This project began towards the end of 2016 as an attempt to combine landscape photography with the beautiful starry skies of regions where there is little or no light pollution.

It was not easy to begin with, mainly due to my lack of elementary knowledge of astronomy, particularly about where in the sky and when I could combine an Andean landscape with the arc of the Milky Way, our galaxy.

With a little studying and the enormous help of an app (Photopills), things started to get easier and the heavens began to reveal their story. Or rather, I began to understand a little of the history the “universe” was telling me.

I soon learned to recognize certain constellations, the planets visible to the naked eye, the galactic center and, visible to the south, oh, wonder of wonders, a couple of galaxies beyond the edges of the Milky Way known as the Magellanic Clouds.

I followed this up with a series of in-depth readings on astrophysics, on the origin of the universe, on the formation, life and death of the stars and on the origin of all those elements that make up the galaxies, the stars, our planet and even ourselves. I was moved, and still am, to learn that quite simply “we are stardust”. Such is the title of a wonderful book on the origin of the cosmos by José María Maza Sancho (Editorial Planeta, 2017).