Astrophotography

The images in this gallery are captured from a personal observatory on the edge of the Compiègne forest in northern France, using two complementary instruments: an RC10 telescope with a 2-metre focal length at f/8 for galaxies and compact objects, and an FSQ apochromatic refractor for large nebulae. Each image represents dozens of hours of cumulative exposure, often spread over several nights, through filters that isolate the light of ionised hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur.

What these photographs show is real: the colours translate the chemical composition of the nebulae (the famous Hubble palette), the tidal arms of ARP 273 are genuinely there, stretched by gravity, and every star in the field is an actual star. Processing merely makes visible what the sensor truly recorded — and what the human eye, far too insensitive, could never see on its own.

As prints, astrophotography is spectacular: on acrylic glass, the blacks of the sky become deep as lacquer and the nebulae seem lit from within. It is wall art that never fails to start a conversation — each image comes with its story: the object, its distance, the instrument and the conditions of the capture. A way to hang, quite literally, a piece of the universe on your wall.