Astrophotographer Ruslan Merzlyakov (instagram.com/rmerzlyakov/) paid a visit to the SONG telescope, located at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife and captured some amazing photos.

Ruslan (23 years old), born in Latvia, is a former student at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University and currently studies Natural and Cultural Communication at UCN in Hjørring.

Much of his time he spends finding beautiful landscapes near Hjørring, which together with beautiful astronomical phenomena can be combined to create masterpieces!

He has won several awards for his pictures. Among other things "Astronomy Photographer of the Year" in 2018 and 2019 and many of his pictures have been shown by NASA, National Geographic, Royal Museums Greenwich, Visit Denmark, Visit Norway, TV2, Digital Foto etc.

In 2016, when Ruslan was a student at IFA, he first contacted the astronomy group about a possible collaboration. He wanted to take pictures in connection with some of the projects in the group at the institute. This year, in collaboration with Mads Fredslund Andersen, this resulted in a visit to the Teide Observatory and the SONG telescope in Tenerife.

Here, Ruslan in the middle of June captured the SONG telescope in great harmony with the Milky Way, which almost seems to be spewed from the Teide volcano itself.
The picture taken with a Canon EOS 6D DSLR, equipped with an IR filter, on 24/6 is a mosaic of a total of 20 images. One image that captures the foreground with an exposure time of 30 seconds and 19 images each of 60 seconds put together to form the amazing sky background. The camera with a Samyang 24mm f / 1.4 lens was mounted on an iOptron skytracker, which compensates for Earth's rotation during exposures.

In another picture, Ruslan has captured the beautiful flowers in the landscape in front of SONG while the Milky Way is hanging just above the observatory. The bright "star" just above the center of the Milky Way to the right in the picture is the planet Jupiter and the reddish / yellowish star to the right of Jupiter is Antares. This image is composed of 4 individual images each of 60 seconds and taken on 19/6.

Ruslan will in the future work as an area developer with a focus on astroturism on Møn and Nyord and also has a desire to expand with visits to Tenerife.

These photos and more are available with proper image credits from song.au.dk/press/