[chaitanyakrish]

Originally Posted by graaja

That’s all folks, I have on this trip. Thank you so much for the patience in reading through this long record!

Excellent Post and I am sure, the real experience of going through this journey would be much more exciting.

I've a Celestron AstroMaster 130 EQ Telescope and I keep exploring night skies.

Could you please share, how to get updates from future events of Bangalore Astronomical Society ?

[graaja]

Originally Posted by chaitanyakrish

Excellent Post and I am sure, the real experience of going through this journey would be much more exciting.

I've a Celestron AstroMaster 130 EQ Telescope and I keep exploring night skies.

Could you please share, how to get updates from future events of Bangalore Astronomical Society ?

Thank you for the kind words. It is great to know someone with similar interests. There is a BAS telegram group where they post about star parties and events. Below is the link to register in this group.

https://forms.gle/JaR5zvzxZGHtwz6PA

During winter months, they conduct star parties in Coorg around new moon every month. Next event could be in November or December depending on weather conditions. Join the group and you will be able to see the announcements. Maybe we will meet in the next Coorg star party.

[ruzbehxyz]

Dear graaja

What a wonderful writeup and a wealth of information. I visited Hanle in 2015 and it is one of my favorite spots in India. The beauty is unmatched with clear skies and wide spread countryside. The different shades of the mountains is like God's own painting.
Unfortunately now hoards of tourist are visiting Hanle mainly to scale Umling La.

[bullitt1]

Thanks for sharing the terrific adventure and captures of the universe, graaja. This is best of both worlds to me, driving to Hanle and astronomy.

[chaitanyakrish]

Originally Posted by graaja

Thank you for the kind words. Maybe we will meet in the next Coorg star party.

Thank You for sharing I had great interest in astronomy in school days, and especially did a lot of high level study on red shifts, blue shifts etc ( I'm not into them, but very curious to understand them ) and in those days, we don't have much resources like internet etc to learn from. Our only source of information was Discovery Channel and Science museums.

After that, like many of us, got into the working phase of life and all the interest on astrophotography, astronomy went dormant, until my daughter was born. She is 4.5 years old now, but she loves astronomy and she was watching Jim Al Khalili documentaries along with me. Few days back, she had asked me a question - " Why does hot objects cool on their own, but cool objects cannot become hot on their own". That's second law of thermodynamics !!

And I had documented all her questions, and one of them was " why planets are only round, not square "

This is when I realized, I need to dust and bring my gear out and start exploring beauty of the cosmos and the physical objects along with my kid, which may motivate her to become an astronomer/scientific career in future, who knows.

Thank you so much for the post and also, I've googled about your friend Obuli Chandran and his mango.co, which is very good !!

Glad to get connected with you in a different frequency !!

[graaja]

Originally Posted by ruzbehxyz

What a wonderful writeup and a wealth of information...

Unfortunately now hoards of tourist are visiting Hanle mainly to scale Umling La.

Thank you so much for the kind words. Yes. There is lot of tourist rush who visit Hanle on the way to Umlingla. But the peak tourist visits happen during summer months. That is why usually BAS plans these astronomy trips in September or October when the tourist crowd starts reducing.

Originally Posted by bullitt1

Thanks for sharing the terrific adventure and captures of the universe, graaja. This is best of both worlds to me, driving to Hanle and astronomy.

Thank you so much for the kind words!

Originally Posted by chaitanyakrish

She is 4.5 years old now, but she loves astronomy and she was watching Jim Al Khalili documentaries along with me...

This is when I realized, I need to dust and bring my gear out and start exploring beauty of the cosmos and the physical objects along with my kid, which may motivate her to become an astronomer/scientific career in future, who knows.

Wonderful. Astronomy is a great hobby to enjoy with kids. My interest in astronomy was kindled when my father used to show us the night sky and teach us identifying constellations (it was just naked eye those days 35 years back). Now I enjoy spending time with my daughter in these astrophotography trips.

Do bring your daughter to the next Coorg star party. I am sure she will enjoy watching planets and nebulae through binoculars and telescopes and also the Milky Way.

[RaviCar]

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience and knowledge. Great photographs of nebulae and otherwise.

Did learnt a lot about astrophotography today. My prior experience rests with photographing the moon and the milky way.

Thanks for taking out time and sharing things in such details.

[coolmind]

Gave away my 5 stars sir.
Amazing capture of space.
We have been to Leh in the month of August and tried few photographs of milkyway when we were at pangong, using our DLSR. But with your equipment, it is of next level, we can only dream of! It is always a great experience to watch the clear skies.
If you don't mind, can you please share how much does the kit cost to you?

[am1m]

Simply the best content! Breathtaking!

Thank you graaja for sharing this. It's a sad day when most of us shifted our gaze from heavenwards to downwards, getting more self-involved with our phones and light-polluted cities.

