'Clearest pic of moon' captured by 16-year-old Pune boy wins internet, goes viralStunning photographs of the Moon, painstakingly shot by a 16-year schoolboy from Pune have gone viral on social media platforms and earning him accolades from all over, on Wednesday.

The lad, Prathamesh Jaju is also an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer, studying in Pune's Vidya Bhavan High School in Class X.

Last fortnight, on May 3, he shot around 50,000 pictures and stitched them together to get the clearest and sharpest image of the moon from 1 am-5 am, and then spent another 40 hours processing them for the outstanding results. "The reason behind the 50,000 pictures was to get the clearest picture of the Moon. I stitched them together and sharpened the images to see crisp details of the Moon," he said in his social media posts.

Take a look at the pictures shared bu Jaju-

On one of his social media sites, he has uploaded the photo and explained: "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."

"Our eyes cannot resolute the colours of the minerals on the moon. The blue tones reveal areas rich in ilmenite which contains iron, titanium and oxygen. While the orange and purple colours show regions relatively poor in titanium and iron. The white/grey tomes refer to areas of greater exposure to sunlight," Jaju wrote on social media while describing his captured image of the moon.

Asked about how he got the idea to do such a thing, the teenager told news agency ANI, "I read some articles and saw some YouTube videos to learn how to capture these images. I learned the processing."

Actively connected with the Jyotirvidya Parisanstha - the oldest amateur astronomers' association in India - Prathamesh said he captured around 38 panels at 1500mm and 3000mm focal length with a 1.2 megapixel.

For this, he used Celestron 5 Cassegrain OTA with EQ3-2 GO-TO Mount, ZWO ASI120MCS, GSO 2X BARLOW to click the images, in which the lunar surface, its craters and other stark details are visible with great clarity.

Besides photography, Jaju likes athletics. He even participated in one national competition in athletics. He is also very active on social media and has more than 26,500 followers on Instagram.

Sharing about his future aspirations, the teenager said, "I want to become an astrophysicist and study astronomy professionally but astrophotography is just a hobby for me right now."

Source : DNA India