FirstLook: Orion Through a 3D-Printed Telescope
I had a keen interest in astronomy and the universe around us from an early age, and I crafted my first telescope from cardboard tubes and spectacle lenses when I was 12 years old. I remember looking at the Pleiades star cluster with it and seeing thousands of stars that were invisible to my naked eyes. I was awestruck, and promised myself that when I grow up, I’d make a better telescope!
In 2018 I started tinkering with electronics, robotics and 3D printing. I suddenly had the means to fulfill my childhood dream. In September 2019 I took my first image of a deep-sky object from my rooftop using nothing but a standard mirrorless camera on a tripod.
I had to overcome many technical challenges: tracking the sky precisely, building a reliable rig that can take very long exposures, modifying my camera to be more sensitive to the light emitted by the nebulae, etc.
In 2024, for three nights, I pointed my homemade telescope, made of PVC pipe and 3D-printed parts, at the most famous nebula in the winter night sky. I collected more than 11 hours of data and decided to use the best eight hours of it. After many hours of processing, this is my final image of the great Orion Nebula as seen from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Zubuyer Kaolin is a Bangladeshi astrophotographer who captures breathtaking images beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Learn more about Kaolin, his telescope and his passion for photography at AramcoWorld.com.
@the.z.axis
@zubuyer
zubuyerkaolin.com
Right: Sarika Siraj
Half Moon
You may also be interested in...
Spotlight on Photography: Relive the 1980 Grand Prix Through Michael Turner's Racing Photos
Amid the roar of racers zooming toward the finish line in London during the 1980 Grand Prix, longtime auto-racing photographer and renowned artist Michael Turner trained his lens on a Saudia-Williams FW 07.
All the Lands Were Sea
In late 1967, photographer Tor Eigoland traveled for more than: a month, mostly by canoe, among the countless villages of southern Iraq's vast marshes. Now, 45 years later, writer Anthony Sattin calls his photographs a "rare and ethnographic record of a lost world. They bring us back to a time and place where people lived in harmony with their environment and respected the balance the natural world needs to thrive.'
How to Discover Egypt From the Inside Out
Rather than just telling travelers where to go, the guidebook Egypt: Inside Out by Trevor Naylor offers an inside-out perspective that evokes the experience of being there, inviting readers to embrace an almost meditative travel discipline of slowing down to take in the details and complexities of Egypt, moment by moment.