In memory of Paul Sutherland (1952 - 20 June 2022)

I was saddened to learn of the death of Paul Sutherland yesterday evening, after a short and sudden illness.

Paul will probably be best remembered for his contributions to the SPA, including as one of their webmasters, but he also ran his own blog SkyMania, worked as a freelance writer, and wrote astronomy pieces for The Sun. He was an absolute genius at writing clear, simple English, often littered with terrible puns. On first reading his "Essential Guide to Space", I remember laughing out loud at his description of Apollo 7 as "probably the grumpiest mission ever".

Those of us who followed Paul on social media were regularly treated to 6am images of sunrise - or other dawn phenomena - taken from Walmer beach. Paul posted the last of this series of images - possibly the last astrophoto he ever took - at 6.30am on 27 May. It seems appropriate to share it here and I'm sure Paul would be flattered to see it remembered.

Rest in peace, Paul.

If anyone fancies a challenge, it would be lovely to see some images of asteroid 6726 Suthers. At magnitude 17 and declination -17° it's pretty tricky from the UK right now, but will get slightly more accessible as it approaches opposition on 25 July. It would be relatively easy to catch it using a telescope at a more suther-ly (sorry, Paul) latitude, though.