How it Started

The Full Moon

Anyone that has joined the hobby of Astronomy knows that they had a beginning that made them join the hobby, whether it was first looking at Saturn through your little refractor, or visiting a planetarium, and I am here to tell about mine.

Many years back, my parents bought one of those department store refractors. I never really bothered to use it, and when I did try, the tripod would be unstable so I never really got a chance to see anything. A few years later in June 2018 we went on a hiking trip to Utah, and since I had heard about their dark skies, I wanted to try stargazing. My dad installed one of those free Stargazing Apps, and after dinner we left our hotel, drove a couple of miles and started stargazing. Sadly we weren't able to see the Milky Way(probably because we didn't go far enough from the town), but we still saw the most stars I had ever seen, and I loved it. Not long after the trip, I wanted to go stargazing again.

I live near Raleigh, North Carolina and the closest stargazing spot was the Outer Banks. So later that year, we went to the Outer Banks, which is where for the first time in my life, I saw the Milky Way Galaxy. It was in Hatteras, right next to the lighthouse, and the Milky Way was stunning, and I couldn't stop staring at it. We had bought our Canon camera along for the trip, and I tried to use to it to take pictures of the stars, but no matter what I tried, the photos I took did not show up in the LCD screen of the camera, it was just blank. Afterwards, I quit trying and just admired the sky. After that trip ended, I felt content with the experience, but for some reason I was somewhat disappointed that I wasn't able to take any pictures. Soon, an idea grew within me: I would learn to take pictures of the night sky.

In the beginning, I would just put my camera on a cheap tripod we owned and pointed it at the sky to take 30 second exposure of random parts of the sky, whether it was the Big Dipper or a bright star that I saw. Whenever we had a grill in the evenings during fall, I would take my camera out and point it at the sky. Soon though as winter came, I stopped going outside for a while. I took a long break from astrophotography and the next time that I picked it up was in the summer of 2019, when we went on a trip to India to visit family. I had done some research and I learned that my grandparents house was in a Bortle 4 light pollution zone, which was better than my Bortle 7 neighborhood. They had something like a small concrete balcony on the second floor, and after waiting weeks for a night without rain or cloudy skies, I finally got a chance. Except that I forgot one key thing: the tripod. Without the tripod, I couldn't take any good photos, but still I tried by putting the camera flat on the ground, and took a few photos before giving up.

My failed attempt at astrophotography in India.

Soon after that futile attempt, we went on trip to the Himalayas(which were really pretty by the way) before returning home to North Carolina. I was disappointed to say the least, I didn't really get a chance to take any good photos. After we got back home, I started doing more research. It wouldn't be long before I learned about stacking images, and editing them using a photo editor and in November that year of 2019, I first pointed my camera at Orion.

One of my first attempts at the Orion Nebula

My early images weren't that great, but I kept trying and trying until I finally started getting good images. And Since then, I have photographed a whole variety of galaxies and nebulae, bought a telescope for visual astronomy, and tried doing planetary photography. I am still a beginner, and I am still learning and improving but I decided it would be nice to share my story and experiences with others which is why I started this blog.

My first attempt at Andromeda