A journey through the Year

by: Simon Tang

There are many things in life that people want to achieve. Goals, possessions, career, etc. The problem is, we all seem to want everything now. We see others excel and others fail. No matter how hard we try, we just seem to give up to quickly. I have to admit, what I have managed in one year may seem like a lifetime of work to others but what I like most is the challenge. Using every shred of information and knowledge, I set about a task thinking, “how can I use what I know to achieve what I don't?” After all, if you want something enough, you will most likely get it.

So how does all that philosophy really help anyone? Perhaps a moment of inspiration is required to set you in the right direction. Or maybe it's just something else. Whatever the case, I want to take this time to share with everyone an achievement.

A year ago, I set out on a journey of taking pictures of the night sky. I use to look at photos of planets, nebulae and galaxies, and wondered if I could do that. Question was, how do I do that? I don't have millions of dollars in funding. I don't have access to telescope time on the Hubble. In fact, I didn't even have a telescope! All I had was a camera and a selection of lenses.

With no experience or knowledge, I pointed the camera upwards and took a few shots, only to discover that I had frame after frame of black. I couldn't quite understand why. Fast forward a few years and my collection of equipment had grown and my knowledge of photography allowed me to go out into the world and make money. I started to understand how light works and as technology improved, I decided to try again.

On a late November night, I stood outside and watched Orion rise up over the horizon from my backyard. Every now and then, I could see some kind of fuzz in the sword of Orion. I dragged out my tripod and camera and proceeded to use the knowledge I had acquired to try and take a photo of what I saw. No matter how hard I tried, all I got was this ball of fuzz and a very noisy image.

I thought to myself, what happens if I exposed for longer? The result was equally remarkable if not just as disappointing. The great nebula glowed with color and for the first time, I saw an image that I took that revealed something that I have only ever seen in books and TV. But there was one problem. Stars would streak across the image as I realized that the stars move across the sky. For weeks, I racked my brains trying to understand what was going on and how would I combat this issue.

After many weeks of research, I discovered image stacking. A technique used by professionals and amateurs alike. The idea is to take multiple images and “Stack” them on top of each other to produce an image. For the next month, I would spend an hour in the freezing cold of winter taking short exposures making sure that the images would not show star trails. After a month, I had collected enough images to create a stack.

The result was mind blowing! For the first time I had produced an image that looked somewhat similar to a NASA photo of the Orion Nebula. But that wasn't enough. I wanted it to look exactly like the one from NASA. I need more information. I need people that know what they are doing. I needed a telescope. After all, isn't that what NASA uses?

As the months went by, Orion fell closer and closer to the horizon as the summer sky approached. I knew I had to wait until winter again before I could even try again. I had 9 months to figure this out. I did some more research and discovered that there was an astronomy club near where I live. I scanned through there calendar and found out that someone was doing a presentation of astrovideography. My interested spiked as I thought, that's an interesting method. Since capturing single frames was time consuming, I never thought I could use a video camera to do this.

(I have to thank Arindam, who did the presentation. He may not realize this, but it's because of him, I am where I am today!)

After the meeting and feeling bombarded with new information I sat down with some of the members and talked about anything to do with astronomy. I was invited to various events and sessions to check out different telescopes. The more these guys spoke, the more I wanted to know. A month later, I was standing in a store looking at telescopes. Which one do I buy? There's so many! How much???!

A rule that I have always lived by. If I cannot make money on something, then it is not an investment that I want to do. 20 minutes later, I walk out the store holding a cardboard box. So much for rules! I get home and pull other the telescope and looked at it for about an hour playing with it and reading the booklet. Oh boy, what have I done!

I tried to take a picture of the Orion Nebula again and was extremely disappointed by the results. Not only was Orion low, it was hard to find it using the telescope. More frustration followed as I spent more time scratching my head trying to figure out what was happening. I truly did not want to give up. I really wanted to figure this out.

After many months of hanging out in the dark with other members of the club that I had joined, I started to understand how everything worked. Lecture after lecture, I started to piece together information. In the meantime, my collection of telescope equipment grew beyond belief. By the end of summer, I had thousands of dollars worth of stuff sitting in my living room.

The rest of the summer was spent outside with my telescope taking pictures of anything I could find. I had learnt the summer sky and most of the major stars. I knew pretty much where all the cool things in the night sky were located. Week after week I took hundreds of images and practiced stacking. I discovered multiple programs to process images. Techniques on how to process images. I started producing images that rivaled some of the better amateur photos that I had seen.

As summer came to close and we moved towards winter, I asked myself, am I ready to put into practice the knowledge I had acquired? Orion started to show his head early in the morning once again. It's now or never.

Ok, not bad indeed. Admittedly, I have better images of other objects that I took in the summer. But still, massive improvement over what I had taken 9 months prior. All I need now was a night out in the darkest of dark places.

I found myself traveling with a small convoy to a location that 2 of the members had been scouting. After setting up shop, the wind picked up and the chill of the night forced us into our cars. Determined not to waste the night, I woke up at around 3am and crawled out of the car to a frozen windless morning. The skies darker than ink and the constellation Orion hovering in the sky.

I poked around in the dark setting up my telescope and sat down in front of my laptop. There was a moment of silence as I recalled the past year that past. I setup the camera and waited patiently as each sub frame was taken. For brief moments, I would see the subs flash up on the camera preview and I began to get over excited. Just the subs alone compared to what I took nearly 12 months ago showed a massive difference. After about an hour or so, I moved onto darks and bias frames. When morning broke, we headed home.

A few days later I found some time to sit down and process the images. I have gotten so use to using the software that it was like muscle memory. Click here, click there, wait around and before long, I had a stacked image. A few more hours in PixInsight and Photoshop, I produced the final image.

I've waiting a year to get to the end of this journey. It has been worth every step. All the rules that I have broken, had paid off. Things where people would tell me that's the wrong way or I should do this, simply did not matter. I choose to do this my way and learn from this amazing process.

So I leave you with not only the final image but also one other final thought. No matter how hard something is, no matter what people tell you, no matter the rules and limitation. If you stay your course, you can always achieve wonderful things.