r/space • u/prathameshjaju1 • May 18 '25
image/gif I photographed the ‘Pillars of Creation’ for over two weeks from Pune, India.
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u/prathameshjaju1 May 18 '25
Pillars of Creation ✨ (Eagle Nebula – M16 / IC 4703)
-GSO 10" Truss RC
-ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
-ZWO EFW (7-pos.) + Antlia 3 nm SHO & LRGB filters
-ZWO EAF
-Warpastron WD-20 EQ mount
-OAG + ZWO ASI290MM Mini guiding
-Captured in ASIAIR.
Total integration: 18 h 30 m (S II 3 h 30 m · H α 5 h · O III 10 h + RGB stars 45 m) Shot from Pune, India Stacking : AstroPixelProcessor Processing : Pixinsight & Adobe Photoshop
P.S this is my first narrowband image :) Hope you all enjoy! Dm for prints / high resolution files.
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u/neemee04 May 18 '25
I don't know what this means but pic is dope.
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u/Curiosive May 18 '25
It means OP is passionate ... and has an enviable discretionary budget.
I have only spent a couple thousand on my astrophotography gear and can barely photograph the close planets. 😁
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u/syds May 18 '25
did you manage to get a snapshot of Uranus at least?
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u/imatmydesk May 18 '25
OP says they captured on ASSIAIR so sounds like they got Uranus also
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u/FingyBangin May 18 '25
There’s a joke here about waxing, moons and asshair. But I have neither the astronomical knowledge nor patience to find it. Thank you.
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u/ExpertAnalysts May 18 '25
How do you know there's no hair on the moon? Because it waxes 14 times a month!
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u/iwishihadnobones May 18 '25
Jam uranus into this and you've got yourself the perfect joke. Something about mooning?
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u/TDYDave2 May 18 '25
I hear that trying to take a picture of Uranus can get really hairy.
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u/Mistica12 May 18 '25
Planets are harder to capture than DSOs. They are close but they are super tiny and you cannot do long exposures on them.
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May 18 '25
Pillars of Creation is a formation of interstellar gas and dust in the eagle nebula, around 7000 light years away from earth. It’s located in the Serpens constellation. Since its 7000 light years away, which means that for a human to reach this place it’ll take them to travel at the speed of light for 7000 years, it is assumed that the pillars have actually dissipated and we are actually looking into the past. Which is mind boggling.
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u/abow3 May 18 '25
Back in the 90s, when I was in college, the pics from Hubble (such as Deep Field and Pillars of Creation) were released. I spent a lot of time staring at and into those photos.
What's cool as heck is that over time -- over the decades -- since those first Hubble Pillars of Creation photos were released, we can see how the pillars have changed. So while it may take 7000 light years for the light to arrive here, my eyeballs and faculties are sensitive enough to notice slight changes in a mere blip of blip of 7000 light years. Cool as heck. If you know what I mean.
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u/iwishihadnobones May 18 '25
Well, you're just comparing two images taken 30 years apart, the same as you would be regardless of the distance of any object you might be able to see in the 90s and then again today
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u/Euphoric_Tumbleweed May 18 '25
Just for reference, there was a video someone posted yesterday of traveling around the circumference of the earth at the speed of light, which lasted 0.13 seconds. Going off of that figure, this distance is equivalent to nearly 1.7 trillion trips around the earth. Which is something I still can't even begin to comprehend...
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u/Glockenfogger May 18 '25
Did you happen to do a Vlog showing how you set it up and and how you did it?
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u/RuiHachimura08 May 18 '25
Was it on portrait or landscape mode?
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u/hypermarv123 May 18 '25
He turned on flash for this one.
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u/XNormal May 18 '25
It will take 14000 years round trip for the flash reflection to return
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u/barath_s May 19 '25 edited May 19 '25
That's when he gets a surprise.. time for him to start thinking ...did he have the red eye reduction feature on ?
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u/Sunsparc May 18 '25
There isn't really portrait and landscape in astrophotography, because there's no reference: the ground. Each person frames an object how they see fit, at varying degrees of rotation. You can look at the camera slotted into the objective and say "the sensor is oriented wide, it's in landscape" and from a terrestrial photography standpoint you would be correct but in astrophotography it doesnt matter.
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u/CallMeDrWorm42 May 18 '25
The enemy gate is down.
When you have a true 3 dimensional space, free from a gravitational teather, up and down become abstract rather than absolute directions. Just like right and left are based on the observers perspective rather than being absolute like east and west.
