As you’ve probably already figured out, my name is Emil Andronic.
I was born in 1979 in Vaslui, a small town in Romania. Even though, for most of my childhood, the country was ruled by the Communist Party and many people had a hard life, I was a happy kid — always having fun and doing plenty of naughty things I wasn’t supposed to do.
Growing up, I attended the Economic High School in my hometown, followed by Gheorghe Asachi Technical University in Iași, where I studied the economics of electrical engineering.
In 1997, when I was in Year 12, I met Anca — the girl who would later become my wife and the mother of my two gorgeous daughters, Nina and Olivia.
We spent most of our university years together and, during our final years, with the help of a summer student programme, we came to England to pick strawberries and raspberries. We were hoping to earn enough money to buy a flat back home.
That, of course, didn’t happen. When the student programme finished, we moved to London to find work and continued saving for the flat we had always dreamed of.
In 2004, we got married, and the dream of going back home slowly began to fade. We started to build a life here and eventually decided to make England our new home.
In 2009, our first daughter, Nina, was born, and soon after we applied to become British citizens.
Six years later, in 2015, Olivia, our youngest daughter, came into the world. And here I am now — happily married, with two beautiful girls.
Somewhere along this journey — between countries, responsibilities, dreams that changed shape, and a new life built from scratch — I found my way back to the night sky. The same sky I used to look at as a child in Romania was still there above me in England. Different horizon, same stars.
Astrophotography became more than a hobby. It became a way of reconnecting with that curious child, of finding stillness in a busy life, and of reminding myself that no matter where we are in the world, we all share the same universe.
Thank you!
