How'd He Do That? Astrophotographer Shares Story Of Stunning 'Planetary Parade' Image

Inside Astrophotography: A Universe In Tiny Detail

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Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy has left millions of fans in awe of his detailed, breathtaking photos of the cosmos.

His recent image of the planetary parade in late January got more than 130,000 likes on Instagram alone. The image shows the alignment of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Neptune and Uranus from the perspective of the moon.

Neptune and Uranus would not have been visible to the naked eye if you were looking up to the sky to see this for yourself. The alignment in that image would not look like this in “real life” either, but the image isn’t faked, so what gives?

Welcome to the world of astrophotography. Andrew McCarthy explained it like this: “My goal as an astrophotographer is always just to, I guess reveal what’s hidden in our universe. I have a number of telescopes and cameras that I use. I use these instruments to, you know, spend a lot of time, hours sometimes, to reveal what’s hidden in that darkness.”

McCarthy’s photo is a composite image, which he says he’s sometimes hesitant to create and share because composite photos can be easily misunderstood. If you look through the comments on social media, you’ll see some people calling the image a fake, but it’s made from thousands of layers of real photos.

"There’s no way to actually capture a photo of all of them at once, while also being able to see details on those planets," he said. "And as an astrophotographer, I'm all about those details, so I wanted to be able to show you the weather bands on Jupiter … I wanted to show you the rings of Saturn … I wanted to show you the terrestrial features of Mars."

So he went the composite route, which he says also gives the viewer a better perspective on the size of the planets.

"When I compare them to the moon like I did, you're able to actually see like, oh, Jupiter is about a 20th the size of the moon, Mars is about like 100th the size of the moon … you can kind of start to put those details together in your brain," he added.

"I started with Venus and Saturn because they set the earliest … for Saturn, I shot about 60,000 photos of it, over a period of about 10 minutes," he said.

Then he repeated that process for every planet, over four to five hours, admitting that some of that time was spent waiting for Mars to be at its zenith.

The weather and the upper atmosphere play a critical role in getting the best images. McCarthy says forecasts help him make sure he’s getting outside at the right time and a key component is understanding what the sky transparency is going to be like.

"Even a thin layer of haze means the images won’t turn out," he said.

He also points out that if he looks straight up and the stars are twinkling brightly, that’s an indication of atmospheric dispersion, which can distort his images. It’s just one of myriad complex issues he has to solve while he’s shooting these celestial images.

McCarthy sells some of his work on his website, but he also shares the images on social media where he happily answers questions about how he captured his photos or what kind of telescopes sky-gazing enthusiasts should invest in.

He says besides loving sky gazing and photography himself, his goal is to encourage people to get outside and look up, so they can discover and enjoy the universe for themselves.

"By talking with people and encouraging other people to kind of explore this on their own, I'm now able to have a larger impact than I would as just myself," he said. "Hopefully there'll be a very, very large new generation of astrophotographers that continue to spread my mission and get more people looking up because I think looking at the sky is something that can unite us and kind of ground us a little bit."

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