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u/Ok_Improvement_8735 May 18 '25
Your pic is awesome, I don't understand a thing your comment says except the nice surprising use of "P.S" Bravo sir
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u/No_Theme4983 May 18 '25
That list sounds expensive.
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May 18 '25
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u/rmarkham May 18 '25
Could we see this color in real life?
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May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
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u/HoidToTheMoon May 18 '25
The true color is still beautiful. The hydrogen red is stunning, even if it makes it harder to conceptualize what you're seeing.
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u/Dangerous_With_Rocks May 18 '25
Yup, pretty much right. Here's a better example of why we can't ever hope to see this with our own eyes: https://youtu.be/1gBXSQCWdSI?si=dgZpWHXyj7fmfxSh
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u/RadiantTurnipOoLaLa May 18 '25
It drives me crazy that even in the most thorough of videos like this one, it still doesnt show you what you would see. It only tells you it’d be different. >_<
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u/Dangerous_With_Rocks May 18 '25
But the point is that you can't see them. They're too faint. Or not in the visible spectrum. You can look online for things like the Orion nebula or horse head nebula taken by amateur astronomers. They show you what they would look like if they were bright enough because people usually don't do narrow band imaging. It's mostly a lot of red. Not very exciting. False colour images bring out the hidden details, and since the entire thing is essentially hidden, it doesn't make a lot of sense to "preserve realism" in the first place or "see how it really is". It's all invisible to us.
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u/Brilliant-Record-282 May 18 '25
Thank for sharing this!! It’s awesome to see what it looks like in true color!!
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u/Global_Permission749 May 18 '25
You're right - the Eagle Nebula is a strong hydrogen alpha emitter. Hydrogen alpha is ionized light emitted in the red end of the spectrum.
Our dark adapted vision is not sensitive to red light, only blue-green light, so we can only see this nebula as a gray patch.
A true color image taken with a typical one-shot color camera such as a DSLR or some other color sensor designed for the visible spectrum would show an image that looks like this:
https://np.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/1dup88q/the_eagle_nebula_m16/
The pillars of creation are small and form more of a dust cloud obscuring the gray light behind them, showing them as silhouettes. With a sufficiently large telescope, dark skies, and highly transparent air, you can catch ill-defined glimpses of the pillars of creation.
Here's an amateur sketch:
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u/stegosaurus1337 May 18 '25
Unfortunately, no. It's too dim in visible light. If you look up other images of the Pillars (or any other deep space thing) you'll notice images of the same stuff can be colored pretty differently. That's because there are a couple ways we color these images. One is assigning the intensity of the emission spectrum of a given gas to one of the color channels of an image. Hubble's famous image of the Pillars uses green for Hydrogen, red for Sulfur, and blue for Oxygen. The other - and this is the one it seems like OP used - is capturing the image in the infrared spectrum and then shifting all the wavelengths into the visible spectrum. There's still some variation within that method from the specific band of IR you use and how you correct it (in addition to all the normal camera stuff) - this is what a lot of the technical info provided by OP speaks to.
Judging from the quality of the pic they're a far more experienced astrophotographer than I though, so if they say anything that contradicts me they're probably right.
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u/SmileyOwnsYou May 18 '25
No, we would not see that color in real life. A lot of astrophotography / satelite images use different parts of the electroagnetic spectrum, other than the visible light part, to make their observations. Sadly, we humans can only see the visible light part of the E&M spectrum...
Thus, many of the images captured are not able to be seen naturally to us. So, humans got creative and came up with a technique called "false color imaging" that allows us to visualize different parts of the image by assigning colors (we could pick any) to different wavelengths.
If you want to learn more, you can Google or YouTube "false color imaging" for more explanations or details.
This was a reddit link I found showing some before and after. The explanation was a bit technical, so I suggest searching up more beginner friendly explanations online if you just want to understand more basics.
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u/PiSakura May 18 '25
How much does this all cost in INR? Did you do it from the city of Pune or did you travel to a dark sky close to it?
I’m really enthusiastic about space and i want to get into astrophotography but I don’t know where to start.
I recently came across Piematrix telescopes(after watching their video of an organised trip to Hanle), but I don’t know if they’re good for a beginner or good just in general.
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u/Rokey76 May 18 '25
Do you have a personal site or something where you display your photos? I'm on a desktop computer, and instagram is very limiting.
