I set up a telescope in my garden and pointed it at the brightest objects I could see on the southern horizon - which, purely by chance, were Jupiter and Saturn. I was instantly taken back to the days when I was a child, gazing at these amazing sights. Then, as one might expect from a member of the millennial generation, I whipped out my iPhone and attempted to take a photo of what I was seeing through the telescope. It didn't turn out well, but it did prompt me to want to share with others what I was witnessing.
I started to educate myself in astrophotography and the equipment required. My photographs improved significantly. Then, during the pandemic, I was made redundant from a technology startup and couldn't find a new job. I thought: “What if I try selling the pictures I’m taking through the telescope?” Before I knew it, I had people helping me transform my hobby into a business, and I was learning the skills I’d need to venture into more sophisticated deep space photography, such as capturing the sun.
The sun's atmosphere consists of several different layers. The outermost part is referred to as the corona. Below that is a thin layer of plasma called the chromosphere. The visible 'surface' of the sun is referred to as the photosphere, where convection cells the size of Texas rise and fall back again through the plasma. This convection process is so intense it overwhelms everything else. To capture an image of the sun, you require a telescope that is precisely calibrated to block out the photosphere. Due to the sheer brightness of the photosphere, using the wrong type of telescope can render you blind and set your house ablaze.
This image was produced from around 90,000 separate photographs, taken with a brand-new telescope that I had specifically designed for producing high-resolution images of the sun. It has a focal length of approximately 4,000mm, which is 10 times the power of my previous telescope. When you view the sun through this telescope, you are only seeing a very small part of it, so I had to take thousands of photos in rapid succession. With the help of another astrophotographer, Jason Guenzel, I used specialist software to combine them into this single individual striking image.
Related: Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2024 – winners and finalists
The sun's activity experiences periods of being relatively quiet and busy. This image shows a period of relatively low activity. One noticeable feature is that if you look at the 1 o'clock position, you can see a massive plasma whirlwind that stretches about 14 Earths in height - amazingly, it just so happened to be present at this time.
I'll be happy to take pictures of other objects in the sky, from the planets in our solar system to the moon, and even satellites and rockets. I've just taken the highest resolution photo of a comet I've ever captured, and I'm also studying nebulas where you can see the birth of new stars and solar systems. I'm at the moment working on a high-resolution image of the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest galaxy to our own. It's a challenging task that requires hundreds of hours of work.
They tend to go viral, as I capture our skies from a unique perspective. I'm not a scientist, I'm an artist. I'm trying to show things in a way that makes people stop and say: “Wow, the sun looks really cool like that.” What's exciting isn't the buzz in the scientific community, it's the buzz among people who normally don't pay attention to space or science; who might save my photos as their wallpaper, and look up and think about our place in the cosmos. We need to inspire young minds to think about space, and their role on our planet, and how we may one day venture beyond it.
• Andrew McCarthy's latest calendar can be found at
Andrew McCarthy’s CV
“Self-taught.”
Vincent van Gogh, Don Pettit, the Hubble space telescope image processing team.
“Whether I ever get to capture an image of our planet from outer space.”
It's been an absolutely fantastic experience.
“Do not let your situation stand in the way of exploring the vastness of the universe.”
Post a Comment
0Comments