A NEWCASTLE Emlyn primary school pupil has been shortlisted in the prestigious Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2020 – a remarkable third time in a row he has achieved the accolade.

Ten-year-old Casper Kentish, from Ponthirwaun and a pupil at Ysgol y Ddwylan, has qualified for the young photographer category with his shot entitled ‘Clouds Across the Moon’.

But the entry - taken on his Apple iPad linked to a Skywatcher 200P telescope - which caught the judge’s eye was not what he was originally intending.

Mum Jodie said: “Casper had been planning to take an image of a thin sliver of moon for more than a year. He wanted it to be a very slight hint of moon shape against a flat blue background.

“Unfortunately, every time the moon was in the right phase during daylight, the weather was so bad that he couldn't capture the image he was after. He didn't want a night shot of the moon as the dark portion ends up with what is called ‘earthshine’ where the light from the earth reflects up onto the moon and illuminates the rest of the moon disc.

“The final opportunity for him to get the picture he wanted was just a few days before the competition closed and there was nothing else he had in mind or as back-up.”

On the day he got his shot, the weather started out really badly. Casper set his telescope up around the south-east side of the house among trees that obscured most of the view. The sky was really cloudy but the clouds were moving quite fast.

He tracked the position of the moon using Stellarium - a free computer program that charts the position of celestial bodies throughout the sky both day and night - and about three hours after starting he finally got a clear shot of the moon.

“While he was outside waiting for the sky to clear he started singing to himself a song by the Rah Band called ‘Clouds across the Moon’,” said Jodie.

“He had heard it playing many times in the car on the way to and from school, so he decided to keep shooting as the clouds began to cover the moon up again. He also took some other experimental shots using different coloured filters.

“He entered some of the experimental ones alongside his clear shot and the one of the clouds drifting back. The shot he had planned wasn't chosen, nor were his experimental shots.

“However, there was something in his ‘Clouds across the Moon" the judges liked and he was shortlisted for the third consecutive year.”

The family is hoping to build an observatory at the back of the house so that Casper has a permanent place he can set up his equipment and develop his techniques for astrophotography.

“He has a few different ideas for future photographs that would require upscaling his equipment a bit,” added Jodie.

“One of his plans is to get some long exposure shots of the upcoming Perseid meteor shower should there be a decent display. He tried to shoot the Lyrids back in April but in the eight hours he spent outside he only saw six and one fireball in a completely different place to where his camera was pointing!”

Now in its 12th year, the Royal Observatory’s Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year has broken the record number of entries once more, receiving over 5,200 entries from enthusiastic amateurs and professional photographers, taken from almost 70 countries across the globe. Go to www.rmg.co.uk/astrophoto

The winners will be announced on September 10. The winning photographs, alongside a selection of shortlisted images, will be exhibited in the National Maritime Museum from October 2020.