A man from Wantage has snapped an incredibly detailed photograph of the Andromeda galaxy from his driveway.
Roland Gooday, 47, of Coopers Lane, took the photo in the early hours of last Monday morning.
Mr Gooday, a systems analyst, described himself as more of a photographer than an astronomer and said that he does not really ‘gaze at the stars much’.
However, when he does he said there is ‘always a specialist camera at the end of his telescope’.
He said: “Generally, whenever there is a clear night I will try to get some imaging done.”
The incredibly detailed photograph shows the Andromeda Galaxy’s distinctive disk shape comprised of different types of brightly coloured stars and gases.
The Andromeda Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy and the nearest galaxy to our own, the Milky Way.
It is approximately 2.5 million light-years (770 kiloparsecs) from us.
The number of stars contained in the Andromeda Galaxy is estimated at one trillion, or about twice the number estimated for the Milky Way.
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