Dots Of Thoughts - An otherworldly night sky experience in Himachal Pradesh.
The Experience
Witnessing the night sky is a blessing to everyone on this planet, that is not divided by boundaries or territories like on our land.
This year has been really indefinite and rigorous for all of us. I had spent endless nights staring at the sky from my rooftop thinking how miraculous the activities at night can be. Eventually after a long wait till November I got clearance to pack up and head out for an exclusive night sky exploration in the Fairy forest of Parvati valley in Himachal Pradesh. I could not think about anything else but the milky way galaxy and the phenomenal activities of our night sky away from the city lights. I boarded a bus at night of 7th November. It was a 12 hour overnight journey from New Delhi to Parvati valley. In order to reach the forest I had to complete a day long hike from my base camp in Chalal to the forest beyond a small village, Kalga. I started my hike with a handful of fruits and drinks to maintain my appetite, a knife for my protection, a sketch book to visualise and my camera gears. I had this one thing in my mind all the time and that was to get away from civilisation (light pollution) as much as I can and look out for a spot in the wilderness from where I can stargaze the whole scene and capture that immense beauty of the night sky.
THE PROCESS
Before I begin with the process involved in capturing the night sky and milky way galaxy, below is a visual of my first encounter with the Milky way galaxy.
A VIEW OF THE MILKY WAY GALAXY SHARING THE CANVAS WITH TWO CONSTELLATIONS ON EITHER SIDES: SCORPIUS AND SAGITTARIUS AS SEEN FROM THE INNER REGION OF THE FAIRY FOREST IN PARVATI VALLEY.
It was my first ever experience of witnessing such kind of a miracle. It felt completely out of this world. A faint arch composed of gases and stars and nebulae dividing the night sky diagonally.
So to begin with I would like to inform that all these photographs that I’ve made are shot using the gear that you may already have or can get without a great deal of investment. There are, of course, several thousand-dollar lenses that will do the best job but they are far from required to get photographs you can still be proud of. I had my Nikon D7200 with a Samyang 14mm F2.8 and a Nikon 70-300 mm F4.5-5.6 lenses with one sturdy tripod and a remote trigger. No telescopes, No trackers, No big deal.
We’ve seen those outstanding astrophotography images that are almost hard to believe that regular cameras and gears have captured them. Unlike the daylight photography, There are couple new variables that have to be considered before setting off to shoot the night sky. This includes the time of the month, preferably near the new moon and your location and your distance from the city’s light pollution. From there if you have a little knowledge of photography then that can begin to render for the need of astrophotography.
There are variety of techniques that I use for creating dynamic night sky photographs, Including capturing the pin point stars or star trails or time- lapse movies as they move across the night. My subject usually determines if I pursue pin point stars or star trails in my photograph, For example if I have some interesting elements in my foreground, I will capture the pin point stars just to compliment my frame. In order to capture the pin point stars you must start with a decent wide F/stop as much as your lens provides with a shutter speed of not more than 20 seconds and ISO about 1600-3200. Any more time will produce motion blur causing the stars to look blurry. I usually let my foreground be lit by the moonlight by incase of a dark night I light paint my foreground using speedlights or torches to give an artistic look but maintaining the originality.
Below is an example of a pin point stars and a star trail photographs .
PIN POINT STARS WITH MOONLIT FOREGROUND STAR TRAILS WITH LIGHT PAINTED FOREGROUND
The above picture on right is shot on Bulb mode. It is an an hour long exposure of the rotation of our earth capturing the trails of stars. Pointed towards the true north to get a circular formation of trails. It took me almost 2 hours to capture this single exposure photograph that includes an hour long exposure and an hour long in camera noise reduction & picture control. This was shot from the camp site in fairy forest.
That’s not all. On a chilly crystal clear night, The 3rd day of my exploration, I ventured out to spot some known visible stars and constellation formations in the depths of fairy forest. Shared Below is a visual showing the bright winter stars that were clearly visible starting from the Sirius ( bottom ) to the constellation Orion ( centre ) and Taurus with a bright orange star Aldebaran ( left off Orion ) and Pleiades star cluster on top of the Orion constellation. I was lucky enough to locate these constellations and clusters of stars in the night sky along with the faint edges of Milky Way galaxy.
Finally came the day to return from the fairy forest after a 4 day long hike, extremely tired, laying back in the car I was still tracking the milky way on my app StarWalk and looking out of the window to see if i could figure out the exact position of it. I was moving downhill on a path full of pin bends and ups downs to reach the base camp in chalal while i was still in an argument with myself whether i was satisfied or not with this otherworldly experience. I Couldn’t resist and asked my driver to pull down the car somewhere on the shoulder and found a little dark spot for myself on the edge of the road to set up my gears. This was then when i captured this beautiful sight of the galaxy we live in.
It is really hard to believe that we tiny creatures tend to think that we are the point and all revolves around us but no, it is us who move on a velocity of 1600km/hr gazing outwards to the surreal realm around us full of galaxies, nebulae and a sky full of million stars.