About Me
Marco Failli, student and astrophotographer
My name is Marco Failli, I was born in 1998 and currently studying Mechanical Engineering at the University of Florence.
I grew up in the outskirts of Prato (a city close to Florence) under a heavily polluted sky that never recalled my attention until I turned fifteen when a friend of mine gave me a small telescope (114 mm f/8 Newton on an EQ1 mount) that used to belong to a relative of him: this really appreciated present made my endless voyage in the universe begin.
Due to my technical education background, the interest in knowing how to use such an instrument and its working principle was really high, and that is exactly what I did during the following months, helped by my dad and the huge amount of information available on the internet.
On March 20th, 2015 I shot my very first astronomical image, capturing the partial solar eclipse that was showing in the Italian sky that day. At that moment I finally understood that astrophotography definitely was something I wanted to master.
It did not take long until I realized I needed a proper tracking mount to compensate for Earth’s rotation, and a used SkyWatcher EQ6 was the best thing I could afford and that soon allowed me to capture my first deep sky image: M27 The Dumbbell Nebula. Since then my interest kept growing and growing, learning more about astronomy and astrophotography. The more I knew, the better I wanted my photos to look, making errors, buying and selling equipment to reach an impossible “ultimate setup” to capture my best pictures ever.
Almost every clear night, my scope “dances” on my balcony chasing faint stars and capturing stunning images of outer space. Galaxies, nebulas and star clusters are my targets of choice, which I try to isolate from the awfully polluted sky of the city I live in. The chances to go and find a dark sky location are very few and far between but when possible, what you take back home the following day is not just an image but rather the memory of the adventure you lived to capture it.
Long drives, friends, cold nights, wild animals and a sky full of stars are the fundamental ingredients for the recipe of a photo up to the show the universe offers us.
