Stephen Heliczer FRAS I became interested in astrophotography soon after joining Hertford Astronomy Group after a life-long but rather casual interest in astronomy. I started to take things more seriously during lock-down in 2021. I discovered that even with basic equipment (and a great deal of practice!) one can take incredible pictures of the universe, even from a heavily light-polluted suburban garden. Starting with an inexpensive telescope it is visually possible to see cloud-bands and the largest moons of Jupiter, the beautiful rings of Saturn, detailed craters of the Moon, all of which are all spectacular and awe-inspiring sights. However, astrophotography allows me to also capture and learn about the faintest of objects in the night sky. These include galaxies that are hundreds of millions of light years away and beautiful gaseous nebulae (sometimes the birthplace of stars, sometimes stars at the end of their life) within our own Milky Way galaxy. These distant and faint objects are usually not visible by eye, even through a large professional telescope. It has been very encouraging to see how my images have improved over time and are now often superior to images taken by these massive observatory telescopes just a few decades ago. The advancement of high quality mass-produced optical equipment and the latest generation of sensitive dedicated astrophotography cameras, plus new image-processing techniques has made this all possible. And what better way to learn about the universe than to capture and view images taken of distant planets, nebulae and galaxies located at unfathomably large distances from us? A telescope is a time machine - I am taking images of some of the most distant galaxies comprising of billions of stars, as they appeared hundreds of millions of years ago. And all captured from a back garden in Hertfordshire. Stephen Heliczer FRAS Instagram @heliczer