First direct image of the M87 black hole by the Event Horizon Telescope

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In my new post, i shall be explaining on how the Blackhole picture M87 was taken.
This eventually forms part of Astrophotography.
This blog will describe it in a way that it is easily understood.

The Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope has released the first direct image of a black hole and its neighbourhood. This black hole lurks in the centre of a nearby galaxy called M87. This historic image shows a ring of light coming from the gas falling into the black hole. The black hole itself is shielded by the event horizon, a boundary from within which nothing can escape, and this is the dark interior in the image. Though astronomers have had solid evidence for the existence of massive black holes for many years, this historic moment marks the first time that it has been imaged.

What has the Event Horizon Telescope seen?

The Event Horizon Telescope, or EHT, has imaged the silhouette or shadow of the black hole at the centre of M87, a galaxy 55 million light years from us. To make this image, astronomers combined data from 8 different telescopes across the world in an experiment in April 2017. The data was taken at a frequency of 230 GHz, or a wavelength of 1.3 mm. Using this, astronomers have formed an image of the black hole for the first time. The event horizon of a black hole is the ultimate boundary. Nothing from within it can escape out. The ring of fire in the EHT image is light from the gas falling into the event horizon, whose shadow is the dark hole in the centre. The exact shape of the ring is due to the way the incredible gravity of the black hole bends the light around it, and the incredible speed at which the gas is travelling is why the ring is not uniform in brightness.

How big is the black hole at the centre of M87?

Almost all galaxies have black holes at their centres, and these can be a few million to a few billion times the mass of our Sun. Our Milky Way galaxy has a fairly small black hole about 4 million times as massive as our Sun. However, the black hole in M87 is a monster, and is 6500 million times the mass of the Sun. The size of its event horizon is about 20000 million km, which even bigger than our Solar System.

A telescope large enough to image the shadow of the black hole in M87 would have to be as big as the Earth itself. Since that might be a bit difficult, astronomers chose the next best thing. Using a technique called interferometry, data from many telescopes spread across the Earth were combined in a special way. This enabled astronomers to make images that show detail on as fine a scale as would a single earth-sized telescope. However, this comes with the cost of enormous computation that requires months of processing on very powerful computers.

I am providing a link below in which it will explain about the First picture of the black hole in more details.

Thanks for having a look at my post friends

You are most welcome to leave a feedback below.

Check the video below to see how to take a picture of a black hole by Katie Bouman. This will help in understanding the video through visual observation.
Enjoy the video friends and follow me for more updates.
Thank you

                                         

A picture of blackhole by CHANDRA X-RAY Observatory

Welcome to Counting And Capturing Stars......

Welcome All!

I'm Zaffir Ghaseeta. And I'm an Amateur Astronomer and Astrophotographer.
This blog is for those who are trying to find everything about Astrophotography  at a single place.....
I've got blogs on various topics of Astrophotography.
Looking at Stars and Capturing Stars are completely different things. And believe me, Astrophotography is a field in which you can explore and have fun both at same time...
So, are y'all ready to embark on a journey through nebulae to galaxies and from a little DSLR camera to massive 20" telescope's built only for Astrophotography?
Let's Have Some Fun....

See Y'all with next blog....!!!

Basics Of Astrophotography

Welcome again...!

So, as we all know Astrophotography is something very very very exciting and fun thing to do.
Get your camera, Point it to sky and shoot!?
No. It's not that simple. It's a very complex, complicated and somewhat hard type of Photography. But don't worry!!
Here is a list what you'll need to start capturing the Stars....
#1
A Camera
Well, that's the pretty basic thing. Without it Astrophotography is impossible.
A DSLR or a Mirrorless Camera is must needed.

#2
A Steady and Heavy Tripod
Astrophotography is also impossible without a tripod. Because you can't handle your camera for 15-30 seconds. One will shake it.
You can get one here
www.amazon.com/VILTROX-VX-18M-Professional-Camcorder-Horseshoe/dp/B01D1GMT5I/ref=mp_s_a_1_2_sspa?crid=2KCN1GCBN9MPZ&keywords=heavy+duty+tripod&qid=1554783864&s=gateway&sprefix=heavy+duty+tr&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1

#3
Lens
Any lens from f1.8 to f3.5 will work.
You'll need a wide angle lens for your camera because you want to capture big areas in night sky. But sometimes it depends on your needs. Let it be wide angle lens for now.

#4
A Very Good Computer System

A photo from camera isn't always the best. One need to edit and enhance them. This is called Post Processing. There are many softwares available for that. Like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom etc. They need a pretty good computer system so they can run fluently.

Some other needs,
Extra Battery
Lens Hood for protecting your lens at night from dust and cold.
Warm Clothing
A Flashlight

In the end,
Astrophotography is very expensive hobby....
Many can't afford it. But don't worry. One can do it from a mobile camera with manual modes too....
So, what are you waiting for?
Gear Up and Get Ready...!

Capturing The Milky Way.....

Hello and Welcome Back...!

First of all,I'll show you how to capture Milkyway.
You've seen pictures of Milkyway many times. That's a pretty exciting thing to do. It's not that hard...

It's all about Technique...

This picture is shot at Lake Victoria.
Images like this, always exite us.

Let's have a look at basic seetings in your camera...

First thing is Aperture or F Number.
This will decide how much light your sensor will gether. Lower the aperture larger the light it will gain. As an example,
f1.8 will gether more light than f3.5
Remember, this will decide how wide your picture will be. Less aperture, wider image.

Second thing is ISO
More the ISO more light sensitive your camera will be. Every Entry level DSLR can go up to 6400 ISO. But, there's a little minus point of ISO. More the ISO more noise will be there in the picture. So, basically we will shoot at ISO 6400 or lower.

