Amateur Astronomy (hologram)
This work is part of series influenced by our residency in the 1980s at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, then based at Herstmonceux Castle, Sussex.

The image of a ‘star’ that we present in Amateur Astronomy is an optical phenomenon, an ‘Airy’s Disc’, named after the Royal Astronomer who first explained it. This fuzzy disc with rings around it is present, but not noticeable, whenever an astronomer looks at a star through an optical telescope. In fact, you would need a high level of magnification to actually see the rings. For us, this optical form, taken from the history of astronomy, links it to the medium of holography. Through our ‘amateur telescope’ you do see the bright disc surrounded by rings, as we reveal the ‘optical truth’ hidden by the telescope maker’s art. Our disc is made from a laser beam diffracted through a pinhole in our studio, but it is mathematically identical to every ‘star’ ever imaged by astronomers.

The “Airy’s Disc” is named after Sir George Airy. Airy wrote the first full theoretical explanation in 1835 “On the Diffraction of an Object-glass with Circular Aperture".

We are playing with the concept of what is real and concrete—an optical phenomenon—and what is an actual star––if only you could see it more closely. Our telescope is a sawn drain pipe. Are we a looking at a nineteenth-century star?

Susan Gamble and Michael Wenyon
Wenyon & Gamble
November 2026