In an achievement that combines patience and a passion for astronomy, Dutch astrophotographer Cornelis van Zylen succeeded in creating a mosaic featuring the 110 celestial bodies listed in the famous Messier catalog, after a photography trip that took 352 hours and 13 minutes of collecting light, and required him to spend many nights away from his home.
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The painting brings together galaxies millions of light-years away, gaseous nebulae where stars are forming, and star clusters twinkling deep in the sky, to present an exceptional visual view of the most famous objects that amateur astronomers can observe with small and medium-sized telescopes.
The photographer used two different types of telescopes, along with astronomical cameras and specialized light filters, then processed the images using Photoshop and PixelSight software to show the fine details of the objects and compile them into a single image.
Nights of surveillance and sleeping in the car
Collecting the images was no easy task, especially since Van Zylen did most of his work from the Netherlands, where clouds, light pollution, and terrestrial obstacles pose constant challenges to astrophotography.
He was able to photograph a large number of objects from the balcony of his home in the Dutch town of Heilo, but he had to move to more open rural locations to get a clear view of the low-lying objects near the horizon, away from trees and farm buildings.
The photographer says that those nights were not a burden on him, but rather more like enjoyable camping trips, and he did not treat all the objects in the same way; he gave some of the pictures more space inside the canvas because they represent his favorite scenes, or are linked to personal memories from the photography trips.
Index started for searching for comets
The story of the Messier catalog dates back to the 18th century, when the French astronomer Charles Messier began compiling a list of fuzzy celestial objects that observers might mistake for comets.
Messier was interested in discovering comets, but he found that some fixed spots of light in the sky might confuse the search operations, so he worked on recording their locations to make them easier to distinguish from moving objects.
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