Prathamesh Jaju, a 16-year-old teenager, who is an amateur Astro-photographer has spent 40 hours processing 50,000 images to stitch viral clearest moon picture and has left everyone awestruck with the picture he created.
He first took formal lessons of astronomy at the Jyotirvidya Parisanstha, India’s oldest amateur Astro club, around three years ago. Jaju has recently cleared his class 10th examination and telescopes and cameras have always stuck with him, both to view and capture celestial objects.
He started Astro-photography as a hobby and interest for space after watching Star Wars and few more thrilling space-based fiction movies. The pandemic caused lockdown last year clashed with his class X preparations and he could not explore outdoors. He stroked his chance finally in the beginning of this month, he made the most of it and the result was a viral image that changed his life, and made him famous for his work.
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Prathamesh is a student at Vidya Bhavan’s Public School, Pune. When asked about his feeling over the achievement he said that, his initial plan was to capture the moon in November last year, but due to his studies and board exams it kept him occupied. In May, he finally managed to set up the camera and telescope and shoot during the peak moon hours of May 3.
Make sure to check out the viral Instagram post, if you haven’t
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On this viral picture’s imagery he said-
“I used JVP’s telescope and shot some 38 videos featuring as many craters and every inch of the moon’s surface, as if taking its panoramic shot. Each of these videos had some 2,000 frames. Finally, 50,000 images were shortlisted and stitched together into one image. The colour variations in shades of blue and orange too were captured, which showcases the numerous mineral compositions on the lunar surface.”
He also added that Astronomy is a vast and difficult subject, and it has taught him patience. He says that, “I think I have more patience now than I did in the past and I was more focused to capture the right moments, handle and process volumes of data images.” For the moon image which he posted on Reddit and on his personal Instagram accounts, he handled images and videos that approximately amounted to 186GB for which he took about 40 hours to process the whole data in one image.
“An image with this level of detailing being captured by a non-professional photographer and an amateur astronomer is commendable.”
-said Aniruddha Deshpande, co-head at JVP.
Prathamesh also said that he often contacts well-known and established astro-photographers around the world. He seeks for their guidance and suggestions and also tips on how he can groom himself professionally.
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