00 The Colors of the Deep Sky

Traveling along the California coast with the family, a nice September evening in 2007, I stopped the car at my wife's request to take a look at the sky, and neither of us could believe our eyes when we saw the Milky Way for the first time. My first instinct was to photograph it with a simple camera, and although the result left much to be desired, I was very intrigued... Can someone like me take pictures of galaxies and nebulae? Once at home, an internet session and I was hooked, for life. With this beautiful anecdote begins the exhibition The Colors of the Deep Sky, an exhibition of 16 astronomical photographs taken by the Spanish astrophotographer Rogelio Bernal Andreo. In them, Rogelio shows us, with the help of the most advanced photographic technology and image processing, the great diversity of colors and shapes present in the sky and invisible to our eyes. The photographs, taken between 2009 and 2017 from California, show us bright stars like Sirius or Antares, colorful nebulae like Orion or Trifid, distant galaxies that we catalog as neighbors like Andromeda or M87, and even the very heart of the galaxy we inhabit, the Milky Way. This is a unique exhibition, a visual pleasure that makes us wonder about the line between art and science. Undoubtedly, Rogelio offers a visual experience that transports us to the colorful spectacle of the deep sky.