The most people will see when they look up at the night sky in Singapore are some faint specks of light in the dark.

But one hobbyist astrophotographer here has been snapping shots of celestial objects millions of light years away.

Shooting from Punggol

Lester Neo's interest in astronomy was piqued in 2015 following a visit to the Singapore Science Centre where he bought a basic tabletop telescope for around S$200.

He has since upgraded to the Seestar, a smart telescope that can automatically shoot when a target is selected.

In an Apr. 8 Facebook post, Neo shared a stunning image of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy.

According to NASA, it is also known as the M83 spiral galaxy, and is located approximately 15 million light years away.

This is one of the brightest spiral galaxies in the night sky.

"So what you are seeing [in the photo] was the lights emitted from the galaxy 15 million years ago," Neo explained.

Neo stated in his post that although Singapore suffers from light pollution, there is still a possibility of imaging distant galaxies on cloudless days.

He told Mothership that the photo of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy was taken from a sky garden atop a Punggol HDB block near where he stays.

The final image that he posted online was the culmination of over 1,400 stacked images taken over 10 hours spent across two nights at the sky garden.

"So have to make efforts to go to the sites for shooting each night, face night heat, wind, mosquitos and bursting bladder for five hours each night," Neo elaborated.

Here are some of the other things he has photographed, which include other galaxies and nebulae.

A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space, which can often be found in the space between stars, known as the interstellar medium.

Top photo courtesy of Lester Neo