Aloke Kumar's Blog

  Astrophotography in India - V   Stacking As a child, I used to find NASA images hauntingly beautiful. Resplendent nebulae looked like carefully sprinkled gulal across the canvas of the universe; they were nothing short of mesmerizing. I am sure I was, but one of billions, who found inspiration from those photographs. As a grown up, I got a chance to work in labs where instead of peering up though telescopes, I was looking down the eyepiece of microscopes. The microscopic world can be just as mesmerizing as if it is a universe unto itself. The issues that astronomers face is often the same ones plaguing those who are trying to image the universe of microbes – poor signal to noise ratio, optical train effects etc. Over my years of experience with optical microscopy, I learnt important image processing techniques and basics. Little did I know then, that they would come in very handy when I started astrophotography. Deep-sky astrophotography if often an uphill battle against noise. Fo

   Astrophotography in India - IV   Equipment The idea of photographing nebulae and galaxies may sound daunting to many – and it is – your journey can start with a simple set of instruments. Perhaps, the ideal place to start is with a good DSLR camera, a good lens and a tripod. With this simple set, you may not get the best possible outcome, but it can give you a taste of what can be. Moreover with a bit of early hands-on experience, you can decide on which accessories will be best for you.  We will start from the most basic setup and keep adding the equipment as we actually did in our journey as well.  Essential Gear   A sturdy tripod A DSLR Camera Star-tracker Laptop/ Intervalometer to control your camera A mobile app to locate sky objects Let’s take a look at each one of them. 1. Tripod:  As has been explained earlier, no matter what kind of night sky object you want to capture you either will have to take long exposure shots or take shots with high magnification. Even with short ex

  Astrophotography in India - III   Essentials “I am extremely pleased that you have taken up the question of the bending of light with so much zeal”; the year was 1912 when Einstein wrote these words to Erwin Freundlich. Erwin was a young German astronomer, who had decided to embark on an expedition to make astronomical observations to confirm the theory of space-time being developed by Einstein. The targeted celestial event was to be the solar eclipse of 1914, which passed over Crimea, Russia. But fate had other plans for Erwin -   World War I broke out and he was arrested by the Russians. This was a boon in disguise as Einstein’s theory of ‘general relativity’ was still in the works and the theory developed till date contained errors. Einstein went on resolve the issues and crescendo came about in November 1915, when the famous physicist unveiled the corrected theory in a series of lectures. In UK, Arthur Edington became feverishly excited about this theory. After all, it meant upro