Mustafa Aydin — Bringing the beauty of the nebulae and galaxies from millions of light years away
Mustafa Aydin from Turkey has been a lover of science, space and the night sky since childhood. After discovering his passion for astrophotography 10 years ago, he has become a well-known and respected astrophotographer with over 21k followers on Instagram and 13k followers on Twitter. His photo “22° Moon Halo and Aurora” was shortlisted in the Aurora Category in the most prestigious astrophotography competition “Astronomy Photographer of the Year” in 2020 by Royal Museums Greenwich.
We talked about the effort required to reveal this hidden world that our eyes can’t see.
— Mustafa, how did you get interested in astrophotography?
I have always been into science, aviation, space, and astronomy. I did things like these as a hobby since my childhood so I ended up studying physics engineering at university. Being born into a photographer family also fed my photographer’s side. It wasn’t until 10 years ago when a visual observation (with and without telescopes) of the sky started being insufficient for my curiosity and I decided to try astrophotography. When you decide to shoot deep sky objects you can’t just start the next day, there is a preparation process for understanding the equipment and technical things with a steep learning curve. So a year of reading, watching and learning, as well as buying the necessary equipment followed.
— Your hobby turned into your job where you spend most of your time. What does exploring the sky mean to you? What do you feel?
Sky exploration has a huge effect on me. It is quite a humbling experience in the first place which makes me feel small. I realise that I know very little and this makes me even more curious. Spending nights over nights under the stars and shooting things that you can’t see with bare eyes makes me feel special.
— There are famous nebulae, star clusters and night landscapes photos in your portfolio. Which sky object is your favourite target and why?
That’s quite a hard question, because I love them all! But if I have to choose one, it would be comets. Most of the deep space objects (nebulae, galaxies, star clusters) don’t show radical changes in human lives. Comets, on the contrary, come from the outer solar system and as they get closer to the sun they change everyday. I love watching and shooting that change. It’s worth mentioning that shooting comets and post-processing photos is quite a challenging process and I love that challenge so much.
— Tell us a little bit more about the effort you have to put to get that perfect deep sky image?
Astrophotography has 3 parts: planning, shooting, pre & post-processing.
Starting with the place, a weather forecast, light pollution check, equipment and camping gear preparation — everything has to be meticulously planned and prepared. Most of the time the planning itself takes more than a week for astrophotography shoot camping.
Then follows the setting up of the shooting equipment, initial adjustments, polar alignment, focus & framing, auto-guiding adjustments and calibration, starting the sequence of shooting the desired object, then shooting the calibration frames: darks, bias, dark bias, flats etc. Depending on the object multiple nights can be spent to shoot one deep sky object.
Finally there goes deselection of the frames which are useless due to tracking errors, plane or satellite passings; calibrating the original object frames with calibration frames then stacking all these frames is called pre-processing and this has to be performed meticulously as it directly affects the resulting image. The photographer should be merciless in getting rid of the bad frames for the sake of a great result. Once the pre-process is finished, the resulting stacked image is brought to the post-process where noise reduction, colour, contrast and curve adjustments are done. The whole pre & post-process can take days depending on the data collected.
— Astrophotography requires enormous amount of scientific and technical knowledge. How much art do you find in this sphere?
Astrophotography is one of the most multi-disciplinary photography genres. It combines engineering, science and art. There are certain aspects related to art as you have to deal with colors, aesthetics and composition. I would say at least 25% of astrophotography is art while the rest is shared between engineering and science.
— NFT’s are taking the art world by a storm. What brought you to the NFT space? What was your experience entering the crypto art space?
For me, as an astrophotographer who is very much into technology and science NFTs/crypto art is another new technology and an interesting space to be in. For the 1st time art finds the value it deserves with NFTs. That is quite exciting.
— Yes, it is also exciting how NFTs connect artists with collectors. What were your impressions of the ForeverLands project?
I have never been a gamer person all my life, but the ForeverLands project seems really cool with the opportunities in the NFT space.
— Given the opportunities that these new technologies have to offer, what is your vision for your creative future?
I will definitely continue creating astrophotography art. Shooting deep sky objects needs and suggests continuous improvement in technical aspects of the hobby that will affect the artistic output. Being aware of this I will keep creating which means learning more everyday, creating better art and going beyond boundaries.
— You have spent a lot of time exploring deep space, what is your message to people?
It may sound cliche, but we are so small and the universe is so vast, and we, humans, have been exploring and learning since the times we were wanderers, hunters and gatherers. While we learn and know more all we have to do is get humbler. To put it in other words — by knowing more we should realize how little we know. We are made of star stuff, we are the cosmos and the cosmos is us. We have to treat the cosmos very well as you wouldn’t want to treat yourself badly. We are the exact same thing.
— Very wisely said. The last quick question — are you keeping ETH or converting it to FIAT?
I keep ETH all the way! 🙂
Thank you, Mustafa, for shedding some light on this multidisciplinary astrophotography subject. I hope your photos and shared knowledge will inspire more people to get on this challenging yet rewarding deep sky exploration journey.
To view more of Mustafa Aydin astrophotography content visit Sloika.xyz , his website and do not forget to follow him on Twitter.
Our Collection:
ForeverLands Vault has acquired 2 works from the Universe to Metaverse collection by Mustafa Aydin. You can see the whole ForeverLands Vault collection on OpenSea at https://opensea.io/foreverlands.
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