And the last thing is Shutter Speed or Exposure Time
We will be shooting at slower shutter speeds maybe from 10 seconds to 25 seconds or more. Every Entry-level DSLR has slow shutter speeds up to 30 seconds.
But there's a rule here, to determine your shutter speed.
It's called the 500 rule
Take the focal length at which you are shooting and divide it by 500. You'll get average shutter speed. This will help you to get pinpoint stars. Otherwise at longer shutter speeds than the limit, stars will get trailed. Like long threads. That's another type of AP but we'll discuss it later.
Supposr, I'm shooting at 18mm than I'll took 18 and divide it by 500.
500÷18=27.78
Roughly 25 seconds. So, shutter speeds higher than 25 seconds, my stars will get trailed.

Ok. Now we've all know the basic settings.
For Milkyway images, one want to go at darker locations. Here's a site that'll help you to choose dark locations near you.
This'll help you get your dark location.

Now, here's a little hard thing. At night, your camera's auto focus will not focus perfectly on stars. We'll need to focus it to Infinity.

Here's a video on that.

So, after knowing every seetings and everything, we're good to go...

In short, Aperture between f1.8-f3.5
ISO between 800-6400 and Shutter Speed according to one's lens....

Now, there are applications and softwares that'll help one to determine Milkyway's location, rise time etc...
 Like this one
You can find others too...

So, in the end
Just hit the Shutter Button and be Mesmerized...!

Star Trails Photography

Howdy?

Star Trails Photography is one of the greatest and cool looking night sky Photography techniques.

This is how it looks like...

So, basic concept of start trails is tracking the motion of stars in night sky. There are few techniques, but I'll show you guys what I use the most.

You'll need a camera(Definitely)
A tripod.
A remote cable or Intervalometer.
This thing will capture automatically as you put seetings in it. Will discuss further.
StarStax or An Software to creat star trails.
I use StarStax most. It's completely awsome.
And too much time.

Let's start with interval timer or Intervalometer. 
This is a remote...
Suppose you set your shutter speed at 25" ISO at 3200 and f3.5. Than, for star trails you need to gether around 180-200 shots. You can't push shutter button all the time.
You set interval of 20" between each shot, than your camera will capture a shot of sky at above seetings every 20 seconds.

That's what it'll do.

Now, you have 180 frames. Upload them into StarStax. And it'll do your work from there. Just wait for a while.
You can download StarStax here...

Here's a little tutorial on StarStax...

That was it...!
It'll take and need some time to get used to it, but believe me, after it you'll be able to get awsome results....

See y'all later....!!

Deep Sky Astrophotography....

Bonjour Folks...!

In Astrophotography, capturing deep Sky objects like various nebulae, galaxies and other things is much more complex, complicated and more time consuming.

And it's very expensive too, if you want to take it to more advance levels. Because you'll need a telescope or at least a telephoto zoom lens and a sky traker is must.

Why So??

Because these objects are too much far away and faint. Our camera can't capture more details. What Sky Trackers do is they track the sky for given time. They use a motorized system to match their speed with Earth's revolution. So, you can capture for a long time. They're quiet expensive though. But you can make one for yourself. It's called The Barn-Door Tracker. It's easy to build and you can track the sky for maximu 5 minutes. But that's a good start.You can Find how to build one here....

This is one of the famous and brightest Deep Sky Objects... The Orion Nebula
Captured using a Barn-Door Tracker...

Well, think you've got money?
Just grab one of these:-
iOptron SkyTracker Pro
SkyWatcher Star Adventurer...
Or this...
Vixen Polarie Star Tracker

So, how will you capture the Deep Sky Objects?
These Videos will help you through a basic workflow of capturing Deep Sky Objects...

Editing and Post Processing is must in Astrophotography.....
Check out my other Blog on that....

Stay Tuned.....!

Editing and Post Processing.....

Hola Amigos...

Astrophotography isn't only about capturing pictures. It's about Editing and Post Processing too. Well, Post Processing is little bit humiliating but fun thing to do, if used properly.

What's Post Processing?

Well, Post processing is the secret sauce that takes a well-captured photo of the night sky and turns it into the final product a budding astrophotographer can be proud of!

And in Astrophotography, there's another term called Stacking Images.

What is it and where do it helps?

Stacking is one of the basic essentials in Astrophotography. Stacking means combining or layering 2 or more images. Remember in my blog, Star Trails, I talked about a software named StarStax...! It stacks images together. That's what it does. In our night sky images, there are details we want to pop up. And there's noise in our pictures also. Stacking do both at same time. It removes noise and give us more detailed image. But, it'll make the file size large. In softwares like StarStax and etc, they do automatic stacking. But, you can do it manually too .it gives more detailed results than auto stacking. You can do it manually in Adobe Photoshop. Here's a video on how to do that.

Ok, so after stacking, there comes post processing. Stacking is a part of it. But you can post process your images before stacking or after stacking. But processing after stacking is more easy.

Most of the Astrophotographers use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom to post process their images. Some use PixInsight too. Never heard? No matter Click here to know more.

There's are many ways to post process a photo. Enhancing it will make it lot more amazing.

This is unprocessed image of Milkyway....

But this is what a processed image looks like.
There's plenty of post processing we can do on a picture that we can't image.

So, I'll be putting 2 videos here, one of Adobe Photoshop and other of Adobe Lightroom.

Here's a video how to process photos in Lightroom.

And here's the one on Photoshop.

Feeling like haven't got enough money to buy a DSLR? Or the softwares?
Don't worry! Read my blog tips and tricks. A few tips for using your mobile to do Astrophotography are there....

So, that's all for now.....
See you later Amigos...!