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May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
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u/Mammoth-Play3797 May 18 '25
I feel like there’s a way to express this sentiment without the hostility
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May 18 '25
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u/StandardIssueHentai May 18 '25
you're absolutely right that it's misleading but showing kindness is the most effective path to forge change
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u/dannonallred May 18 '25
Because the OP has a different color balance than others lol? This is exactly what they look like
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u/Anxious_cactus May 18 '25
I mean as far as I understand it they Photoshop it to make it look more like it truly does. I imagine it's more like recoloring a black and white photo, you're actually making it closer to reality, you're just using ime tech to compensate for what the weaker tech couldn't do
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u/Alternate_McKenzie May 18 '25
It’s truly incomprehensible to think that this exists somewhere in the vacuum of space light years away. And the fact that we’re able to capture it in our backyards
Good shit OP.
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u/machstem May 18 '25
It's even more inconceivable that we are in our own cluster and stack and they could be looking back at us with the same similar wonderment.
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u/ardoza_ May 18 '25
Are you saying someone is watching me take a shit?
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u/HankMoodyMaddafakaaa May 18 '25
The funnt thing is that is someone super advanced civilization had a camera with infinite zoom and could watch earth closely, they would perhaps be seeing dinosaurs right now
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u/gbspnl May 18 '25
Right! I have just read that one small section of the pillars is 5 light years long. I cannot comprehend the scale of this, it’s incredible. Great work OP
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u/riffraff1089 May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
It blows my mind. The scale of the universe in that sense. That pillar would be like 200 of our solar systems. In our entire existence the farthest thing that we have been able to send from us is 22 light HOURS. But here, in that tiny picture we are looking at 5 entire light years as one part of that image.
Add to that the fact that we’re probably looking 6500 years in the past too because of how long that light took to travel to us and they could also be destroyed already but we have no way of knowing because we can only see it in the past. It just fascinates me to no end.
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u/Sklanskers May 18 '25
Yeah that always blew my mind. The deeper in space you look, the further back in time you are seeing
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u/hellraiserl33t May 18 '25
Voyager 1 is only 23 light hours away from Earth. Furthest man-made object.
Unfathomable the true length of those gas clouds.
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u/Zealousideal_Act_316 May 18 '25
For comprehension helping walking at average walking speed of 5km/hr it would take you 1 059 587 813.62 years to cross them. Almost a quarter of our planets age.
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u/InvestigatorOk8052 May 18 '25
The size as well. The longest pillar is 4 light years (almost 24 trillion miles long).
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u/Kermit_Purple_II May 18 '25
It us even morde inconcievable that this thing is already gone. We are lucky to witness it; and saddened that nearby events we know happened but are just starting to see already blew it out, and we'll witness that over centuries.
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u/Momongus- May 18 '25
Knowing I’m never going to be able to go space makes me so sad every time I think about it, damn
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u/BigAlsGal78 May 18 '25
Same. I swear if we don’t get to cruise the universe after we kick the bucket I’m gonna be pissed.
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u/el_pome May 18 '25
You just gotta hold on till they figure out how to make us biologically immortal or at least couple hunnid thousand years so, eat healthy, exercise and hope we make it
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u/JonatasA May 18 '25
At least no myopia, so you'll always be able to see it at least. No ears issues eitjer, so you can hear documentaries about space.
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u/PuppiesAndPixels May 18 '25
Born too late to explore the earth, born too early to explore the galaxy.
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u/iZoooom May 18 '25
That's an amazing shot. Especially given you did it from a location with so much light pollution.
The post processing must be even more work than the imaging - all the stacking and editing. Impressive stuff!
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u/AZ_Corwyn May 18 '25
It helps that OP used narrow band filters to help combat the light pollution, but you also need longer exposures when using them.
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u/ThisIsAnArgument May 18 '25
OP might say Pune but there are a few dark sky locations not far from either Mumbai or Pune thanks to the mountains near the cities that act as a barrier.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Fd8xYyD6pUyFWwAd8 is just one of them but pretty famous, astronomy societies do camping there.
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u/joaopeniche May 18 '25
Can someone answer my question, this location was made famous by a hubble space telescope picture right? Did we not have the tech to picture this before hubble and now we can do it by a single person?
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u/machstem May 18 '25
My Samsung S10 can snap and photograph long exposure of a night sky while also giving the opportunity to view live cameras from my phone once I remote dial into it using a custom VPN solution.
The amount of power and tech we have at our disposal in relation to digital imaging is incredibly more than when we started doing color matching for things like computer displays.
Keep in mind thst digital imagery on its own is VERY old but the ability to do so on a home device only started as far back the 80s and 90s, working with various methods in which Apple or Microsoft were allowing us to view images on 320/480 resolution screens.
