Astrophotographer

TUNC TEZEL

MEET TUNC TEZEL…

WHO IS TUNC TEZEL?o Leading amateur astronomer and night sky photographero Born in Bursa, Turkey on June 2, 1977…Lives in Turkeyo Intrigued in the night sky since he was a little boyo First record of night observation on February 29, 1992 using very basic

equipmento Graduated with a civil engineering degree in 2002o Took photos with wide angled lenseso Loved to hike and be a part of nature to capture the night sky of his countryo Also interested in solar eclipses which ultimately brought him publicity and

publicationso Specialty capturing rare conjunctions and occulations of bright stars,

planets, and bright clusters near the moon.o Creates dramatic all sky and time-lapse photographs of meteors and motions

of cosmos

Venus Transit over Caspian Sea…

A distorted Sun with a "blemish" on its face rises over Caspian Sea in this multi-exposure of the 2012 Transit of Venus taken from Suvelan, near Baku, Azerbaijan. During the transit —the last one until 2117— Venus crossed between Earth and the Sun, so that observers could see a black dot gliding over the solar disk. The Sun appears squashed in this frame because more of its light is being bent by the thick layers of Earth's atmosphere (Tezel).

The Solar Eclipse…This is a time lapse series of Baily's Beads in the last 5 seconds leading to the second contact of the total solar eclipse, as seen from near Novosibirsk. Russia.Photo details: 8" Meade LX10 SCT, Canon EOS 5D camera at ISO 400 and 12 exposures of 1/2000 seconds each (Tezel).

Heavenly Window…Starry sky as photographed from the giant window of False Kiva in Canyonlands National Park in eastern Utah, USA. In the night sky constellation Scorpius and Sagittarius appear on the left (toward the bright central bulge of the galaxy) and planet Saturn is the brighter point on the right, just above bright star Spica in Virgo (Tezel).

Galactic Paradise…This heavenly view of the southern Milky Way arching in the sky is photographed from a remote island in the Pacific Ocean.On the left the brightest region in the band of Milky Way is the galactic central bulge toward the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius. Bright stars of Alpha and Beta Centauri, the Southern Cross, and the Coalsack dark nebula appear in the right along the fading Milky Way band. This pacific paradise in the southern hemisphere is Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands. This volcanic remnant has the distinction of being the oldest island in the Pacific dating back to about 18 million years ago. As noted by the photographer "I traveled to this 10 km wide island with only 500 Polynesian residents because the total solar eclipse path of 11 July 2010 was passing over this location“ (Tezel).

This photo was a winner of Astrophotographer of the Year 2011 competition of Royal Museums Greenwich in Earth and Space category.

WORKS CITED• "Solar Eclipse Gallery: August 1, 2008, Page 7." Solar Eclipse Gallery: August 1, 2008, Page 7.

SpaceWeather.com, n.d. Web. 02 June 2014.

• "TWAN Bio for "Tunc Tezel“ "TWAN Bio for "Tunc Tezel" TWAN, n.d. Web. 02 June 2014.