Pitt student takes interest in astrophotography to new heights
For Ryan Caginalp, the sky is not the limit. The freshman in the University of Pittsburgh’s Honors College in the Swanson School of Engineering used downtime from the pandemic to accelerate a craft most people know about through scientific magazines or documentaries: astrophotography.
Ryan, 16, used internet forums and YouTube videos to learn more about taking photos of stars, nebulae, planets and other celestial objects, beginning in July 2019.
He and his father, Gunduz Caginalp, a professor in Pitt’s department of mathematics, realized Ryan’s standard refractor telescope wasn’t as effective at capturing the full extent of deep space objects that many astrophotographers seek.
The Caginalps invested in such highly technological equipment as a telescope mount that moves to compensate for the rotation of Earth, a high -powered telescope and a special camera mounted to the telescope that takes hundreds of images as the telescope moves.
Computer software then synthesizes and processes all the information captured by the camera while eliminating light pollution and noise. Ryan also has a second telescope for capturing images of planets. According to the university, locating and capturing a planet requires about 20 videos with 30,000 images each.
“If you simply want to take pictures of the moon, then it’s not that difficult,” he said. “But if you want to take highquality pictures of nebulae and whatnot, it can get pretty tricky if you’re in a light-polluted area.”
Over about a year and a half pursuing the hobby, he has photographed Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, and Crescent Nebula, a figure in the constellation Cygnus about 5,000 light-years away.
He said taking pictures of nebulae is his favorite and that he takes the photos from the driveway of his Squirrel Hill home.
“I use certain filters to capture the light that you want and only capture a certain spectrum of light,” he said. “Typically light pollution isn’t in that spectrum. [That] helps minimize it a bit.”
He said the most difficult task is taking photos of planets or “very dim” nebulae.
“Planet imaging relies on atmospheric distortion, which varies from day to day,” he said. “It’s very rare you get a good night.”
He worked with Pitt professor Alex K. Jones in electrical and computer engineering research this fall and plans to pursue engineering in the future.
As far as astrophotography goes, he said he wants to continue that as well.
“It’s a good hobby have,” he said. to