©Andrea Girones, Girones Rho Rising, This image of the Milky Way and the colorful Rho Ophiuci molecular cloud rising above the spring filed was created using the “Deepscape technique” which combines two images shot at the same time, from the same place with the same lens (85mm). One image is a long exposure static image of the spring fields while the sky portion is a stacked and “star-tracked” image.

Andrea Girones is a multifaceted, award-winning photographic artist working in astroimaging, solar imaging, alternative photographic processes, and other art forms. Her images have been featured in the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, NASA, and Astrobin, among others.

Andrea Girones is clearly obsessed with her astrophotography. A life-long astronomer and eclipse chaser, she used to take sky pictures with film back in the day, it took a while for Andrea to figure out these new-fangled automated scopes and digital cameras. After a long hiatus from the hobby raising her two children it was Comet Neowise that brought her back to her beloved hobby. Thankfully by this time her daughter could help her work her modern DLSR camera and together during the pandemic they took her first digital image of that famous Comet.

Since then, Andrea has spent far too much time, effort, and disposable income, refining her art.  Her astrophotography has won several awards, including the Paul Commission Observer of the Year award, the Rolf Meir Planetary imager of the year, of her local RASC chapter, a WITNS selection from the late Alyn Wallace, as well as the Williamina Fleming award from the Astronomical League. She was honoured to have been selected as the 2023 Imager of the Year at Starfest and was a judge of the 2024 contest.

Her images have appeared on the covers of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) and on the cover of the 2024 RASC calendar. She often gives presentations to organizations on solar imaging, a particular fascination for her. The first APOD (NASA Astronomy Photo of the Day) awarded to her, was of a solar filament tethered magnetically to the sun.

Her work is on Instagram, Astrobin and Flickr. She also posts her timelapses on Youtube

Andrea lives in and images from Ottawa Ontario Canada.

An interview with the artist follows.

©Andrea Girones, Last Night on Earth, The sheer joy of capturing an image of Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks was the last post I read from the renown astrophotographer Alyn Wallace before he died, far too young. It inspired me to get out the night of March 28th, 2024, to shoot this lovely comet with the raggedy blue ion tail.

Marsha Wilcox: Tell us about your journey in photography. You’ve done fine art terrestrial photography, alternative image processes, and wonderful astrophotography.

Andrea Girones: Space. The final frontier. How the words resonated with the small child who looked up at the stars during those long Canadian winter nights. From space travel to UFOS my young imagination often took to me alternate universes and planets. To grow up and learn about the photographic techniques of actually collecting light from far away galaxies and our own solar system, was a dream come true for me as an adult photographer.

Photographing planets, galaxies and nebulas requires scientific filters, special cameras, motorized tracking and computer techniques to accumulate the data and display it in a way that our human eyes can appreciate. My work therefore must combine art and science. I work to create images that are both scientifically intriguing and beautiful at the same time.

Long exposure images gathered over hours and days bring the faint and distant universe home to us.  My intention is to share the invisible universe with fellow humans in a way that sparks curiosity, a quest for scientific knowledge, as well as joy and wonder.

Our universe is a magical, infinite place where unlimited possibilities exists and we are all tiny, yet significant parts of it.  We are stardust.

My journey started when I was young, and I was interested in astronomy. I’ve always liked astronomy, and I always loved photography. It took me a while to figure out the two things go together.  As a young person, my father took me to see an eclipse.  He had a small plane, so he flew us up to Moosonee.  We saw the eclipse with welder’s glass in the airport. It was cloudy, my mom and brother stayed home and watched the whole thing on TV without clouds.  My father was a big photographer. I did a lot of photography growing up.

When I got my first job and my first paycheck, the first thing I did was to go to the astronomy store in Toronto. They helped me buy a used Celestron C8 (8-inch telescope).  I began doing a lot of astronomy and looking at astronomical things. Back in the day, I did try to do a little film work. I would put the camera on the telescope.  I just found a set of negatives with a Milky Way photos.  It was really hard.  Film was very hard to do.

I got married, I had children, and everything paused for 20 years or so. I primarily photographed my family over that time. I got a digital SLR because kids move so fast, you needed a fast camera.

©Andrea Girones, Caroline’s Wizard, Caroline Herschel is credited as discovering this emission nebula in 1787, and which surrounds a bright star cluster known as NGC 7380. She is considered one of the original professional woman astronomers and discovered hundreds of comets and nebula. This image was shot from my backyard during several clear nights in September of 2025 using narrowband filters

During the pandemic, my daughter and I decided we were going to go look at Comet Neowise.  I had a digital camera.  I had done astrophotography, I had fast lenses, but I didn’t know how to work a digital camera manually. My daughter had taken some courses, so she set up my camera for a manual shot. I said, okay, let’s go look at the comet. We drove just up the road with a friend and her daughter, we could see the comet naked eye and we’re amazed, “Oh my god, there is the comet!”  We got out the DSLR and we took our first shots of the comet.

