Capturing beauty of Orion Nebula

Hello. Nebula is one of the spectacular sight in a night sky. Nebula basically means a cloud of dust and hydrogen. Nebula is a place where stars are born. Incidentally some nebulae are formed after stars have died. When a star is burst in its last stage, it forms a nebula in surrounding region. In a way, Nebulae represent total journey of stars. One of the nebulae is Orion Nebula. Watching it through a telescope is a great experience.

Recently, I captured this beautiful nebula through my binocular and my smartphone and still I am not able to believe how it is captured! The cloudy region of the nebula, its expanse and even reddish colour highlighting massive interactions between the young stars and Hydrogen atoms! All this is captured through my small equipments. I am learning astrophotography.

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This image is the result of a stack of 635 frames of 2 seconds each. Total integration time is over 21 minutes. Every frame had ISO 1600. This is captured from Pimpri- Chinchwad. I used headphones as a remote button to avoid shaking the mobile while pressing the capture button. After every 20 seconds (around 10 images), I had to re-centre the nebula in the binocular to maintain proper alignment. I used Sequator for stacking and DeepSkycamera app for clear view. I captured the photos through Pro mode of my mobile Motorola G57. The binocular- Celestron 15 X 70. Used my 30 year old tripod! After stacking, just fine tuned the image in Snapseed. With just 21 minutes integration time, the result is wonderful!

Mars in Beehive cluster!!

Hello. The night sky never fails to amaze us. It always has spectacular scenes. The stars, constellations, planets, clusters, nebulae, galaxies, Sun and Moon are there. But apart from that, there are beautiful scenarios also. Around a month ago, we saw Venus occulted by the Moon and two crescents together. Then we saw Regulus star close to the Moon. On the dawn of 3 November, at around 2 am Jupiter will be occulted by the Moon as seen from South India. From rest of India, the Moon and Jupiter would look so close. 

One of such incident is being observed since last two days. Reddish planet Mars is just in the Beehive cluster. In cities, we cannot clearly observe this cluster just with our eyes. But with a binocular or a telescope, this beautiful sight could be seen in the dawn sky. For next 2-3 days also Mars will be close to Beehive cluster. Through a smartphone, this scene can be photographed even in cities.

On the dawn of 11th October, Mars was slightly above the cluster. There were clouds also. So this scene was not seen that clearly. But today, on 12th October, the sky was clear in the dawn at 4 am. Binocular revealed the red planet Mars entered in the middle of the Beehive cluster. Its movement in 24 hours was also clearly revealed. The reddish planet and some red stars in the cluster! By attaching my smartphone to the Binocular, I could capture its photograph. When we capture faint stars in the sky, we need to take several frames and stack them together through a software. I took 420+ frames of this scene and then stacked. Its integration gave this photo. Each photo captured the light for 2 seconds and so 420 photos totally captured light of around 14 minutes. This way, we can observe faint stars, clusters and nebulae also. Photos taken by me can be seen on my channel.

 

Karve Days 11: Study tour to remote villages for PRA

✪ Research is a simile for life- Things will happen for everyone
✪ PRA- Participatory Rural Appraisal
✪ Studying villages and social analysis
✪ Villages and hamlets in remote Pune district
✪ Village transact and mobilization walks
✪ Satisfaction to take desired efforts for field work

2008 March! Winter was slowly giving way to the Summer. The peak hour of submissions and deadlines. Slowly every task moved towards its completion. Everyone's research went further. For me, research felt like a simile for life. The research work- its all stages. Right from finalization of the proposal, its tool design, pretesting, data collection till thesis writing. This is really like life stages. Everyone’s research is going to be submitted. Those stages will be completed. Situations would be different. There will be differences. But the things will happen. When I realized this, things became mild and the stress reduced. There will be a delay, but it will happen.  

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Karve Days 10: Survey work in displaced villages near Narmada river

✪ College gathering and fun with friends
✪ Research deadline is missed, finally!
✪ Villages near Narmada river!
✪ Badvani and 1 Rs- poha
✪ Heart of the hostel- Santosh Rathod

January 2008! Time of the college gathering. The gathering was a relief from the stress of all submissions and tasks! I could enjoy it well as I was sufficiently socialized by hostel friends since last one and a half year. Friends did many performances- the tradition attire, traditional songs and dances! Many wonderful performances were there. Povada, Bharud, folk songs. I remember the attire of Avinash Ravate. Of course, by then he had lost his long hair, like Dhoni of 2006! The new faces- the first years- they were quite known by this time and they also performed well. Everyone was so energetic and zestful. Sandeep Barve's songs- everyone liked them. And the last jamming session! We hostel boys had a jumping dance! Even after feeling tired, we did not stop. And there were those ones who were dancing with minimal movement so as to avoid fatigue! Those were the days!

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