[Axe77]

Originally Posted by graaja

Astrophotography Event at Coorg:

I carried two mounts, two telescopes, a few cameras and accessories. And we were three traveling in the car. Folded the 60% of rear seat and the boot gobbled up all the equipment. There was an extremely bad stretch of road between Hassanur and Chamrajnagar. For about 8km, the road literally did not exist and it was like offroading. Though the car managed all the bad roads without scraping, it did scrape on a couple of humongous speed breakers. This car never ceases to surprise me in all my adventures

Amazing post Graaja and incredible to learn of yet another hobby that you pursue with your trademark commitment and attention.

This post literally defines why the GT is so perfect for folks like you and me. I love taking it to every kind of place through every kind of road / non road that is there and the GT never disappoints. This last weekend, we too went to Panchgani (all proper roads on this one) but the car as usual in 60 seat dropped mode, managed to gobble the usual space saver, my bicycle (with only front wheel removed!); a bike pump, a michelin air compressor, two medium suitcases, two laptop bags, one bike helmet bag (needed it in Pune), at least 3-4 other small hand bags and three passengers. And by no stretch was it loaded to the hilt. Its the epitome of being the most practical luxury car.

Here is a pic from our drive with the boot loaded up. You can see bits and bobs of the yellow Ceepo with the aerobars and hydration unit sticking out.
But the rest of the bike is not that clear. My son is actually sitting in the back seat but not visible in the pic.

[graaja]

Originally Posted by Dr.AD

Absolutely fantastic photos Graaja! Both of the 3T and the deep space objects :-)

The photographs of the galaxies and the nebulae are really fantastic...

Also, great to see you could carry all your equipment so easily in the 3GT. This would never have been possible in the 3 sedan. You are really putting the 3GT to the best possible use.

Thank you so much for the kind words Dr.AD. I should thank you for your suggestion to get a 3GT when I was looking for the 3 series. You were one of the very few who suggested the 3GT. I remember I had mentioned it was not in my budget. But that seed you had sowed in my mind did bear fruit in the end

Originally Posted by androdev

Wow. I once bought a telescope to impress my kids but I could not graduate beyond the moon :-) I would have guessed these photos to be from Hubble/NASA!

Thank you so much for your kind words! If you want to pursue this hobby again, let me know. Will definitely help you get past the moon Observing all those celestial objects and knowing about the size and distances makes one feel so small that sometimes the day to day problems and stresses become irrelevant.

Also I am relieved to know you eat cake and bread. Lol.

Ha ha. I am a mere moral with many vices - cakes happen to be one of them!

Originally Posted by Axe77

Amazing post Graaja and incredible to learn of yet another hobby that you pursue with your trademark commitment and attention.

This post literally defines why the GT is so perfect for folks like you and me. I love taking it to every kind of place through every kind of road / non road that is there and the GT never disappoints. This last weekend, we too went to Panchgani (all proper roads on this one) but the car as usual in 60 seat dropped mode, managed to gobble the usual space saver, my bicycle (with only front wheel removed!); a bike pump, a michelin air compressor, two medium suitcases, two laptop bags, one bike helmet bag (needed it in Pune), at least 3-4 other small hand bags and three passengers.

Thank you so much for the kind words Axe77.

Yes. The 3GT is one of the most practical cars. It can do all the regular work of carrying people and luggage and at the same time be sporty to satisfy that enthusiast.

And your post reminds me to get back into Triathlon training. It has been a long break due to that plantar fasciitis injury. I am just not finding the mood to get back.

[adi_sun]

Jaw dropping photographs !!
The gear in the first few pictures all packed up made me thing what dinosaur are you packing !! Do share some more photographs and some details on what goes in to get these clicks; if not in this thread a new thread would be helpful.

Your Beemer is pretty versatile and looks smashing too , cheers!

[slayer23]

Fantastic post. Learned a lot of things across topics.

The telescope setup looks quite challenging! Inspiring to see the passion

[carthick1000]

Originally Posted by Axe77

My son is actually sitting in the back seat but not visible in the pic.

