A 16-year-old Takes The ‘Clearest Images Of The Moon’!
In Pune, India, a curious teenager turned his house into an observatory gateway to the cosmos. Prathamesh Jaju, a 16-year-old high school student, clicked the sharpest pictures of the moon to date with the assistance of a small telescope and a camera. What began as a personal challenge turned into an epic feat in amateur astrophotography. Prathamesh spent nights in search of the perfect shot, playing with angles and settings. It took him 5 hours to take the photographs and another 40 hours to edit the final clear picture. Let’s dive in to see his mindblowing captures.
How Prathamesh Jaju Captured the ‘Clearest Images of the Moon’
With a Celestron telescope and an eye for detail, Prathamesh set up the perfect capture of the moon. He gathered over 55,000 images over many nights, a continuous array of snapshots of every unfolding nuance on the face of the moon. The work required plenty of time and effort. He combined the thousands of images in a process called ‘stacking.’ In the stacking process, multiple images are layered to reduce noise and enhance details to create ‘one high-definition image.’
The techniques he used allowed him to show the craters, ridges, and valleys of the moon in striking detail. The capture gives a three-dimensional, textured feel that was tangible. According to Jaju, this is his best work. Fine-tuning of the details that we can clearly see in the picture is a result of softwares like RegiStax and IMPGG. For alignment, he used softwares like AutoStakkert.
Besides, Prathamesh applied HDR imaging to the shot in capturing the moon’s different levels of brightness. Combining shots from higher and lower exposures, HDR imaging allows him to show the extreme contrasts of the lunar landscape-from well-lit highlands down to shadow-filled craters.
“On May third, I went on my terrace at around 1 p.m. and took multiple shots of the moon on different portions and stitched them together. I have a telescope which is automated, it tracks the objects according to the earth’s rotation, I used it to capture the moon’s movements. This is my most detailed and clearest shot and my best work of the third quarter Mineral Moon. I captured around 50,000+ images over 186 GigaBytes of Data which almost killed my laptop with the processing.”
Prathamesh said on Reddit.
Jaju photographed what is known as the third-quarter mineral Moon
The clear pictures taken by Jaju depicts the third-quarter of the moon and a mineral moon. The third-quarter Moon is the seventh phase of the moon. It appears around midnight (12 AM) and sets around 12 PM. It is also referred to as ‘Half moon’ as the sun rays illuminate half of the moon.
The photo has also captured a “Mineral Moon.” Moon has materials on its surface that are referred as regolith. These materials have subtle colour differences according to the mineral composition in a particular area. The Mineral moon is a term refers to the capturing of difference in orange and blue colours due to the different concentration of minerals in the regolith.
Conclusion
Prathamesh Jaju’s project is something more than his personal achievement. It shows how much one is able to do with curiosity and determination. He has been able to achieve the clearest images of the moon to teach a lesson to young science enthusiasts. If one has passion and perseverance, the stars are well within reach. It is the curiosity and determination of fellows like Prathamesh that will take us further into space.
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