This was one of a number of photos I took one day at Dungeness in Kent, UK. Although it is the largest shingle beach in Europe it is best known in the area for its pair of nuclear power stations. Apart from these (which dominate the otherwise flat landscape) there are a few very small single story houses, a couple of pubs and a lighthouse. I went there with my family one Sunday in December 2006, it was a cold day but it was dry – perfect for wandering along the beach taking a few photos before heading back to the pub for fish and chips.

I got some nice photos of the sea and the beach, clouds in the sky etc, all standard stuff, but this is my favourite from that day. The tide was out and the formation of the beach meant that the steeply shelving pebbles soon gave way to a huge expanse of flat sand. On the sand I spotted this pebble and had a closer look. I took the photo because I liked the way the water flowing around the pebble had carved out the sand around it, it wasn’t until I looked at the photo on my computer that I really noticed the pattern on the pebble. It reminded me of some of the photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope – the orange area looks to me like one of those clouds of star-forming gas that NASA reliably tells us are billions of light years across, and we are seeing them as they were hundreds of millions of years ago.

So, over to you – Hubble simulacrum or am I just going mad?

Taken with a Nikon D1X and a Tokina 18 – 35mm lens at 31mm. Shutter speed 1/160th sec, Aperture f/5.6

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