OUT OF THIS WORLD!
Breathtaking shot of the heavens above Hadrian’s Wall wins top photo prize for one man and his dog
It’s certainly one way to get lost in space.
Astronomical photographer Ben Bush and his dog Floyd are pictured in front of a dazzling array of stars and planets including Mars and saturn.
Mr Bush, 40, was out walking four-year-old border collie Floyd when he decided to experiment with his camera.
After setting it up on a tripod with a time delay and changing the shutter speed, he walked Floyd over to a knoll where they posed for the photo.
When he checked the picture Mr Bush found he had managed to frame Mars and saturn – as well as the Milky Way’s galactic core.
His photo taken at night near Hadrian’s Wall in Hexham, Northumberland, has now won the ‘people and space’ category in the Royal Observatory’s 2019 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition.
Mr Bush, of Keswick, Cumbria, who gave up his job as a tree surgeon to work full-time as a star photographer, said he had slowed the shutter speed to ten seconds and the frame was repeated 30 times to capture a clear silhouette of the pair.
He added: ‘I often take my dogs out walking at night and I started capturing the planets and stars while I was out.
‘It was a bit of luck we got the photo as the clouds had rolled in when I saw an opportunity to take a picture with the dog.
‘I thought it would be a nice shot so long as Floyd sat still for long enough.
‘the hardest part was getting Floyd to stay still. I whispered “Don’t move! Don’t move!” the entire time the photo was being taken. I managed to get Mars on the left-hand side of myself and saturn to the right of Floyd. Over us is the galactic core of the Milky Way, which is 26,000 light years away. It’s pretty amazing, really.’
He added: ‘I often get my photos from just playing around and seeing what I can get.’
the competition category winners – along with runners-up and highly commended entries – will be showcased at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, as part of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition which is open to the public from today. the competition received a record 4,600 entries from 90 countries.
Laszlo Francsics, from Hungary, won the £10,000 photographer of the year prize.