Chris Baker - Photographing the Deep Sky: Images in Space and Time

PHOTOGRAPHING THE

DEEP SKY

Images in Space and Time

What could be more beautiful than the heavens, which contain all beautiful things?

N ICOLAUS C OPERNICUS (1473-1543)

CHRIS BAKER

This book is dedicated to all my family. Youre magical.

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

PEN & SWORD WHITE OWL

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire - Philadelphia

Copyright Chris Baker 2018

ISBN 9781526715531

eISBN 9781526715555

Mobi ISBN 9781526715548

The right of Chris Baker to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

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This book would not have been possible without the encouragement, contributions and hard work of several other people. I am truly grateful.

Firstly, my wife Fiona, who greatly encouraged me, supplied writing guidance and tirelessly edited so much of the text. Without her work, the book could not have happened.

Tony Halker, an author himself, met me so many times in a local coffee shop to develop the ideas and guide my writing.

A special thanks to Dr Emily Brunsden from the Physics Department at the University of York. Emily kindly edited the book from a scientific perspective.

The contributors have given much to make this book unique. Sara Wager and Andrew Harrison generously contributed several of their deep space images. Both are remarkably skilled astro photographers and each dedicated significant amounts of time to capture and process these objects. Thank you so much.

I mentioned Tony Halkers guidance but he is also a contributor. On hearing my plan for the book, he immediately offered to write the sections on the ancient Earth. Thank you, Tony.

And to Susan Taylor a UK-based poet, for a beautiful poem inspired by a one of my photographs.

I want to thank the team at Pen & Sword Books for their diligent editing, a super design and all their efforts to make this project a success. Also to Carol Trow for all her editing corrections and expert guidance. Finally, thank you to Jonathan Wright at P&S for proposing the book in the first place and then supporting me throughout the project.

I have been an astro-photographer since 2001 as an extension of my lifelong interest in astronomy. I have won awards for my photography and contributed articles to the BBCs The Sky at Night and Astronomy Now magazines. I originally studied Chemistry at the University of York, so I am a scientist at heart. I now support the University by allowing physics undergraduates to use my observatory in Spain and I have also donated equipment to the Astrocampus outreach centre based on the campus. My interest in astronomy really developed at York, so it is rewarding to give something back.

I have spent my career building teams and companies within the printing industry and related high technology sectors. In a change of direction, I launched in 2015 my art collection, based upon my astro photography and known as Galaxy on Glass. I enjoy the challenges of capturing data from objects which are trillions of miles away where the light has travelled through the universe over thousands or even millions of years to reach my camera. I am passionate and dedicated in my pursuit of an outstanding photograph of a deep space object. It may be nebulae which are giving birth to stars like our Sun, a gigantic galaxy made up of a trillion stars or a star spectacularly disintegrating in vivid colour. Such images make the cosmos more accessible and brings these wondrous distant objects closer to home.

I am interested in investigating the cosmos through the language of art as an alternative to the language of physics which is baffling to many people. I see both physics and art to be simultaneous descriptions of reality which are equally valid. Like many scientists, I was initially drawn to astronomy by a deep sense of wonder and awe for the beauty, enormity and mystery of the universe.

This book on astro photography taps into the human urge we all share to contemplate the universe, with its themes of the vastness of distance and time and the smallness of mankind who despite his ingenuity will never tame or fully explain the cosmos. The universe just gets on with doing its thing irrespective of what we do.

To find out more see the Galaxy on Glass art collection at www.galaxyonglass.com

Have you ever wondered what is in deep space far beyond our Solar System? Do you consider just how far away things in space really are? Did you know that as we look deep into space we are looking back in time, sometimes hundreds of millions of years? What was the Earth like that long ago as the light travelled through deep space on its interstellar journey to Earth?

Ill take you on a journey through time and space, far beyond our Solar System. This book is a pictorial description of the awe-inspiring wondrous objects that exist out there. You will see spectacular nebulae where stars are born, images of beautiful star clusters formed in the young Universe, and galaxies a billion light years away. All here in this book of stunning photographs taken by myself and other astro photographers.

The distances and time involved are of such enormity that they are hard for our minds to grasp. For example, as the light was travelling from the Andromeda Galaxy 2.5 million years ago on its journey to my telescope, the Himalayas were still being raised and the North Sea didnt exist.

The book includes fascinating information on what the Earth was like when the light started its journey through space. The section Images beyond our Galaxy includes photographs taken by colleagues and me of objects of such distance that the light has taken tens or hundreds of millions of years to arrive at Earth.

The book explains how these photographs were taken. Modern telescopes and cameras make this a rewarding hobby, with advanced photography well within the reach of the amateur astronomer. I describe my observatory in the mountains of Spain along with practical guidance on how to get started in observing and photographing deep space.