Photographers cast an eye to the sky
Tim Burgess, aged 37, took a photograph of the International Space Station over Stonehenge in April, and then the picture went viral.
He said: “A friend and myself often go out and do night time photography. We knew that the space station would be passing at that place and time but I didn’t know whether I would get it properly.”
He uploaded his image to the sites he would normally would – Twitter and Flickr – and before he knew it, it had been retweeted and shared by nearly 100,000 people, including the commander of the International Space Station and it was also shown on ABC news and Good Morning America.
He said: “It went all over the world – it was a really good example of something going viral and crazy.”
He was then asked to submit his image to a group on Flickr, run by the Greenwich Royal Observatory.
It was then that he was told that he had been shortlisted for the award in the Sky and Earth category.
He said: “There’s some very tough competition. Just to be shortlisted is a huge achievement. There are a lot of people who have taken a lot of amazing images.”
Of his image, he said: “It was difficult to know how it would take; I knew it would be quite a strong image. It is one of the oldest natural objects against one of the newest man made.
“It’s not often you are grateful for light pollution – we are normally trying to get away from it, but this wouldn’t have worked without the glow in the background.”
This week has also been an exciting one for other stargazers and amateurs photographers alike.
Monday night was the peak night of one of the spectacular examples of ‘shooting stars’.
A natural phenomenon, the annual Perseid meteor shower is the result of the cosmic pollution created by the
comet Swift-Tuttle which last passed near the Earth in 1992.
With the clear skies over West Berkshire and the new moon, people looking to the skies were treated to hours of bright meteor showers.
One of those was Newbury Astronomical Society member Steve Knight (photograph right), who said: “You never quite know when they are going to appear – if you have your camera pointing another way in the sky, you might miss it.
“They were quite spectacular – I saw a couple of really bright ones.
“The really nice thing about Perseids is that it happens in August where it’s not such a problem being out all night – it’s something that everyone can get involved with.”