If you’ve read my other blog post about light pollution filters, you know I love them and they work really well especially with Deep sky images. Like all other products in the market, there are several brands that make the same product (similar), one of the companies that make these awesome light pollution filters is Optolong Recently, Optolong reached out to me and was asking about my experience with light pollution filters and they mentioned about one of their latest filters “L-Pro” filter, The description sounds good for the same, but you can’t tell unless you use it. I wasn’t in the market ..read more

I’ve been attempting to shoot a proper timelapse video of the glowworms at McLaren Falls and every time I’ve been there to shoot, something went wrong, but I finally managed to get some decent footage over the weekend. I’ve fallen for this location ever since I first saw them, I’ve been there for hours staring and being fascinated by these little creatures of the dark. This time, I took my little chair, some food and drinks and just sat there as my camera did the painstaking task of shooting. It was funny when people walked around the tracks and looked at me as if I was some sort of lunatic, j ..read more

Often when you talk about astrophotography, first things that come to mind are Long Exposure and High ISO. For most of the time this is true but then there are times when you cannot use both at the same time and sometimes you just have to stick to short exposure times. Sometimes, the images produced with a short exposure will not have much detail of the sky, but if you are a dark site, it is sufficient enough to capture those details. I recently visited East Cape lighthouse, which is the easternmost point of New Zealand to capture the milky way rising next to the lighthouse. This was my first ..read more

I have been using the Astronomik CLS Filter for the last few years to get rid of light pollution in my astrophotos. The filter has done a really good job so far and have given me some good results, specially when doing deep sky astrophotography. I was planning on modifying my Canon 6D for astrophotography, so it is more sensetive to H-alpha. But before I could completely modify my camera, i wanted to give some other astronomik filters a try. Specially the UHC Filter and 12nm Ha Filter as these filters only allow narrow wavelengths (specially the 12nm Halpha.) Below is a comparison for the CLS ..read more

I recently uploaded an image of LMC which is probably one of the best images i’ve processed so far. As i was processing the image, i decided to record the process, so i can upload that as a tutorial as in the past few people have asked about the processing. I used pixinsight for processing and photoshop for final touches. Keep a look around as i upload more videos. Here is a 11 part video series that shows the processing workflow ..read more

The Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of all the dwarf satellite galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, it’s tiny in comparison with the Milky Way’s 200-plus billion stars – the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is thought to contain around 30 billion stars, Persian astronomer Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi wrote about the ‘clouds’ over a thousand years ago, but it wasn’t until explorer Ferdinand Magellan travelled south and wrote about them in the 14th century that their existence became common knowledge – and it’s his name they bear. The Large Magellanic Cloud seems to orbit the Milky Way, bound by its gr ..read more

How much does the moon affect when capturing the night sky ? Here is a comparison of what the camera sees when the moon is out and when the moon has set. The night / morning i captured this image, It was Waxing Gibbous moon with 95% Illumination. Moonset was in an hour and that is when i started doing a timelapse to capture that smooth transition from bright to dark sky. The images i used in the comparison are straight out of camera (SOOC) without any editing. The botton one is the first frame and the top one is the last frame of the timelapse. Exif: 15sec, ISO 1600, f2.8 at 24mm on Canon 6D ..read more

This is a short video of M51 processing. A friend of mine “Rahul Ramtekar” from Dhruva Skywatchers Association asked me to process this beautiful image of M51 galaxy shot from a Dobsonian telescope. I did not have DSS so this set of image was stacked in PixInsight, but any stacking software will do. The image was taken by Rahul Ramtekar of Dhruva Skywatchers Group – Nagpur, while observing through the 10″ Go-To Dob at Sillari, Pench with Pravin Jat. Canon EOS 60D + Skywatcher 10″ Synscan Dob Alt-Azimuth Tracked 20 images Stacked in DSS + Postprocessing in PS 29Sec, f/4.8, ISO 1600 19th March 2 ..read more

It was such an honor when the editor at UNO. Magazine asked me if I would like a feature in the magazine. Who could say no to it. This was going to be first magazine feature and really did not know what to write about myself, struggled to start with and then went back and asked the editor for some tips. She suggested writing a photo essay and that’s when I decided to write a short essay on my 4 year journey into astrophotography. After sorting a lot of images and proofing the article, it was finally the time when the article went under the press. Freshly printed, i got to see the final result ..read more

Carina Nebula is a region in the sky much brighter and larger (at least 4 times larger) than the famous Orion Nebula (M42), yet is not as famous. This is probably because of the location of the object which is circumpolar south of latitude 30°S, but is never visible north of latitude 30°N. It is a treat for people in the south and especially for astrophotographers. During the summer, we have Orion up in the sky and as the winter comes, it’s time for Carina to be up nice and high. This not so famous Carina Nebula is an extreme stellar nursery, a home to one of the youngest known star clust ..read more