FLORENCE, Ariz. — Editor's note: The above video aired during a previous broadcast.
The cold expanse of the cosmos is hiding beautiful sights in its darkness, and an astrophotographer is revealing that secret to thousands from the comfort of his home.
The pictures that Andrew McCarthy takes with his personal telescope in Florence would have some second-guessing how dark space really is. Human eyes aren't good at picking up color and detail in a dim area, and that remains true in our universe.
So, how does McCarthy reveal what is usually hidden? He gets some help from the light of the stars.
"There's this misunderstanding that human eyes are the arbiter of truth," McCarthy said during a Zoom interview with 12 News.
"I'm wearing a red shirt right now. If I turn off the lights in my room, my eyes stop seeing the color very well, and now I can't tell whether I'm wearing a red shirt or a green shirt. Does that mean it's no longer red? Or, is the shirt still red but now my measurement instruments (eyes) aren't working properly?"
For example, McCarthy's picture of the Horsehead Nebula is extremely faint and isn't illuminated by much light. If humans were able to see it with a naked eye, he says it would just look like a smear of gray light.
However, the truth is that the nebula is red, and McCarthy knows this because of the type of energy it puts out.
"This is a limitation of our eyes. A camera doesn't have those limits," McCarthy said.
He was only able to grab a shot of the Horsehead Nebula after moving to Arizona from Sacramento, Calif. earlier this year.
Arizona's lack of humidity in the air made it much easier to see the celestial body compared to his hometown's obscured winter skies.
"Sacramento had smokey summers and foggy winters," he said. "If there's anything in the atmosphere it makes it very hard to shoot deep space stuff."
The hazy skies of Sacramento didn't stop McCarthy's father from originally picking up astronomy as a hobby.
His father's telescope was the first one McCarthy looked through. The experience allowed him to see Jupiter and Saturn, and the inspiration he felt in that moment continues to this day.
McCarthy hopes to share that inspiration with as many people as he can, and uses that hope to propel his work forward.
"We don't know what crossing these boundaries will bring us," he said. "That's why it's so important that we try and cross them. I want to see more people on the moon. I want to see people on Mars. I want to explore the rest of the solar system."
"The only way I feel like I can make a difference in that is by getting other people as excited about space as I am."
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