A nebula on the shape of a killer shark
Hunt in the night for sky shark ends up with amazing shot.
That Hunt is Ronan Hunt, an astrophotographer who shoots images of the sky at night with his camera, not in the Chief Brody sense.
And he didn't need a bigger lens, as he took an amazing photo of the dark shark nebula, which is a region of dark dust in the constellation of Cepheus.
It resembles, as the grandiose name suggests, our favourite ocean predator, the shark.
And what an image it is, which just like the shark from Jaws, isn't that easy to capture. Here's why.
Unlike emission nebula, dark nebula do not emit their own light - he ate the light - and are only visible to us through faint reflected light from surrounding stars.
Finding this particular shark didn't sound any less complicated than the hunt by Quint Brody and Hooper on board the Orca.
Ronan said: "I packed up my telescope and mount and drove four hours to the west of Ireland, to dark skies between bortle 2 and 3. Bortle being the scale to measure the brightness of the night sky for a particular location.
"I spent three nights imaging this object and managed two full clear nights and the third night was partially wrecked by clouds."
Clearly that image couldn't stay down, not with three nights from Ronan, not with three it couldn't.
How difficult is it to capture a dark shark nebula?
Capturing these images is a fairly involved process that requires patience. Aligning the telescope and tracking mount each night so it tracks accurately and finding the nebula in the sky each night takes some effort.
For example, I use a specialist Astrophotography camera which is monochrome and cooled for maximum sensitivity and minimum noise, with this I shoot the red, green and blue channels separately using separate RGB filters. I then need to stack all my red, green and blue exposures separately and combine them in post processing to create the colour image. Image processing takes quite a few days or longer once the data is acquired.
How long been trying to capture one?
I’ve been trying to shoot this nebula because it’s so awesome looking for a couple of years, but I’ve never been able to do it justice as I wasn’t able to get to dark enough locations to shoot.
Any hints for beginners in astrophotography?
You 100% do NOT need a big telescope to take great images of the night sky. If you’ve a DSLR you can get started with nightscape shots and start learning from there. Check out Astrobackyard on YouTube he’s got loads of great guides on how to get started.
To really take the plunge if you’ve got a DSLR already, invest in a star tracker (e.g., skywatcher star adventurer) to let you counteract the earth’s rotation and take long exposures of the stars without trails. That’s the first real step towards capturing deep sky objects. Many nebula are actually relatively large in the night sky and can be imaged with modest telephoto lenses. Believe it or not my Dark Shark image was shot with a 250mm focal length which is actually half the size of what sports and wildlife photographers use.
How long have you been doing it for?
I got my first DSLR in November 2018 and took my first tracked deep space image in July 2019. So nearly three years of deep space astrophotography now.
Are you a fan of Jaws?
Absolutely, I’m a big fan of Jaws and sharks. I honestly can’t remember the first time I saw it. I was pretty young, I think. I’ve seen it loads of times, an absolute classic!
Rather than sharks in the sky, have you ever thought about photographing sharks under the water?
YES! I’ve always been interested in sharks; I was always a religious shark week watcher on discovery channel when I was a kid. I really want to do it. I actually tried to shoot whale sharks with a GoPro before on a trip to the Philippines a couple years ago, but we never managed to see any.
I want to try shoot basking sharks on the west coast of Ireland this summer. I just need to get the correct housing for my DSLR to try proper underwater photography! It’s absolutely on my list when time allows it.
You can follow Ronan and see more of his amazing work here: https://linktr.ee/Ronanhunt