About me

I'm James, an amateur astrophotographer living in Stockport in the UK. When time and weather permit, I take pictures of the night sky from my back garden. By day, I work as a web developer, and I designed and built this website in order to share the best of my photos with others.

Investigating a pond in Macclesfield Forest with my dog Layla

I have a deep interest in nature and the universe around us, and space in particular has fascinated me since childhood. I had a small telescope as a young teenager, which despite not being very good, showed me Jupiter's moons, Saturn's rings, and mountains, plains and craters on the Moon.

These experiences were profound, and I've never completely lost interest in the subject, but I was ultimately disappointed with what the tools at my disposal could show me, beyond these soon-to-be-familiar sights. Where were the spectacular nebulae and galaxies I saw in books, or on Sir Patrick Moore's "The Sky At Night" (one of my favourite shows growing up)?

It quickly became apparent that I lacked the equipment and knowledge necessary to see most of the things I'd hoped. In the years since, however, the barrier to entry has fallen a great deal, both in terms of the cost of good equipment and the skills required to get good results from it.

A slightly older iteration of my current setup, an Askar 103 APO refractor on a ZWO AM5 mount. It was used to take nearly every picture you see in the gallery.

Astronomy technology, like many other kinds, has come a long way in the past 10 to 15 years, and recently passed a threshold where I felt it was time to start taking the hobby seriously. In 2023 I invested in a much more capable telescope setup than anything I'd had previously, and began taking the images you see on the gallery page.

A typical night-time imaging session in the garden. The telescope is controlled using an app on the tablet that's sitting on the table.

This time around, it's fair to say I'm far more satisfied with the results. I hope at least some visitors to my site will find my photos as enjoyable and fascinating as I do, or better still, be inspired to take an interest in the amazing universe in which we live. I plan to keep adding more whenever I can, so be sure to stop by again in the future!