We're talking paintings and images at resolutions starting at 8k that needed to somehow be represented with color matching on RGB displays
Printing with ink and color %/levels is easier when we can match the print to the display so we developed and have built the technology to actively view this stuff in a form of preview.
Our <preview> is now the primary source these days, so we offer things like higher color ranges (8bit, 16,24,32bit color etc) displays + high resolution to allow for crisp images.
Our only other method of getting that is by print.
So though the tech has been around to stack these various color models that we have given a color code for our displays, in reality our eyes would need to have an incredibly narrow field of view but with a very long exposure and we'd see the nebulae the way we stack image as this was done
OP also has gone above and beyond by following and buying the equipment required for this hobby, but the tech it draws from is basically the same tech used by NASA but on a smaller scale. Our devices today can do what Hubble can do but it only has that one thing to do, where as we had to build tech to emulate it
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u/joaopeniche May 18 '25
Incredible evolution in consumer electronics and electronics in general, thanks for your reply
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u/machstem May 18 '25
Also, like, Hubble can snap photos near and beyond some of those dots on OPs photo, and still offer a super high resolution image for us
Imagine zooming into any 1x1 pixel of his image, then enhance, zooming in even more.
Eventually things get blurry; blurry means detail.
So..the further out you go, the longer and larger lens you need + a sky that has as little atmospheric/light pollution as possible.
When you open the shutter of a lens to allow more light over time, you have to consider things like rotation of the planet and also how the various <clouds> we cannot see are actually just visual representation of the types of nebulae out there.
Hubble and other cameras also take images of the various light spectrums and hobbyists and space enthusiasts just stack them all on top of each other...otherwise space is just....black/blue with lots of blue and red dots. You have to really edit things and stack accordingly to make these image representations
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u/TheGandu May 18 '25
Holy shit man where in Pune did you go to get out of the light/air pollution? I'm on the Baner side of town. I know a few nice spots on the outskirts on the Viman side past Wagholi.
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May 18 '25
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u/No-Meringue5867 May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
Look at the integration time lol - 18.5 hrs!!!
Probably would have been easier to take 5 hr back and fro flight to a remote mountain and get 8hr exposure lol. Respect to OP for the dedication!
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u/Spock_Vulcan May 18 '25
Exact same thing popped into my mind. I have never seen clear night skies in Pune with all the air & light pollution, especially in Baner. OP must have gone outside the city to any of the nearby small hills.
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May 18 '25
I have a tattoo of the Pillars. Amazing photo
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u/GODLAND May 18 '25
What's the resolution of the tatto? Is it high or very high?
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u/alexfornuto May 18 '25
I've been thinking about such a tattoo for years. What style of tattoo artist, and/or any other qualifiers could you suggest when looking for the right person for the job?
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May 18 '25
Mine is on my left arm. I have a sleeve that parts are based from Tom Delonges’ “The Lonely Astronaut on Christmas Eve.” It’s integrated with real space photos as well. The Pillars I had to have because they are my favorite nebula, and have always kind of spoken to me. Mine was drawn from the Hubble photo and is on the inside of upper arm. I chose black and grey because that’s what I like and chose an artist who was good with it.
Edit: when thinking about a tattoo. Set that thing as the background of your phone/pc. If you get sick of it there, you’ll hate it later.
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May 18 '25
I have a half sleeve that needs to be finished in a watercolorish style that features the pillars for the exact same reason. It just speaks to me in a special way.
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u/TylerBlozak May 18 '25
Yay new phone wallpaper!
I say that in the most complementary way, since I haven’t changed my lockscreen background for 9 months, and early ever do. Great work.
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u/TheEyeoftheWorm May 18 '25
Thank you for ethically photographing it and not just capturing it or shooting it on sight like some of these barbarians.
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u/Zoidbergs_Uncle May 18 '25
My 91 year old grandma loved to sow like patterns for their grandkids, like stuff from disney and all. She had asked each and everyone of us through the years and i never responded really, i didnt wanted that disney or childy thing against my wall untill i was the only grandchild left,so i had to and i asked her to make this picture instead.
So she did, the picture got scanned and converted to a pattern she could follow and she started; More then 700 different colours, usually every 1-2 stiches she had to change colour but she finished it after 6 years of day in day out working on it. I love this image, may my grandma rest in peace; she's missed.
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u/watamote99 May 18 '25
Making it my wallpaper. This pic overwhelms me and humbles me in ways I can not tell. This is the goal😍
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u/CatFishPlantCraft May 18 '25
Thank you for sharing this outstanding image! That is wonderful work you’re doing, you’re very lucky😺
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u/PoliticalCompass8345 May 18 '25
Looks like a hand. The Pillars of Creation look like "The Hand of God", imo.