This is worrying to see such unsafe pictures. Every small object sitting unsecured is a projectile in a crash. No matter how many airbags you have, it is not safe at all. Your kids wont appreciate you if they see this picture, in the future for putting them in such situations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE8sLDkwT_Q

[DriverNo.420]

This is some existential crisis inducing stuff! Mind bending pictures sir, really well done. Can you observe betelgeuse with it? It is not a perfect sphere which is very weird for such a big star. Astronomers say that there is a chance that we might get to see it's supernova in this lifetime. Thats is, if it went supernova 650-700 years ago

[Axe77]

Originally Posted by carthick1000

This is worrying to see such unsafe pictures. Every small object sitting unsecured is a projectile in a crash. No matter how many airbags you have, it is not safe at all. Your kids wont appreciate you if they see this picture, in the future for putting them in such situations.

https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=dE8sLDkwT_Q

Thanks for sharing. This is a great point and while I have often belted up some bags it’s been more to keep them steady.

I will definitely be mindful of loading permutations in future to ensure that loose stuff is buckled in or firmly at the boot end of it.

In the current pic the bike is actually locked in between the boot and back seat. But the wheel would have been better off locked into boot or locked in behind front passenger perhaps.

We actually take our safety very seriously. Always buckled at the back too,even in the city and had a car seat till he completely outgrew it.

[AKSarkar1]

Loved this thread! Awesome to see your BMW being actually used and not just sitting in a garage, kudos to you for that!

The Estoril blue colour with those rims make the car an absolute stunner! Do keep posting more photos of that beauty!

[Arjun Bharadwaj]

The last I remember seeing these kind of photos was probably in a science textbook or an encyclopedia and most times I used to think these galaxy photos are imaginary/theoretical.

I'm amazed how the dark night sky can have so many vibrant colors and patterns when seen in the right way.

[itwasntme]

Originally Posted by carthick1000

This is worrying to see such unsafe pictures. Every small object sitting unsecured is a projectile in a crash. https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=dE8sLDkwT_Q

Great video and a real eye-opener. I recall during our UK stints, we had loaded my then first gen A-Class (the moose test fail one) with a bunch of furniture from IKEA. Even though our infant son was securely belted in to his child seat and the furniture flatpacks were securely jammed in, I was cautioned by a friendly Birmingham copper to be careful when driving with such heavy outsize loads!

Also reminded of this:

https://youtu.be/mKHY69AFstE

Originally Posted by Axe77

Thanks for sharing. This is a great point and while I have often belted up some bags it’s been more to keep them steady.
I will definitely be mindful of loading permutations in future to ensure that loose stuff is buckled in or firmly at the boot end of it.

Axe77/graaja: I think BMW sells cargo nets as does Skoda. Why not pick up a set because I think the attachment points are already present in boot floor and walls? Just a thought - could be worth it given the steady outstation trips you guys do.

[graaja]

Originally Posted by carthick1000

This is worrying to see such unsafe pictures. Every small object sitting unsecured is a projectile in a crash. No matter how many airbags you have, it is not safe at all.

Originally Posted by itwasntme

Axe77/graaja: I think BMW sells cargo nets as does Skoda. Why not pick up a set because I think the attachment points are already present in boot floor and walls? Just a thought - could be worth it given the steady outstation trips you guys do.

Thank you for pointing this. I usually take care not to leave lose objects lying around. But still this is a very valid point. I will look into getting cargo nets and packing things more safely.

Originally Posted by slayer23

Fantastic post. Learned a lot of things across topics.

Originally Posted by AKSarkar1

Loved this thread! Awesome to see your BMW being actually used and not just sitting in a garage, kudos to you for that! ...

Originally Posted by Arjun Bharadwaj

The last I remember seeing these kind of photos was probably in a science textbook or an encyclopedia and most times I used to think these galaxy photos are imaginary/theoretical...

Originally Posted by gulerianeeraj

What lovely photographs. Kudos to you and heartiest congratulations on the GT.

slayer23, AKSarkar1, Arjun Bharadwaj, gulerianeeraj, Thank you so much for your kind words

Originally Posted by adi_sun

Jaw dropping photographs !!
The gear in the first few pictures all packed up made me thing what dinosaur are you packing !! Do share some more photographs and some details on what goes in to get these clicks; if not in this thread a new thread would be helpful.

I will try to give a high level description of the equipment, software and the process involved in shooting photographs of deep space objects.

