Terry Maurice jokes that before he takes his place in the stars, he wants to appreciate them more.
The 80-year-old Guelph man is an amateur astrophotographer, and started the hobby about a year ago. Astrophotography is the photography of astronomical objects, celestial events or the night sky.
His grandson started asking about the planets, and Maurice found his love for astronomy again.
Maurice’s telescope and the camera equipment attached to it is $7,000. It’s not a cheap hobby but it’s far less expensive than NASA’s $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope that has produced images captivating everyone's imagination of late.
The photos Maurice posted on Facebook were noticed and his cousin commented Maurice’s photos are every bit as good as the James Webb photos.
His telescope is called the William Optics Gran Turismo 81 IV.
What he said he enjoys about the NASA program is their images are downloadable for free so you can process them and make your own composite image.
“There’s a real learning curve if you can get into it. It’s very daunting at first,” said Maurice. The process of astrophotography is technical and complex. Patience is necessary.
The telescope is set up with photography equipment and is controlled through software Maurice uses on his iPad. He controls the exposure, how many shots it takes, and how long the program will run for.
He takes the photos and stacks them to make a composite image which can take hours to process.
Guelph is a class seven on the Bortle scale, which measures the sky’s brightness in a particular location. Maurice is going on vacation to Manitoulin Island, a class two on the Bortle scale. The conditions for astrophotography are better in more rural places because there is less light pollution.
“They say about 80 per cent of the world’s population has never seen the milky way,” said Maurice.
“You’re just humbled by the fact that you’re looking at light that came and started out millions of years ago.”
The galaxy makes it feel how trivial life really is, said Maurice.
“We are part of a bigger world out there,” he said. He then makes a reference to a Joni Mitchell song, “Woodstock” and the lyrics, We are stardust/We are golden.
“She’s right because everything we have on earth comes from stardust. All the elements. So when these stars explode they go supernova and they explode. All that material travels through space and ends up wherever. It’s like dust it ends up everywhere,” said Maurice.
To have the privilege of seeing the galaxy that has been here for many millennia and will be here long after humans are here is very humbling, he said.
Maurice suggests newbies to astronomy check out a free software like Stellarium to get a view of the stars. They can also get a good view of the night's sky using binoculars.
