Sky’s the limit as Andrew snaps up heavenly visions
OUT of this world photos taken in Ma c c l e s f i e l d prove Jodrell Bank isn’t the only place to see hundreds of millions of miles into space.
Astronomer Andrew Greenwood captured these images, largely from in and around his home in Kerridge.
They include Jupiter, Saturn, the Milky Way and even the galaxy Andromeda, which is around 2.5million light years away.
Relatively close to home he has also managed to get ‘close ups’ of the moon’s surface as well as pictures of Mars and Venus.
And while it takes time, patience and a lot of technical equipment to get shots like these, Andrew says some of the sights can be seen with the naked eye. He said: “At the moment when it goes dark if you look directly to the south a third of the way up the sky the brightest object is Jupiter.
”Then across to the left the yellowish thing that looks like a star in Saturn, although it is not as bright. That’s probably the limit of what you can see with the naked eye.
”It’s a good time to see this at the moment as although Jupiter and Saturn a far away from each other their orbit round the sun puts them close in terms of line of sight.”
Andrew, 47, who has his own design studio Visual Sense in Bollington, was fascinated by space as a child.
But it wasn’t until 1997 that he took up astronomy seriously, when the appearance of comet Hale Bopp inspired him.
He says the relatively light-pollution free village of Kerridge is a good place to star gaze.
And the LED streetlights used by Cheshire
East Council also help as the light is directed downwards rather than up into the sky.
The most far away picture - of Andromeda - is actually like peering back in time, Andrew explained.
He said: “The light from
Andromeda takes 2.5million years to reach the Earth so what we see is how it looked that length of time ago, it’s almost like time travelling.”
To see more of Andrew’s photography visit his Instagram page @visualsense.