That was it.  I was down the rabbit hole deep after that. I got out all my old lenses. You needed the fast lenses, the F1.8s, F2.8. I started imaging with the DSLR. I had a telescope at the time. So, I pulled out the C11 (Celestron 11-inch) I bought in 2012.  I had rarely used it, but during the pandemic, I took it out and set it up. It was a computerized scope. Honestly, I couldn’t get it to work because I had done manual observing earlier. That’s how I learned. I had this fancy computerized scope that I couldn’t figure out. I sat in my basement and ran through every menu. I went through all the star alignment routines. I looked up every star. I wrote out every map so I could go out and do a three-star alignment. Once you do a three-star alignment, then your scope can find its way. During the pandemic, I went out with my telescope and started doing observing.

I began my astrophotography with planetary imaging. My first astronomical camera was a planetary camera. Basically, a small video camera, and it does videos.  My first image of Saturn was with my cell phone. I did a video holding it to the eyepiece, and I could hear little crickets chirping in the background. It was great fun.  So, that’s how I ended up back at astronomy and back at photography.

You’ve broadened out a lot now. You’re doing solar imaging, and the deep sky objects you’re photographing are glorious.

I was lucky. was during the pandemic, a lot of people couldn’t get gear.  I had a C11, a big, big scope, and an equatorial mount.

At that time, I put the camera and lens on the telescope and used it for tracking the sky.  My first images were of the Lagoon Nebula. I did this all the first summer of the pandemic.   Next, I attached my DSLR to a small refractor. I managed to get a Red Cat 51 (250mm).  It was a nice beginner-friendly telescope.  It had a focusing mask built in and a flat field, so you didn’t need a coma corrector or a flattener. You just attached your DSLR with a little adapter, that’s how I started.  I branched out to tracking and doing wide field deep sky imaging.  I realized pretty quickly lenses are not great when you’re doing astrophotography.  With telephoto lenses, you’ll get distortion in the corners.  When you track and stack the images, you get a lot of distortion.  Attaching a regular DSLR to a telescope gave much better results than a telephoto lens.

But then you moved to dedicated astronomy cameras.  Tell us about that.

After a while, I realized that there are limitations to using an older DSLR.  I went to an astronomical camera because it’s more sensitive to the hydrogen-alpha (the most prominent gas in space, red in color), and it removes the UV-IR blocking filter usually found in DSLRs. It’s a higher quality image with a higher quality lens (the telescope). I did a lot of deep sky imaging with that setup for a long, long time.

Eventually, I upgraded my mount because my 20-year-old mount had some challenges. I have upgraded my technology over time. The C11 (Celestron Edge HD 11-inch) was a beast, as you know, to do deep sky imaging.  I ended up getting a Hyperstar* lens for that. My first work with the C11 was Hyperstar, 540mm at F1.8.  The camera I was using had a small sensor.  So, I had to learn about calibration frames, flat-field images.  The C11 with the Hyperstar is a high-speed lens resulting in vignetting. There are lots of tricks getting appropriate flats for the Hyperstar.

* [The Hyperstar replaces the secondary mirror and takes the telescope from ~3,000mm at F11 to ~540mm at F1.8].

In astroimaging, there are a lot of technical things and lots of problems to solve. Fundamentally, I am a problem solver. I wanted to eventually get the C11 at its native focal length, or with a reducer. This was a learning ground, a way to slowly progress to imaging at 2,000mm, which is much trickier and not easy to do.

The image processing was a whole other world. I did do all the Adam Block courses. I loved it because I’m a technical person. I like to listen to his descriptions of every detail. I do believe in his philosophy.  He is teaching us to solve problems in the future.

You upgraded your mount, added an off-axis guider, and started doing narrowband imaging. 

The Wizard Nebula was my first narrowband image in a long time. I’m not a big fan of narrowband imaging. I just don’t do a lot of it. I quite prefer broadband targets, but I think it was a night that I couldn’t find any broadband targets, or maybe there was a moon, or I’d never done the Wizard, so I tried it.  Generally speaking, I’m impressed with some of the LRGB (luminance, red, green, blue) images. I have one of my Cave Nebula images is 100% LRGB. There’s no hydrogen- alpha in it, the colors are beautiful.  I am very happy with my LRGB filters.

©Andrea Girones, Our Sun, A deep, high resolution, 12-part mosaic of a day on the Sun during Solar maximum, shot using specialized solar filters and optics. Sunspots, filaments and prominences are indicative of a period of high solar activity known as Solar maximum, which occurs every 11 years or so.

I started solar imaging with my Lunt 40.  I called it my Sunday morning sun imaging. I would sit outside and enjoy a coffee, and run a solar time lapse.  I ended up making contact with Simon Tang, who’s an excellent solar imager. He gave me lots of feedback and tips about image processing, and it evolved over time.

Solar imaging is something I quite enjoy because it’s in the daytime. The nighttime work is automated. You don’t participate as much in it, but solar, you’re there.  I do like being there. I enjoy sitting out. Planetary imaging is the same. You tend to sit out by your telescope with the computer, you do video.  You start a sequence, and then start another one, and move the telescope around, or tweak the focus.  I do enjoy the being out there on my own. That is a big part of what I like about astronomy.

