NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, the Antennae Galaxies!
Image Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
My journey into the cosmos officially began in the early months of 2019, when I first looked through a telescope. However, my interest had been sparked about two years prior to that. I had always enjoyed science and found it fascinating, but it wasn't until I got to college that my love for all things science truly blossomed. In college, I majored in biology and worked in the microbiology labs at Arizona State University. I loved the work I did, but barely knew anything outside of those fields. As for astronomy, I could barely name the planets, let alone what order they were in. I had not even looked through a telescope as a child or ever dreamed of being an astronaut. Yet, not long after graduating college and finding myself at a very low point in life, I began to learn about astronomy.
In April 2016, after having successfully graduated college two years before, I was working in a clinical lab, testing blood samples on machines. My work had lab week — a week where we celebrated working in a laboratory. We got food, prizes, and got to listen to various presentations. We could even offer to present if we wanted to! Say no more! I offered to do a presentation on gravitational waves, having briefly learned about them earlier that year. I had no idea what they were and why they were important, but I figured it would be interesting. After receiving positive feedback from the presentation and realizing how much I enjoyed it, my intrigue about the cosmos began. I gave a presentation every year thereafter on various astronomy topics until I left that workplace. At this point, I was still limited to reading books about space. Then, through a fortuitous opportunity in early 2019 when volunteering as a park steward for the city of Phoenix, I became acquainted with my first telescope.
Through a fledgling astronomy club that did not survive the 2020 pandemic, I looked through my first eyepiece at the cosmos. Seeing the Orion Nebula through the telescope blew my mind and made me feel incredible awe and happiness. I soon learned after that you can put cameras on a telescope and take pictures. And that began my hobby into astrophotography. Right as my involvement was ramping up throughout 2019 and into 2020, the pandemic occurred. Everything came to a screeching halt. I had acquired my own telescope and camera by this point but had no idea how to use it. And now I could not meet up with anyone to learn how to use it. Eventually as time went on, I was able to get outside and slowly try to learn. I just as quickly learned just how much taking your own photos sucks. It was hard. It was expensive. It was time-consuming. And I had no idea how to even process the images I was taking!
Finally, in the summer of 2020, I connected with an amazing astrophotographer named Isaac Armas on Instagram. Through online Skype sessions, he taught me the exact buttons to push in Photoshop and what workflow I should use for my images. Once I understood what to do, I felt so happy and confident! It felt so good to finally get help from someone after being confused and alone for so long. Early on in my astrophotography journey, someone else on Instagram had told me about Hubble data and how to work with it. They had sent an article about how to download the data and use it, but I was still too new to understand what I needed to do. I figured since I knew what I was doing now, I could give it a go! And that is the story of how I met the Antennae Galaxies! They were the first image I ever downloaded and processed. I was immediately enamored by the data and fell in love with it.
After learning new processing skills, I re-processed this image of the Antennae Galaxies! Image Credit: NASA/ESA/ Hubble Space Telescope/ Alexandra Nachman. Image processed using FITS Liberator and Photoshop CC.
The image of the Antennae Galaxies was the first piece of professional data that I had ever processed. I had no idea before I even got into this hobby that all those pretty pictures from NASA were available to the public! For free! The image was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and downloaded from a data archive run by NASA. Once I learned how to download them, I then learned how to process them by adapting narrowband techniques taught to me by Isaac. I began to work on downloading more images and processing them, but soon ran into hurdles — images I wanted to work on that couldn't be done without more advanced knowledge. Eventually, I was able to connect with some who were able to point me in the right direction and I found other techniques online. But it was never easy. To this day, there is a lot that I do not know and not a lot of information on how to fully unlock the extent of processing these images, shy of actually working for NASA.
That is the reason why I have created this website and my YouTube channel (which can be viewed here) I wanted to share the knowledge I have so that others may get to experience the magic that is astronomy and not feel the frustrations that I did when learning. I love to learn and I love to share what I learn! This world, this Solar System, this Universe... are amazing and absolutely magical and everyone deserves to get to understand it and experience it. I cannot wait to share what I have learned about processing professional astronomy data as well as other STEM information — from fun activities to awesome lessons and articles! Feel free to reach out with any questions or connect with me here!
Comments