About me
The Story Behind Oscar’s Cosmos
Hi, I’m Oscar — an amateur astrophotographer from the Netherlands, capturing the wonders of the night sky, mostly from my own light-polluted backyard in Hoofddorp near Schiphol Airport. Welcome to my little corner of the cosmos!
How did I get here?
My fascination with the universe started long before I owned a telescope. I remember spending many August holidays looking up at the sky, watching the Perseid meteor shower streak across the darkness. In 2023, when experiencing truly dark skies in Tanzania, seeing the Milky Way in all its glory sparked something new. Suddenly, I wanted to do more than just look up — I wanted to capture what I was seeing.
In 2024, on my birtday, I successfully defended my PhD thesis, which featured an image from that very trip on its cover. As a wonderfully fitting surprise, my family-in-law gifted me an 8-inch Newtonian telescope with a 1,000 mm focal length as a combined present. And just like that, my astronomy journey began. 🔭
From looking up to looking closer
I spent countless nights peering through the eyepiece, discovering a level of detail I never imagined possible. Lunar craters looked like entire landscapes. Jupiter and its moons became little worlds of their own. Saturn’s rings seemed almost unreal, and seeing Venus in its crescent phase completely blew my mind.
Then came Christmas 2024, when I was gifted a DSLR camera and an adapter to attach it directly to my telescope. My first photographs of the Moon soon followed — and I was hooked.
Around my next birthday, almost exactly one year into the hobby, I received a simple right-ascension tracker, a small motor that turned the telescope at exactly the same speed as the stars are moving through the sky. It immediately opened the door to long-exposure astrophotography. Under the relatively dark skies of the Ardennes in southern Belgium, I captured my first deep-sky objects.
Mindblown. Again. ✨
The never-ending upgrade
Since those first images, my setup has evolved quite a bit. My equipment now includes an extra sturdy mount, a dedicated cooled astronomy camera and a second guiding camera. I’ve also made plenty of do-it-yourself improvements along the way, from installing an upgraded focusser, dew shield and aluminium spider to applying ultra-black paint, felt and collimation tweaks.
In addition to the hardware, I'm constantly learning new acquisition techniques, experimenting with processing software and figuring out how to get more out of the data I capture. There’s always another problem to solve, another technique to master or another faint detail hiding in an image.
And that's part of what makes this hobby so rewarding.
What is Oscar’s Cosmos?
This website is where I share my journey: the objects I capture, the stories behind them, the equipment I use and the things I learn along the way. Whether it's a distant galaxy, a colourful nebula or a familiar planet, every image is another little step towards understanding and appreciating the universe around us.
Most of my imaging happens from my backyard in the Netherlands, where light pollution means I have to work a little harder to reveal the faintest objects. But that's part of the challenge.
Thanks for stopping by. Clear skies! 🌠
March 2023 — An accidental discovery 🏜️
Somewhere in the Moroccan Sahara, I pointed my phone at the night sky and, without realising at the time, captured my first deep-sky object. Orion, including the Orion Nebula (M42), was visible above our tent — my first glimpse of what a camera could reveal beyond the naked eye.
July 2023 — Under Tanzania’s dark skies 🌌
Far from city lights, at Lake Natron, I watched the Milky Way rise above the surrounding mountains. Seeing the night sky in such pristine darkness sparked something new — I wanted to capture it.
July 2024 — A thesis and a telescope 🔭
I successfully defended my PhD, featuring an edited image of the Tanzanian Milky Way on its cover. In a fitting surprise, my family-in-law gifted me my first telescope that very day — the beginning of a new adventure.
July 2025 — First light ✨
Under the relatively dark skies of the Belgian Ardennes, I captured my first deep-sky objects using long exposures (image below). What began as a simple experiment quickly turned into a full-blown astrophotography obsession.