Looking at these photos, it's little wonder that astronomy was the first science to be developed when man had nothing much to do at night apart from look up at the skies and wonder.

What an Immense and Spectacularly Grand Universe we live in, we need to see it more often.

[mallumowgli]

One of a kind of travelogue in Team-bhp, coach.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record let me say this again - the attention to detail that you have for everything you do is simply mind boggling.

Awesome trip, awesome travelogue and an awesome lunch at the end to go with it too

[N.A.GTC]

This is so incredible!

I never knew something in our universe could be 70 light years in size! Love everything about this thread. Thanks a lot for sharing this.

I'm sharing this thread with my partner, to convince her for us to go to the hills, so we can see some stars too (spent all our lives in metro cities, never seen a sky like that!).

[haisaikat]

What a stupendous amount of information on planning and execution put behind making this expedition. Really commendable and the final outcome has been outstanding, like a Discovery or Natgeo documentary.

Thankfully your low oxygen level got detected soon and the guest house had the concentrator to heal you overnight. Hats off to your dedication for continuing the trip after that. I would have one question, food-flight-transfer-accommodation kept aside, what would be approximate cost involved for such trips considering we are using Pro equipment (not photography gear people own themselves), observatories, etc

A star studded log is all I can conclude this to be, both in terms of the content and imagery and also my rating for it.

[graaja]

Originally Posted by RaviCar

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience and knowledge. Great photographs of nebulae and otherwise.

My prior experience rests with photographing the moon and the milky way.

Thank you for the kind words. Please do share your moon and milky way pictures. Would love to see them.

Originally Posted by coolmind

Gave away my 5 stars sir...
...If you don't mind, can you please share how much does the kit cost to you?

Thank you so much for the kind words. The equipment I put together cost around 7.5 Lakhs, as I bought many components to support longer focal lengths in the future. One can easily put together a wide field, easily portable setup around 1.5 Lakhs and take very good pictures of nebulae and bigger galaxies.

Originally Posted by am1m

Simply the best content! Breathtaking!

Thank you graaja for sharing this. It's a sad day when most of us shifted our gaze from heavenwards to downwards, getting more self-involved with our phones and light-polluted cities.

Thank you so much for the kind words. Totally agree with you about how we no longer get to enjoy dark skies in cities due to light pollution. We have to travel some distance to dark skies to enjoy the views of the sky.

Originally Posted by mallumowgli

One of a kind of travelogue in Team-bhp, coach.
...
Awesome trip, awesome travelogue and an awesome lunch at the end to go with it too

Thank you so much for the kind words and also for the Salkara recommendation. I have already decided that next year, we will have the equipment shipped to Cochin just to have that great food at Salkara

Originally Posted by N.A.GTC

I never knew something in our universe could be 70 light years in size! Love everything about this thread. Thanks a lot for sharing this.

I'm sharing this thread with my partner, to convince her for us to go to the hills, so we can see some stars too (spent all our lives in metro cities, never seen a sky like that!).

Thank you for the kind words. Actually 70 light years is a small distance in the scale of universe. Our Milky way has a diameter of 105,000 light years. Andromeda has a diameter of 220,000 light years. There are some other galaxies with an estimated radius of a few million light years.

Originally Posted by haisaikat

What a stupendous amount of information on planning and execution put behind making this expedition. Really commendable and the final outcome has been outstanding, like a Discovery or Natgeo documentary.

Thankfully your low oxygen level got detected soon and the guest house had the concentrator to heal you overnight. Hats off to your dedication for continuing the trip after that. I would have one question, food-flight-transfer-accommodation kept aside, what would be approximate cost involved for such trips considering we are using Pro equipment (not photography gear people own themselves), observatories, etc

Thank you for the kind words. The journey cost us about 70K per head. This is for flight tickets, accomodation, food and air cargo for equipment and warm clothes. If we leave aside warm clothes which is a one time purchase, the trip would cost around 50K. IIA had sponsored all local travel. If that were to be added, it could cost another 10K.

As for equipment, do you mean about renting equipment? I don't think there are rentals for astrophotography equipment like mounts and telescopes. You can rent DSLR and lenses though, which would be very nominal.

[kishore1984]

Whao...! what a post to run into just when I was planning a drive to Yelagiri to stargaze. Compared to your rig I think my Celestron Astromaster 70AZ refractor telescope is a minion. The first time I was able to track and zoom into Saturn at 2 AM on a Sunday is an experience in itself. I have a 9 yr old who is equally curious as I am.

Thanks for sharing your experience, the pics are breathtaking and travelogue beautifully written.

while we are on the same topic, can I ask your feedback on something I recently ran into - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...raphy/comments

[sukhbirST]

Thanks for showing me a different world(s) with amazing pictures. The best part was reading and then viewing, which never happens in so many media pictures. Always thought it was possible with state intervention only. Closest to this was viewing from a observatory in Panjim.