It will take two years to stream all the data thay have collected from the probe back to Earth. This is the furthest world we have ever seen close up.

I love informative programmes like the Sky at Night. Its been on TV since the 1960’s I think. I have learnt a lot about astronomy over the years from it.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Astronomy