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The photography of Ekant Veer

10/11/2025

I know that the Great Orion Nebula (M42) is a common astrophotography target, but thought I'd attempt it with an Ha Oiii filter - this brings out the Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) and Oxygen (Oiii) gasses that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye

ZWO Asi533MC Pro with Optolong L-Ultimate Filter
AM5N Mount
Redcat51 Scope
Asi120 mini on OAG for guiding
80 x 300s Light + Bias + Flats + Darks over 2 nights

Stacked and processed in Pixinsight

30/03/2025

Time Traveling...

To put things in perspective, when the light from this galaxy was created New Zealand had just split from Australia. Most of the earth was grass and kelp forests. 15 million years later, it falls onto my telescope in my back garden. Astrophotography feels like time travel.

The M83 "Southern Pinwheel Galaxy" is one of the closest spiral galaxies to our own spiral galaxy. The reddish/pink touches in the galaxy are ionized hydrogen (Hα) emissions which indicates they're star forming regions - worlds are being formed in those parts. It's classified as a 'starburst' region as it's creating new stars far faster than our own Milky Way.

All captured in Ōtautahi Aotearoa (Christchurch, New Zealand) with only about 6 hours of exposure time.

Integration: 75 × 300s lights (6h 15m total), with bias & flats
Telescope: Askar 103 APO
Mount: ZWO AM5N
Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro (OSC)
Filter: Antlia RGB Ultra
Guiding: ZWO ASI120 Mini on OAG
Processing: PixInsight (BlurX, SPCC, Graxpert, StarX, NoiseX, GHS, recombine and final touchups with the histogram)

10/03/2025

Light the Beacons!

An early start but a spectacular morning watching the MW rise over the Pacific Ocean...this little wood pile gave me an idea to try and line up the stars with my head torch...what could I have done to make it work better (other than light a fire!)?

All shot on a Sony A7iii with a Sony 55mm f/1.8 CZ lens - the sky was tracked on my AM5N mount (overkill, I know) controlled with my AsiAir to map the sky out. Each frame was 120s f/2.8 ISO640

I then took a single shot of me with a couple of torches for light painting at 55mm 2s f/2.8 ISO1600

Stitched together in PTGui and Processed in Photoshop & Lightroom. Hope you enjoy it!

19/10/2024

See you in 80,000 years, little comet! ☄️

First (and probably last, for a while) clear night in Christchurch so zoomed up to the Port Hills to see if I could capture the C/2023 Atlas comet before it leaves us.

Full disclosure, this is a composite with the foreground shot at sunset before a massive cloud covered this whole area. I found another location to take multiple shots of the comet and stack that to bring out the tail detail and brought them together in Photoshop. Shot on my Sony A7iii with a Tamron 70-180 f/2.8 lens. 40x5s shots of the comet at 180mm, f/2.8, ISO640 - Foreground is same settings.

12/10/2024

I understand why it's such a popular target. The horsehead and flame nebulae is approx 1350 light years away - all that time to travel to my telescope in my back garden in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

Two panel mosaic shot with an Askar 103 Apo telescope with an Asi533mc Pro camera and Antlia Triband filter. It's only in the sky for a couple of hours before sunrise, so only about 2 hours of data for this one. Look forward to getting more over summer.

08/08/2024

A labour of love - 24 hours of imaging over 4 nights to take this pic of the Tarantula Nebula - I set up my camera to do a timelapse of my telescope on one of the nights - it's quite cool watching the stars move in the background!

Askar 103 APO scope
ZWO Asi533MC Pro camera
Optolong L-Ultimate Filter
iOptron Cem26 Mount
iOptron iGuider on OAG
All shot from Ōtautahi | Christchurch suburbs (Bortle 6)

Controlled with N.I.N.A and processed in Pixinsight

Light data total of 97 x 60s + 167 x 300s + 50 x 600s

Hope you like it!

16/05/2024

Stunning aurora over a New Zealand landscape from my photography friend, Dalle...Really makes you question existence in reality and our place in the cosmos...

Capture details below.
Critical thinking is an important skill. This image, like many circulating on the web at the moment, was create by AI. Many aspects of this image are physically impossible BUT we sometimes get so caught up in the hype and emotions that we believe what we see.

AI has changed the landscape (pun intended) and so be critical and question. Many of the images will have cartoony foregrounds but more critically, they draw people in with emotions and cognitive biases, like appeals to authority (I am an expert, so believe me) or social biases (my friends like this, so must be real).

It's important to recognise a fake and also recognise that some people do this to profit from a lack of critical thinking. Ask questions and be enlightened (pun also intended)

13/05/2024

Lots of the same questions coming up about the , so here's a photo I took to show quick examples of:

1) A representation of what I saw with my naked eye
2) What came off the camera (way more colour and light already)
3) What a little processing can do with a RAW image

And for fun, I asked Photoshop to use its AI function to expand the sky to 3x its size - this is the best of the images it suggested - watch out for fakes! Seeing is not believing!

12/05/2024

More Aurora spam - this time of the beautiful Te Taumutu Runanga Marae and Hone Wetere (John Wesley) church next door. I've been to both before and had the privilege of being whaikōrero on the marae for a University of Canterbury visit many years ago. I always love the serenity of the area (and the darkness for nights like last night!)

Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Christchurch City Council Ōtautahi Christchurch

11/05/2024

Don't know if anyone heard but there was an aurora last night...if you missed it, here's a timelapse and one more photo to adding to the acid spam

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