Whilst I was on the Amant Siena Residency in Tuscany, Italy, I spent some time with a wonderful astronomer called Alessandro Marchini after attending his night sky event, ‘Stelle in Musica’ at Vitaleta Chapel. The event included live music, to ‘open us up to see the stars’ before being guided around the night sky with some very impressive lasers. Later, we looked through the telescopes and saw Saturn and Jupiter and it’s moons. It was fascinating seeing the other artists and Amant curators experiencing seeing these planets, some for the first time. We talked about our passion for natural darkness and the implication of light pollution and satellites on his research.

A couple of weeks later I went to visit Alessandro at the Università degli Studi di Siena where he is based. Alessandro is the director of the university’s Astronomical Observatory and he has published more than 100 papers regarding his research about asteroids, variable stars, extrasolar planets and optical monitoring of blazars. For his commitment to the popularisation of Astronomy, he has been honoured by having an asteroid (55196 Marchini) named after him.

The first time that I visited Alessandro in Siena, we took this magnificent picture of the moon from the observatory above us, at around midday. Because of the intense sunlight, it was not possible to get it 100% sharp. It was incredible to open the observatory to see the historic buildings of Siena and photograph the moon surrounded by darkness. It is definitely my favourite photograph of the moon.