In astrophotography, we are photographing objects that are astronomically far away from us. The objects we see today are from light rays that left the objects thousands, hundred thousands, millions and billions of years before. These objects are so faint that our eyes - even when we view these through powerful telescopes, cannot resolve the color information. To resolve color information, we have to collect light for long durations, sometimes in hours. To do this we do multiple exposures of shorter durations like 2 minutes, 3 minutes or 5 minutes etc. and add all these pictures. The equipment we use in astrophotography work together to achieve this. Below is the picture of the setup I use. I would call this is somewhat in between a beginner to intermediate setup.



Equatorial Mount: All celestial objects move across the sky due to the rotation of earth. If I do a 3 minute exposure of an object, it will have moved a lot in that 3 minutes. Because of this stars will not be a point, but will be a line. So we need to move the camera at the same speed as the objects move in the sky. This is called tracking. The equatorial mount does this. The mount also rotates at the speed the earth rotates, thus keeping the objects in the same place on the image sensor of the camera. A good equatorial mount can keep the objects within a pixel for as long as 1 minute or even more. The particular mount I have is EQ6-R Pro made by a company called Skywatcher. It is an excellent mid segment mount.

Main Scope: This is the telescope that collects light from the objects and focuses on to the sensor of the camera. There are many types of telescopes like Newtonian reflectors, refractors, schmitt cassegranian etc. These telescopes come in various sizes and focal lengths. The larger the focal length, the farther the telescope can see. The larger the aperture, the more light they can collect. In general, for wide field astrophotography (shooting large objects like nebulae, large galaxies etc), refractor telescopes are preferred. For smaller objects like planets and distant objects we need longer focal lengths. Refractors become prohibitively expensive at these focal lengths and reflectors are used. The telescope I have is Gran Tourismo 81 (yes, another GT) made by William Optics. It has a focal length of 480mm. I also have a 6" Schmidt Cassegranian telescope which I will be using for shooting smaller objects.

Main Camera: The camera records the light collected by the telescope. We can use a cell phone, or a DSLR or a dedicated astrophotography CCD/CMOS cameras. As we are shooting very faint objects with very long exposures in minutes, the noise performance of the camera is very important. Cell phone cameras can be used to shoot bright objects like moon or planets. But to shoot dull deep space objects like nebulae and galaxies, we need good DSLRs or dedicated CMOS/CCD cameras. The camera I have is ASI 2600MC Pro, a dedicated astrophotography camera made by a company called ZWO. It has an 26 megapixel APS-C sensor, and a cooler that can cool the sensor to 35 degrees below ambient. This is an important feature in astrophotgraphy cameras. The lower the temperature, the lower the noise and better the picture. We usually shoot pictures at 0, -5 or -10 degrees depending on the ambient temperature.

Guide scope and guide camera: Though a good equatorial mount can track objects within a pixel for long durations like a minute, they will still have some drift and this drift will become noticeable when doing exposures like 3, 5 or 10 minutes or more. This is where a guide scope and a guide camera come in. The guide scope has a shorter focal length and the guide camera has a smaller sensor size. A software chooses some random star from the guide camera and keeps tracking how the star is moving in the frame. Whenever the star drifts on the frame, it issues a correction signal to the equatorial mount. This correction signal along with the equatorial mount's tracking will keep the objects in the same place even for an hour. Below is a graph showing the guide setup working. The solid lines show how the equatorial mount is drifting off in two axes. Whenever there is a drift, the guide software issues the correction pulses (the short +ve and -ve pulses ). As soon as the pulse is issued, you can see how the solid line turns back.


Electronic auto focuser: For good photographs, we need to get a perfect focus with pointed stars. We generally use a manual focus technique using something called a bahtinov's mask. When doing multiple exposures throughout the night, it is sometimes good to check the focus after say every two hours, or between objects etc. An electronic auto focuser can be used to achieve this. An auto focuser has a motor that is coupled to the focus shaft of the telescope. A software will occasionally analyze the focus of the acquired image and and drive the motor to get the perfect focus.

Mini PC: To control all these equipment many software are required. We can either use a laptop running these software or use a mini PC or even a Raspberry Pi to control the equipment. I have chosesn to use an Intel Mini PC with an i7 processor to run all the software. Once I set up all the equipment in my terrace, I can access this Mini PC through remote desktop from inside my home and control the equipment to point to various objects in the sky, set up exposure times etc.

What I have described above is the hardware part that is used to acquire the images. We also use many software.