©Andrea Girone, s Flying Filament, On August 10, 2025, a large piece of solar plasma floated over the solar surface tethered by strong magnetic fields lines looping down to the surface. This is a timelapse of approximately 1 hour shot through specialized solar filters to capture this rare event.

There was an image I just posted with prominences on the sun. You don’t know if it’s moving because you can’t see it in real time. You can feel like it’s changed, but often it’s not until after you process the timelapse that you see whether it moved. The one I just posted was really short, it moved a lot in 45 minutes. Sometimes they do nothing for an hour.  You never know. It’s a bit of a gamble. It’s unpredictable.

©Andrea Girones, Sun Selfie Cyanotype, A cyanotype image of a large prominence along the edge of the sun from August 4th, 2024, where the curving magnetic fields lines, and surface texture are clearly visible.

©Andrea Girones, The Great Sunspot Cyanotype, One of my first “Sun Selfies.” Using the digital negative of my giant sunspot image, I then used the Sun’s UV light to expose this Cyanotype image. Cyanotypes or “blueprints” were actually invented by John Herschel, son of the famous astronomer William Herschel and a great astronomer himself

Tell us about the cyanotypes you’ve been doing recently.

My cyanotypes are a fun thing I’ve been doing lately.  I apply for the Greenwich astronomy contest every year for fun.  I haven’t won anything, but they have the Annie Maunder Prize, which is a more creative kind of prize. One year, one of the winners did a cyanotype of a picture of the sun.  She called it a “sun-selfie.” I thought I would give it a try.

I made a digital negative of an image I took of the sun and made a cyanotype of it.  I wanted to do a sun selfie with turmeric because turmeric is yellow. I got a pretty good image, but it fades. I have a few of those.  If I could get it yellow, then that would be even better, but I haven’t gotten there yet. I’m still cyanotype blue.

What I’m struggling with is displaying these images differently.  I don’t like them on a computer screen. I want to get them out of the computer and into real life somehow. Cyanotype is a combination of technology and analog.

What is your favorite astroimage?

©Andrea Girones The Cave Nebula in LRGB A dim nebula in the constellation Cepheus this is not a target that one can easily observe visually, and often narrowband filters are used. However, I chose to only use LRBG (broadband) filters over several hours in order to preserve and develop the natural color in both the stars and nebula.

I have an image of the Cave Nebula I really like.  I think I love it because nobody tends to do the Cave in LRGB, and you can see the blue in that image. There’s a blue reflection nebula. Reflection nebulae get lost if you only do narrowband.

I have a couple of real close ups of a sunspot that I love. I’ve started adding Barlows (magnifier) on Barlows and going deeper and deeper. We’re just looking deep into the sun.  There’s detail, but yet there’s some softness. I love that the sun is sometimes sharp and soft in other places. It’s like a cozy blanket.

What would you like your audiences to take away from your images?

I’d like them to have curiosity about the universe, the science as well as the beauty. They might be more interested in science, or they might just think it’s beautiful, but I hope it sparks curiosity and wonder about the universe.

I would like people to be interested in things outside of themselves and try to be a part of a bigger world.  I feel like our world is very difficult right now.  Maybe people would see that we are all one species under one sky and one planet, and we should be nicer to each other.

©Andrea Girones, Tangle Ridge, Deep in the Rocky Mountains range surrounding Jasper Alberta, this mountain looks like any other- except for the alignment with the Milky Way. Despite the frigid temperatures that morning in March 2023, the little creek had melted enough that it reflected starlight back at us.

What’s next for you?

I quite like videos. That’s where I’m going lately, more videos and animations. I’ve been experimenting with some flying through space videos, which I’d love to be able to do.  I’ve got to figure that one out. I’d love to be able to display images other than on a computer.  I have a prototype of a hologram where it’s just a reflection.  I’d like to try to get it to where it looks like the planet is moving.

What the Reel Running Video 

©Andrea Girones, LRGB The Ghost, This is a part of space where dark intergalactic dust is lit up by nearby stars to create a ghostly effect which take our imagination away. This was imaged with LRGB filters and a monochrome camera over several hours in September 2024.

©Andrea Girones,The ship, In June of 2021 I headed out at dawn to capture the annular eclipse in my pre-arranged location only to find a sailboat anchored in the cove. The unexpected visitor made a welcome addition to the image. The Sky is a composite of several filtered solar images which I was able to accurately aligned using the image that had the mast running through the sun.

©Andrea Girones, Sunspot, Using specialized filters and optics, I was able to zoom in and capture an image of this stunning and enormous sunspot visible on the Sun. One of the largest sunspots of solar Cycle 25 the magnetic complexity active regions can cause solar flares and other solar phenomenon.

©Andrea Girones, Eclipse Cyanotype, This cyanotype was created using a digital negative created from an eclipse image I shot on April 8th, 2024, in Lac Megantic Quebec. The image is wide angle composite of the phases of a total solar eclipse as it passed over the frozen lake.

©Andrea Girones, Corona Cyanotype, The bright, sparkling solar corona is typically invisible to the naked eye. That is until the Moon blocks the disk of our sun, as it did during the total eclipse of April 8th, 2024, and then it, and the lunar surface are revealed. Printed in Cyanotype.