AN astrophotographer managed to capture the remnant of a star explosion that happened thousands of years ago.

Andy Smith, from Upper Heyford, has been doing astrophotography as a hobby for nine years.

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Taken over several nights between June 5 and 16 due to the weather, he snapped the Veil Nebula - a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus.

Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the nebula is a large supernova remnant - an expanding cloud born out of an explosion of a massive star thousands of years ago.

To get the photo, Mr Smith took a total of 62 three-minute images using a modified Canon 90D fitted to a Sigma 150-500mm lens set at 250mm on a Skywatcher NEQ6 pro mount.

All the images were then stacked in a programme called Astro pixel processor, stretched in Photoshop and finished off in image editing software Lightroom.

The Veil Nebula is believed to be around 2,400 light-years away based on direct astrometric measurements.

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Mr Smith said: "For many years I looked at the stars and was amazed by what I saw but as humans our eyes can only see so much. Inspired by Hubble I wanted to be able to see all those faint and distant objects and now with new camera technologies this is possible.

"Astrophotography to me is the only way that I will be able to see these distant worlds, galaxies, and nebulae, and to marvel at their splendour."

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