SPACE may be the final frontier, but for several years, exquisite fragments of it have been lovingly captured on film by Professor Greg Parker – from his back garden in Brockenhurst.

Now the best of those breath-taking sights have been published in a 155-page book: Star Vistas, a collection of the finest wide-field, deep-sky images taken by Professor Parker, many of which have been published in the Daily Echo.

Collaborating with his US business partner, computer programmer Noel Carboni, Prof Parker, Chair of Photonics at Southampton University, has given us a glimpse of things we could only have dreamed about.

He has certainly given Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope a run for its money, producing pin-sharp images of everything from the Monkey Head nebula (red, looks like a primate) and the Andromeda Galaxy (a vast Catherine wheel of rotating light-spots).

“It’s wonderful to share these images in a book,” he says.

“We printed 5,000 for the first run and I think most have sold.”

His favourite image in the book is the Veil nebula, a “sinuous, supernova explosion”.

Nebulae (from the Greek word for mist) are giant clouds of dust, hydrogen gas and plasma and the Veil is his favourite because: “Although it doesn’t look the most spectacular it’s probably technically the best picture in the book – it took more than 60 hours’ work to get that. That rates very highly with me even though it’s not the most impressive looking.”

For impressive, however, look no further than the Andromeda Galaxy, our near neighbour and the image chosen for the front of the book.

Star Vistas has been rapturously received, especially in America, where one reviewer said: “As a lover of deep sky photographs some of the images bring tears to my eyes... to understand that these are pictures of something that happened thousands of years ago and that the light is just now making its way through trillions of miles of space is incredible.”

The book also has three forwards; by Sir Patrick Moore, the late Arthur C Clarke and rock star Brian May, whose alternative existence – as Dr Brian May, astronomer – emerged when he was finally awarded the doctorate he took a break from studying for 38 years ago, after becoming involved with a band. You may have heard of them – they’re called Queen.

“Brian is a fantastic bloke,” enthuses Prof Parker.

The feeling must be mutual because Dr May leapt at the chance to write a forward to Star Vistas.

“Those of us over 30 grew up enthralled by the analogue images of the night skies captured on film by the biggest telescopes of the day,” says Dr May.

“Now, in the digital age, a few dedicated experts have been able to use the new technology to secure images of astronomical objects which surpass anything we have seen before.”

He says the Parker/Carboni collaboration has “effectively enabled nature to paint with a new brush” and that it was “as if we are seeing the sky for the first time with god-like eyes”.

“To me the special thrill of some of these pictures is that we find ourselves looking at a naked-eye star-field which is quite familiar to us (my favourite being the belt of Orion) but now we see spectacular coloured multitudes of stars, and billowing nebulosity which we never dreamed was there,” he says.

  • Star Vistas is published by Springer at £31.99, newforestobservatory.com