Pune lad clicks 'clearest' Moon with 50,000 pictures

A 16-year-old amateur astronomer and astro-photographer from Pune, Prathamesh Jaju, has clicked one of the best images of the Moon.

The image of Moon clicked by Prathamesh has gone viral on social media platforms.

Prathamesh captured the image on May 3, starting 0100 to 0500 hrs and spent close to 40 hours processing the image.

“The reason behind 50,000 pictures was to get the clearest picture of the Moon. I stitched them together and sharpened the image to see crisp details of the Moon,” he said.

Prathamesh is a student of Vidya Bhavan High School in Pune and was to appear in the Class X exam — which has been cancelled and all students are promoted to Class XI because of the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic.

He is associated with Jyotirvidya Parisanstha, — known as JVP to people of Pune — which is the oldest association of amateur astronomers in India.

In his Instagram post, in which he uploaded the photo, Prathamesh said: “Last Quarter Mineral Moon… This image is an HDR Composite of two different images made to give it a 3 dimensional effect. This is my most detailed and clearest shot of the third quarter Mineral Moon. I captured around 50,000+ images over 186 GigaBytes of data which almost killed my laptop with the processing.”

He captured around 38 panels at 1500 and 3000mm focal length with a 1.2 megapixel.

In the Facebook post, he said he had used Celestron 5 Cassegrain OTA with EQ3-2 GO-TO Mount, ZWO ASI120MCS, GSO 2X BARLOW to click the images in which one can clearly see the lunar surface and craters.