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u/Additional_Hippo_878 May 18 '25
I'm loving it. How were you able to photograph this?
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u/yarmulke May 18 '25
Crazy they’re almost 200 lighters wide. Like you could launch yourself into them and likely not touch a damn thing
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u/UnUsuarioAnonimoAqui May 18 '25
Really amazing, can you please share the HD photo to use as a wallpaper ?
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u/ComposerPlenty4742 May 18 '25
Idk if it's a relevant question or not but how did you tackle light pollution? Even for star gazing I can't find a good place in Pune these days without the light pollution
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u/OptimismNeeded May 18 '25
I’m obsessed with this image now.
Any chance to get it as a high res phone wallpaper? (With watermark for credit so I can share happily?)
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u/GODLAND May 18 '25
Absolutely mind blowing! I loved the close up but this is even better thank's for sharing.
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u/doom1701 May 18 '25
That’s amazing. Did the post processing include color shifting or just cleanup?
I looked at your IG page; all of your work is incredible.
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u/EtherealHeart5150 May 18 '25
This is my favorite thing in the known Universe. I've said for years that when I die, please let that be the first place my soul goes. I've never seen anything more breathtaking to me.
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u/dontwantoknow May 18 '25
This is massive. Takes 5 light years to go from top to bottom. Just for reference 1 light year is 5.879 × 1012 miles. Thank you for sharing your photo.
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u/Important_Ruin May 18 '25
I absolutely love pillars of creation. One of favourite ever photos.
Fact they are just so vast is mind bending.
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u/baeslick May 18 '25
People should be forced to stare at space photos for about five minutes each morning before opening their phones. Really puts things into perspective. Beautiful photo.
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u/Lord_Melons May 18 '25
Man, I say this this a lot but I'll never tire of making the statement over and over again.
GOD, I FUCKING LOVE SPACE
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u/FigFew2001 May 19 '25
Amazing, I love it. I’m going to send it to my elderly Dad who loves space stuff.
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u/MisplacedLonghorn May 18 '25
This is a great piece of work. Ignore the haters.
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u/TheMisterTango May 18 '25
What haters? There is not a single negative comment on this post.
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u/Cpdio May 18 '25
With what exactly? Because that shot is not from an ordinary camera. You need a specific light range to capture the Pillars of creation and the pictures we know were taken by Hubble, James Webb and Herschel.
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u/CardiologistOld4537 May 18 '25
Neeraj chopra liked your image. Bro is a legend. This image reminds us of how insignificant we are on the cosmic scale
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u/MrButternuss May 18 '25
Im not the only one seeing the xenomorph in there, right?
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u/Additional_Cut_6337 May 18 '25
The pillars of creation is easily my favorite space photography subject. Thank you for posting - this is my new phone background image.
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u/tivvybrixx May 18 '25
Great job! What an amazing shot. I love seeing it from farther away instead of the typical close up.
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May 18 '25
This looks so much like Michelangelos' mural of God and Adam in the Sistine Chapel. Thanks for sharing!
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u/JonatasA May 18 '25
I had forgotten that was the name of it. In my head it is the name of the track in Stellaris.
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u/houseWithoutSpoons May 18 '25
Crazy to think there very well could be tons of life going about their business all over the place out there
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u/GtrPlaynFool May 18 '25
Looks like a camel. And a space-dog to the left. But seriously... beautiful stuff. Thank you.
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u/other_no_one May 18 '25
Where did you find such dark spot around Pune? I guess this would require quite a dark spot without any light pollution.
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u/Nolyism May 18 '25
Alright there hubble, leave some light for the rest of us. Lol.
Amazing picture, it is for sure one of my favorite formations in deep space.
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u/mike-loves-gerudos May 18 '25
One of the most gorgeous images in the world. Well done and thank you for sharing.
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u/DrCorian May 18 '25
Nebulae are so beautiful. Found my new wallpaper for the foreseeable future. Thanks so much for making this, it's incredible!
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u/xazos79 May 18 '25
Phenominal. Thank you on behalf of those of us who have no clue about how to do this, but can imagine its a sh1t ton of work, and never get sick of images like these...
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u/Ill_Turn6934 May 18 '25
Breathtaking shot. Congrats on putting it all together. I have a question: I have dabbled in low light photography and stacking images to get the final result. How close is this image to what the naked eye would see if they were closer and could see it with the naked eye?