Amateur astronomer captures photos of space from back of his car

Bryan Shaw set up a telescope on an abandoned street in Cumnock in East Ayrshire.

STV News

18th Oct 2021

An amateur astronomer has captured incredible photos of space 444 light years away – from the back of his car.

Bryan Shaw, 28, set up a telescope on an abandoned street free from light pollution to track star movement in the night skies above Cumnock in East Ayrshire.

His images show the stunning Pleiades star cluster which features seven daughters and two parents according to Greek mythology.

The snaps capture light emitted from the stars before Galileo observed the constellation with his own telescope in 1610.

Amateur astronomer Bryan. Bryan Shaw via SWNS

Bryan, who has a photography business, headed out after work on Thursday on the first clear night in three weeks.

He said: “I put my stuff in the car and set up the telescope to track the targets in the sky.

“Pleiades is actually one of the targets that is visible with binoculars and it is just north of Orion.

“Once you start to learn the constellations such as Taurus you know that Pleiades is in that constellation such as the Andromeda Galaxy.

“In March I start learning how to look at the constellations and the stars within them.

“It gallops on from there really – I started shooting wide angles with 20mm lens to 85mm then all of a sudden I bought a nice big telescope at 550mm that shoots to two degrees visible in the night sky.”