On the full Moon of May, I mounted my old DSLR camera onto a tripod and pointed it to the stars. It was a simple act of curiosity, which soon led me on a great adventure. As I inhaled the crisp air on that tranquil night, my camera's LCD screen lit up with the most stunning image I had ever seen. A moonlit Napa Valley landscape, rich with tones of amber and green, enchanted by a sea of stars above. This image introduced me to the art of Astrophotography.
Astrophotography is the photography of astronomical objects and celestial events in the night sky. Through the use of a long-duration shutter speed, the camera sensor can accumulate more light photons than it would in a typical split-second snapshot. I use this technique to capture vibrant images of night time landscapes that otherwise would be too dark and faint for the human eye to see.
I continued out into the night like an owl. Not in hunt of prey, but in hunt of photographs: my own “astronomical data.” I felt like a scientist, and my camera was my observatory, allowing me to explore beyond the horizons of our galaxy. Since this epiphany, I have devoted my late nights to the allure of the stars.
Through experimentation and failure, I improved upon my skills to produce beautiful works of art. I practiced with different exposure settings, invested in better optical lenses, and learned how to use post-editing software such as Lightroom, StarstaX and Photoshop. With my improving skills, I photographed new areas of the night sky. Facing south I could see the Milky Way rise over the horizon. Facing north I could capture the rotation of Earth with stunning star trail images. Climbing on top of my slippery roof, I saw my first-ever comet: C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE).
I started venturing deeper into the darkness. Taking these photos helped illuminate what I couldn't see. The lunar phases affected my photos, and I soon realized they were related to the Moon’s orbit around Earth, and the angle of light reflected from the Sun. I felt like Aristarchus of Samos when he gazed at a Lunar Eclipse and deduced that, contrary to popular belief, the Earth was not the center of the universe. As the summer warmth turned to an autumn breeze, the Milky Way lowered below the horizon. From this I figured the Earth had been closest to the galactic core around midsummer and was gradually moving farther away. When I discovered this to be true, it reminded me of Pythagoras, who accurately estimated the circumference of Earth using two sticks and a shadow on the summer solstice. I derived meaning from my photos, and a better understanding of the nature of our solar system.
Throughout this exploration, I have not only discovered my love for the night sky, but also the excitement and exhilaration that come with intellectual adventure. I marvel at the photos taken by the Hubble Space telescope or the Mars Rover, but I prefer to venture out into the night myself. The Moon serves both as my source of light and a source of inspiration. Beneath its pearlescent sheen, my imagination runs rampant. Maybe if I look close enough, the Dreamworks boy is perched up on that crescent moon, fishing for cosmic fish. Will I ever get to see a cosmic fish? Maybe NASA will discover a whale in the ocean of Europa. Or the Voyager spacecraft will successfully attract the attention of extraterrestrial life. Perhaps advances in the field of medicine will allow me to live to the year 3000. Will we have colonized Mars by then?
The answers to these questions are unknown, and I want to explore and discover. But for now I will lay under the stars, because it’s wonderful out here.