Astrophotography
During COVID I spent clear nights on the roof at home in Gujarat with a Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ, a 130 mm reflector telescope. I didn't have a proper camera for it, so I held my phone up to the eyepiece and hoped the stars would line up. These are the ones that came out.
Where they are
Everything I photographed, drawn where it really sits in the winter sky from home. Tap or hover over one to jump to its photos.
Stars, star clusters and a galaxy
Closer to home (these move around, so they're not on the chart)
Brighter stars are drawn bigger, and the lines join them into constellations like Orion, Taurus and Gemini.
The photos
-
Jupiter and Saturn, together
Two days after the great conjunction, the two planets were still close enough to fit in one frame. Saturn's rings are visible, and so are Jupiter's moons, strung out in a line.
- What
- The two biggest planets, side by side in the sky
- Last this close
- 1623
- Taken with
- Phone held to the telescope
-
First frames
Before aiming at anything, I just wanted to see if my phone could pick up stars at all. Countably infinite, it turns out.
- What
- A patch of stars
- Taken with
- My phone
-
Andromeda Galaxy
I posted this one as a puzzle first: can you find the galaxy? It's the faint oval smudge, and Mars happened to be in the shot too. The light in that smudge left Andromeda about 2.5 million years ago.
- What
- Our nearest big galaxy
- How far
- About 2.5 million light-years
- Also in the shot
- Mars
-
Pleiades
The Seven Sisters are easy to see with your own eyes and surprisingly hard to catch on a phone. I tried twice. The second try came out so faint that I turned it into a meme.
- What
- A cluster of young stars
- How far
- About 444 light-years
-
Moon halo
The first time I caught one. The ring isn't out in space at all. It's moonlight bent by tiny ice crystals in thin, high cloud.
- What
- Ice crystals in the clouds
-
Orion Nebula
My favourite. In Hubble's photos it's a huge swirl of red and purple gas. Through my telescope it's a small grey-green glow around a few bright stars. Both are real. Mine is a single photo, straight off the phone with no editing.
I captioned one of these "Observing the past", and I meant it: the light I caught left the nebula about 1,344 years ago.
- What
- A cloud of glowing gas where stars are born
- How far
- About 1,344 light-years
- Taken with
- Phone held to the telescope
-
Sirius
The brightest star in the night sky, and one of the closest. In the photo it's a hard white point that wouldn't sit still in the eyepiece.
- What
- A bright white star
- How far
- 8.6 light-years
-
Betelgeuse
Orion's red shoulder. Even on a phone it comes out orange. A year earlier it had dimmed so much that people wondered if it was about to explode. By this night it was back to normal.
- What
- A huge, cool red star
- How far
- Roughly 550 light-years
-
Beehive Cluster
It sits in Cancer, a faint constellation that's hard to spot from the city. Through the telescope it breaks into a loose swarm of stars, which is how it got its name.
- What
- A loose cluster of stars
- How far
- About 577 light-years
-
The Moon
The easy one that never gets old. The craters look sharpest along the edge between light and shadow, where the sunlight comes in low.
- What
- Ours
- How far
- About 384,400 km
-
Venus
I went out to find a comet and didn't. Venus was low in the evening sky that week, so I got it instead. Like the Moon, it goes through phases, and here it's a clear crescent.
- What
- Planet
- Shape that night
- Crescent
The setup
| Telescope | Celestron AstroMaster 130EQ, a 130 mm Newtonian reflector (the kind with a mirror inside) |
|---|---|
| Stand | Its equatorial mount, on a tripod |
| Camera | My phone, held up to the eyepiece |
| Where | The roof at home |