Astronomer’s pics out of this world
THESE star clusters are trillions of kilometres away — and it’s likely some are dead — but the light they emitted years ago is still making its way to earth.
Captured by Clifton Springs amateur astronomer Gerald Grech, the pictures show images not visible to the naked eye and are a window into the vastness of our galaxy — which, if travelling at 300,000km/second, would take 100,000 years to get here.
“That’s what so fascinating because you are looking back in time. Some of these stars would have blown up and not be there anymore. It’s the ghost of what’s gone before,” Mr Grech said.
The dark purple hue of the Lagoon Nebula captured by Mr Grech is a stellar nursery more than 4000 light years from Earth.
The gas cloud is a mixture of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen and contains a star 200,000 times brighter than the sun, according to NASA.
The blue haze of The Pleiades is 44 light years away and made from more than 1000 stars loosely bound by gravity in the Taurus constellation. It is the inspiration behind the Subaru car logo.
Mr Grech said the spattering of pink and blue captured in Eta Carinae — the brightest and largest stellar system within 10,000 light-years of Earth — is made of two massive stars which orbit violently.
According to NASA, one of the stars is 90 times heavier than the sun and outshines it by five million times.
Mr Grech’s fascination with what lies in the far corners of our Milky Way, and the more than 250 billion stars in it, started as a boy when he was given a glimpse through his father’s self-made telescope.
His hobby has grown to more than $10,000 worth of equipment and has allowed him to develop the skills required to capture constellations.
Some are the result of as much as eight hours of pictures taken using an SLR camera with a computer-guided telescope as a lens, then stitched together using Photoshop but not edited in any other way, Mr Grech said.
“(Stargazing) puts life into perspective because it is a different dimension,” he said. “If people want to observe, you can buy a basic telescope for about $120.”
Mr Grech, a member of the Astronomical Society of Geelong, said a fellow member had a telescope capable of seeing the ice caps on Mars, storms on Jupiter and the rings of Saturn.
The Astronomical Society of Geelong is based at the Geelong Showgrounds and meets every Friday night at 7.30pm.
Once every four months the group travels to the Moranghurk Homestead near Lethbridge for a Dark Sky weekend.