Cosmic visitor leaves Manstone starstruck
THIS stunning photograph shows the Neowise comet streaking across the night sky above an ancient ridge in the Shropshire Hills.
Andrew Fusek Peters spent hours waiting for the right conditions to capture the rare cosmic event over one of the oldest rock formations on the planet.
He arrived at the at Stiperstones National Nature Reserve at dusk on Monday but ended up taking the photos at closer to midnight. Mr Fusek Peters managed to snap the comet as it passed above the iconic 480 million-year-old Manstone Rock travelling at about 40 miles per second.
Mr Fusek Peters, 54, of Lydbury North, Shropshire, said: “I thought it would make an interesting picture because there’s some great symbolism.
“Manstone Rock looks like a person’s face. You can make out the face easily and it is looking at the comet.
“The idea of the face looking at the comet appealed to me. This is an ancient rock outcrop on the Stiperstones National Nature Reserve.
“I thought what’s the point of doing the same as what is already out there, so I wanted to do something a little bit different.
“It’s all about putting the two together. Photographing the comet by itself, that’s rather dull really because once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.
“To get the comet and in context with the landscape I think is a bit more interesting and I am very happy with how they came out.” Comet Neowise is around three miles in diameter and at its nearest, and astronomers expect it to come within 64 million miles (103 million km) of Earth.
It will not return to our corner of space for 6,800 years.