I am a chemist based in Munich, Germany, where I have lived and worked for over two decades. I started astrophotography in 2023 — relatively recently, but the fascination has grown quickly. What draws me most to this hobby is its ability to reveal what the human eye simply cannot see: vast clouds of ionised hydrogen, the delicate structure of distant galaxies, stellar nurseries hundreds of light-years across. The camera and the telescope together become a tool for making the invisible visible.
What continues to amaze me is how far amateur astrophotography has come. With today’s equipment and processing tools, it is possible to produce images that would have required professional observatory access just a decade ago. There is something remarkable about that — science-grade results from the garden. I also genuinely enjoy the technical side of the hobby: tinkering with the setup, solving problems, and pushing the automation of the imaging pipeline as far as possible. A session that runs reliably on its own through the night, guided and sequenced without intervention, is its own kind of satisfaction.
Behind all of this lies a question that has accompanied me for as long as I can remember: what is the universe, and what place does humanity hold within it? Astrophotography does not answer that question — but it keeps it alive in a very direct and tangible way. The light captured in these photographs has travelled millions, sometimes billions, of years to reach us. AncientLight is my attempt to document that journey, one image at a time.