While there may be many space enthusiasts and photography aficionados, not many can do what this guy from Bhopal has managed to achieve.
Vedant Pratap Singh Jadon, an astrophotographer, clicked 4000 shots of the Orion Nebula and using a technique called Stacking, reproduced a stunning image. What makes his effort even more special is that he did not have a high-end professional camera to do so. Instead, he used an entry-level DSLR, Nikon D3100, with a 70-300 mm telephoto lens and a cheap tripod.
He posted a single exposure snap alongside the final image rendered by merging the 4000 shots and the contrast is just breathtaking.
Check out the images here.
“Since I couldn't afford a Telescope or an expensive Star Tracker, I took almost 4000 exposures of The Orion Nebula over 3 nights with just an entry level camera from Bhopal,” Vedant Pratap wrote on the Reddit post.
He wrote that to capture the Orion Nebula, which is about 1344 Light Years far from Earth, one would normally need a motorized tracking mount or at least find a dark place with a high Bortle scale rating, a scale that tells the night sky's brightness.
“I couldn't afford either of those things, the latter partly due to the current pandemic, mostly because I'm lazy. So I just took all these shots from my roof instead,” he said. “The fact that I could even get some details on the Nebula from a Bortle Class 6-7 sky was enough for me,” he added.
The photographer said that beautiful night sky shots are possible even without spending “your entire month's salary on buying expensive gear.” To grab the incredible picture of the night sky, he used a Bahtinov Mask, a device to focus small astronomical telescopes, a simple star chart app, an image processor and retouched a bit using a photoshop app.
The image he posted is winning a lot of praise on social media. One Reddit user commented, “Wow! I follow a few space-related subreddits but none of them go into this level of detail and links to actual products/techniques. Very cool to see that you can actually do some good astrophotography with crappy cameras. I was wondering what telescope to buy because I don’t care about looking at nearby planets. I only care for those far away nebulae and galaxies.”
“My god, my brain just exploded. Great job OP! Especially with the detailed explanation in the comment,” wrote another user.
“Modern solutions! At first glance, I thought someone from space research posted this. Really impressive buddy. Try doing the same for the moon,” said a third user.