THROUGH THE LENS

An astrophotographer shines light on galaxies and nebulas light years away from mankind.

THE HUBBLE TELESCOPE was launched in 1990, bringing us the first glimpses of deep space in May that year. It would be another three years before Navaneeth Unnikrishnan would even be born. As a boy, Navaneeth loved outer space and grew up on a healthy diet of NASA images, believing that only the US space agency had the wherewithal to capture celestial worlds. Until five years ago, when he accidentally captured the Milky Way in a wide frame from the rooftop of his Kozhikode home. The image led him down the search-engine rabbit hole of deep-space photography. An electronics engineer by training, Unnikrishnan invested in all the essential equipment, including a telescope, adapters, a tracking mount, cameras, and lenses, to capture deep-space objects himself. Since then, there has been no looking back for this 25-year-old astrophotographer, and his Instagram page (@ navaneeth_unnikrishnan) is testament to his passion. Armed with software like Stellarium and Cartes du Ciel, Unnikrishnan regularly travels to high-altitude regions like Spiti and Ladakh, where the air is thin (and hence, low on dust) and urban light is missing altogether, to capture these images of galaxies and nebulas far far away.

The red supergiant star Antares, the brightest one in the constellation of Scorpius, and the colourful Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, which is one of the closest star-forming regions to our solar system. Opposite: A frozen river and the Spiti Valley sky featuring a bright Moon and the Orion constellation.