Photos: What it takes to capture the cosmos

India’s hobby astro-photographers have been busy in the pandemic. From rooftops, balconies and windows, they’re using time, patience, powerful lenses and gadgets that adjust for solar glare and the Earth’s rotation to render stunning images of the sky. Take a look at the universe through their lenses.

Updated on: Jul 24, 2021 4:53 PM IST

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Astro-photography is a niche in which photographers try to capture intricate details and close-ups of stars, planets and even deep-space objects like nebulas. Soumyadeep Mukherjee’s celestial muse is the sun. Here, exhaust fumes from the plane’s engine create the illusion of licking flames, in an image captured in the afternoon. (Photo by Soumyadeep Mukherjee)

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Using a DSLR camera, telephoto lens and camera filter, Soumyadeep Mukherjee, 27, has been documenting activity on the sun for over 200 days. This image, a composite of images taken over 150 days, shows the movement of sun spots, the coolest areas on the burning star. (Photo by Soumyadeep Mukherjee)

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Nihal Amin, 26, has captured the Milky Way from numerous locations across the country, aiming for the sharpest, clearest renderings. This image was taken from Motigudda in Karnataka, a Bortle 2 location in the Western Ghats (meaning that light pollution is low; Bortle 1 is the lowest end of the scale). (Photo by Nihal Amin)

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Prathamesh Jaju joined one of India’s oldest amateur astronomy clubs, Jyotirvidya Parisanstha in Pune, at 13. Three years on, his astro-photography set-up includes a camera, tracker, telescope and tripod, which he uses to focus on elements within the solar system. “I’ve shot all the planets except Mercury, because it sets too early, and Neptune, because it’s too far and too small for my set-up,” he says. (Photo by Prathamesh Jaju)

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This image of the moon took Prathamesh Jaju a total of 40 hours to put together. One clear night, he looked up and realised the moon seemed clearer than usual. He divided his view of it into 38 parts and took a total of 50,000 short still videos of the different areas, magnified. He then stacked and stitched the frames together, creating this image that went viral and was written about in the mainstream media. The colours are caused by mineral deposits on the moon. (Photo by Prathamesh Jaju)

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The farthest object that Avinash Singh, 29, has photographed is the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light years away. He took this image from the Manora peak in Nainital, Uttarakhand. An astrophysicist, Singh got into astro-photography last year, and quickly developed a love for shooting deep-sky objects. “Andromeda and the Milky Way are on a collision course that will occur 4.5 billion years from now,” says Singh. “They are rushing towards one another at the rate of 112 km per second.” Once they merge, they will form an elliptical galaxy that will live another two billion years, he says. (Photo by Avinash Singh)

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Deep-sky objects are those that exist beyond the solar system. Seen here is the Orion Quadruplet (comprising the Orion, Running Man, Horsehead and Flame nebulas) as captured by Avinash Singh from Nainital. The Orion Nebula (extreme right) is one of the brightest, nebulae visible to the naked eye. It is the closest star formation region, about 1,300 light years away. “The variety of objects you can image is what motivates me to shoot the deep sky,” he says. (Photo by Avinash Singh)