Some software are used to control the hardware during image acquisition. Some well known software for image acquisition are SharpCap Pro, APT, N.I.N.A, SGP (Sequence Generator Pro). These software are used to turn the telescope to any chosen object (it is very difficult to manually point to these objects as they are so small), focus on the object and program the exposure sequence like how many exposures to take, length of the exposure, camera settings during the exposure etc. I use a software called N.I.N.A. Below are a couple of screenshots of the software that I access using remote desktop from my PC.

This shows the sequence of exposures. In this case, I have programmed 30 exposures of 120 seconds, 20 exposures of 30 seconds and 20 exposures of 15 seconds.


This screen shows the status of image acquisition.


Once image acquisition is complete, we use other software to integrate multiple images. This is called stacking. Some software used for stacking are Deep Sky Stacker, Pixinsight etc. They integrate multiple exposures, align all the images using reference stars and create a single final image. After this we do some post processing on this integrated image to remove noise, adjust histogram etc. This can be done using software like Photoshop, Gimp, Pixinsight etc.

I use Pixinsight as a single tool to do both stacking and post processing. Below screenshot is a "work in progress" of processing in Pixinsight.


To close this post, here is an image I took over the last two days. This object is called Rosette nebula which is a birthplace of many stars and lies about 5200 light years from the earth. This means what we see in this picture is actually what this nebula was 5200 years back, essentially history. This image is an integration of 90 x 3 minute exposures captured over two nights.

[Tgo]

Excellent post. You have explained it beautifully. It is tough work and a serious hobby for even those who consider themselves amateurs.

Originally Posted by graaja

This object is called Rosette nebula which is a birthplace of many stars and lies about 5200 light years from the earth. This means what we see in this picture is actually what this nebula was 5200 years back, essentially history.

This statement and the picture is starting to give some sense to the relativity of time even the big bang. Something which I could never relate to till today. I want my logic to be corrected if you wish to do so. Here goes...

So basically what we are seeing today is the present day picture of the nebula on Earth. But it is 5200 years old today.

So basically we have a 5200 light year head start from this nebula in a race which runs in the relative direction we have from this nebula.

I thinking of all this would be the independent observer watching this race live (in terms of my perception of time).

[graaja]

Originally Posted by Tgo

So basically what we are seeing today is the present day picture of the nebula on Earth. But it is 5200 years old today.

So basically we have a 5200 light year head start from this nebula in a race which runs in the relative direction we have from this nebula.

I thinking of all this would be the independent observer watching this race live (in terms of my perception of time).

You are right about the picture being 5200 years old today.

My understanding from the big bang theory is that the universe is expanding in all directions. So, our solar system is itself on the move. But we don't know if the nebula and the solar system are moving in the same direction or opposite direction or some other tangential direction in this expansion. So, your understanding that someone who can watch both these objects will observe that both the objects are moving. But in what direction relative to each other, I am not sure.

[graaja]

50,000 Kilometer Up

After lying idle in the portico for almost 3 months of the lockdown, took the car out last Friday, and the GT reached this milestone.



During the lockdown, I used to turn on the engine once a week and run it idle for 15 minutes. Other than this nothing else to report now.

With the lifting of lockdown, hope to take the car for a long drive soon.

[graaja]

A monsoon drive to Bhadra Tiger Reserve

Last weekend, went for a drive to Bhadra tiger reserve with several friends and fellow TBHPians. I have documented this in the below thread.

Monsoon Drive to Bhadra Tiger Reserve - A Photologue

Due the monsoons, the car was quite dirty and I was planning to take it for the drive in this state. But one day before the drive, my OCD kicked in and I gave the car a nice wash. Ofcourse, the car is back to its dirty state after the drive.

It was a joy driving the car for 1300 kilometers through all types of roads - 6 lane highways, beautiful winding country roads and roads riddled with potholes. During this drive had a chance to do a photoshoot of the 3GT and Dr.AD's red 320d. Also got a couple of pictures with Robimanta's M340i. A few pictures from this drive.

The 3GT getting a wash.


A clean car after the wash.




The lineup of the cars from the drive.






With Robimahanta's M340i




With Dr.AD's 320D








Behind the scenes. I and Dr.AD shooting our cars.




A few solo pictures of the 3GT












Post monsoon, will give the car a proper detailing session.