Richard Guest, Quality Manager at LIBERTY Steel UK (Engineering Bar in Wednesbury) shares his hobby, astrophotography and stargazing.

Whilst day to day, Richard is involved in company projects and initiatives, he devotes all his free time to his passion, which is capturing photos of the night sky, stars, and the moon, a hobby he finds fascinating, and one that never disappoints.

How did this interest start?

“I have always been interested in science even as a very young child.  At around the age of 10, I picked up a second-hand telescope, very basic, and the challenge began!”, said Richard.

His interest led him to his first refractor telescope which he used to view the Moon and planets, then later in 1999 he bought a 5-inch reflector with a basic Astro camera. This allowed him to do simple imaging on visible targets in the sky, with the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter being his main targets.

As is often the case with hobbies, life takes over and in around 2005 his telescope was covered up, moved to the garage and remained there for the next 15 years. That was until we all found ourselves with unusual amounts of time on our hands, and little to do with the spare time, due to the pandemic.  Richard reflects on getting back into astrophotography being a positive outcome during the Covid period.  He dusted off his old telescope, and with a phone camera adaptor, he was all set to take images of the Moon and a comet called Neowise, which was visible in July 2020.  Since then, he’s invested in bigger and better equipment including a new fully computerised telescope, a Celestron Evolution 8HDEdge and dedicated Astro camera which allow him to explore the cosmos from his garden in Kingswinford.

The Hero of BBC and “Astronomy Now”

After just a year of imaging with this telescope, and posting these on a local Facebook group, Richard was asked to put together a calendar using his images.  Two of the calendar images have been published by magazines including The Swan Nebula in “Astronomy Now” (the UK’s biggest astronomy magazine) in August and recently The Lion Nebula in the November BBC “Sky at Night”, which was also published on their Instagram page.

“I’ve also been asked to do a lecture at the local photography club in Kingswinford and approached several times for prints of my photographs. Taking shots is not easy, it is a hard job that takes a lot of time. That’s why I am very pleased to see the results and know that people do like my photographs”.

Tips for the beginners

Richard explains that he’s not in an Astronomy Club but is self-taught and has picked up helpful hints from YouTube. He suggests that beginners should never say never, they should practice a lot and this will be rewarded with stunning photos. He suggests starting off with a good pair of 10X50 binoculars as you’ll be amazed at what you will see with these including the Galilean moons. Richard closes by saying that despite there being so much wrong in the world today, all of us in the Northern Hemisphere can still look up at the night sky, see the same stars and enjoy their magnificence.

More Richard’s photos are available in his Facebook Group Beyond Kingswinford Streetlights