Thank you very much Saad bhai. The sky at Kalri was just like that. This is one of the very few examples that I've seen of landscape astrophotography - that's what the simple process is called - from our beautiful land. And the acute shortage of such photography was one of the reasons why I started this thread at our beloved PakWheels.com.
Most of our PakWheels bros do commendable jobs (no buttering intended!) capturing the sunlit beauty of the country for us, fellow countryfolks, and the rest of the world to admire. The PakWheels team can also do our part, without spending a single extra paisa, in bringing the beauty of the silent night into the limelight. What do I mean? Let me try to explain with some shots. Photos courtesy of TWAN.
Would be not have been proud if we knew these photos were shot in Balochistan or Thar or Cholistan?
Would we not have gone WOW if we knew the guy in the photo is a Pakistani on Pakistani soil?
We Alhamdulillah often see hard-earned daytime shots of our scenic mountains. But very few or none under the stars even though sometimes our folks spend nights there. Don't you wish you could show a picture like this to some foreign acquaintances and said "This is my Pakistan!"
You can see lots of such photography from around the world (there are many shots from Iran and Turkey, for instance) on the TWAN website, but I'm sad to mention I haven't seen one from Pakistan. Even though our country has some of the world's most pristine skies.
So what can we at PakWheels do? Simple. We don't even need expensive cameras and fancy tracking mounts. Even a tripod is optional; some of our astronomers regularly keep their cameras on stools or chairs or even the ground. When you are staying at night at a scenic location and the Moon is out (any phase beyond half), put you digital camera on it's 'Manual' exposure setting, push the ISO up to the highest setting your camera has (may be 800 or even 1600), set the exposure time to maximum (30 seconds to 1 minutes is enough; not more than that), place the camera on something so that it stays still during the exposure, point towards some scenic part of the horizon (so that the shot captures both the land and the stars) keeping the Moon outside the frame and press the shutter.
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Hunza. (Image credit: Tariq bhai, Duikar , dedicate to eagle's nest hotel, hunza ,PAKISTAN on Flickr - Photo Sharing!)
Just like we PakWheelers post the best daytime shots of the country in one of the sticky threads, may be our moderators can sticky this one and folks can start posting night time Pakistani landscapes here? Just a thought. Can our moderators help?If you or anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask. I'll Insha Allah be happy to answer them as best as I can.
You might be wondering why we astronomers don't have any landscape astrophotography to showcase. Two reasons: (1) It's rather shameful, but we haven't had much chance to travel to remote places. My trip to Kalri was the first time in my 22 years that I had gone to a dark site. (2) I mentioned earlier that since celestial objects are faint and very distant, they are easily washed out by moonlight. So when do plan a trip, we have no option but to do it for moonless nights. You need a big Moon for landscape astrophotography.
Have camera, will travel . . . anyone?!
Zain
