PROFESSIONAL NATURE NOMINEE
Egor Goryachev
Dark skies of africa
As many of us live in the big cities we can‘t even see the stars and the Milky Way from our neighbourhoods as the light pollution obstructs the visibility. Africa and especially Namibia is one of the low densely populated areas on Earth where the effect of light pollution is minimized. You don’t have to climb high in the mountains over the clouds chasing the Milky Way. Even on the flat African surface you can see billions of stars during the clear night. And what you see is incredible. My first time in the Southern Hemisphere as an astrophotographer was something special. I had a feeling that I must photograph every corner of this amazing sky. The movement of the Milky Way during the night offers you so many different angles and perspectives to capture so you can’t only work on one image. If you travel to the Southern Hemisphere, you can notice that the night sky with all the constellations looks differently. The Milky Way Core starts its journey very steep in its upside-down position in the southeast, then goes almost overhead in the middle of the night and sets as an elegant arch exactly in the west. These images, taken on my trip to Namibia in May 2022, reflect the magic of my first insight into the southern skies.