From Dhaka to the world and beyond: How Zubuyer Kaolin wins hearts with astrophotography
In astrophotography, I would say 70% is technique and 30% is the equipment. I spent a lot of time learning the technique behind those incredible images of the galaxies, Zubuyer says
Zubuyer Kaolin has forever had an unwavering knack for astronomy. Bringing a spin to this, he took up a rare interest in astrophotography.
The craft, also known as astronomical imaging, is the photography or imaging of astronomical objects, celestial events or areas of the night sky.
That's not all. While anyone would imagine that such a craft would require a special, perhaps even expensive, equipment to practise, Zubuyer took matters into his own hands. He invented a handmade telescope.
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Even that's not all. Recently on Facebook, he posted some photos of the Orion, Eagle and Rosette Nebula. The photos blew up immediately and people started to shower him with love and appreciation especially because he took all those photos using his own device.
In the post, he mentioned that he had been away from Facebook for many years and that he has been exploring other passions and hobbies, astronomy being one of them.
He also mentioned that for the last five years, he had been photographing the space with telescopes he made at home.
Like many countries in the world that are blessed with talented astrophotographers, Bangladesh is blessed with Zubuyer Kaolin, a professional animator and filmmaker based in Dhaka.
Astrophotography stands as a captivating blend of science and artistry, allowing us to capture the breathtaking wonders of the cosmos through specialised photographic techniques. From the ethereal glow of distant nebulae to the delicate rings of Saturn, this field enables both amateur astronomers and professional photographers to document celestial phenomena that often lie beyond the naked eye.
What makes astrophotography particularly special is its ability to not only create stunning visual records of astronomical events but also contribute to scientific research, helping track celestial changes and discoveries while inspiring wonder about our place in the vast universe.
The Business Standard sat down with Zubuyer on Saturday (9 November) to get to know all about him, what he does and how he does it.
How do you feel about the attention and appreciation you're receiving from people since you shared your photos?
"It's overwhelming," Zubuyer said with a big smile on his face.
"I used to be quite active on social media back in the day. But I decided to take a break from Facebook as it can be too much to handle at times. There was a lot happening all at once on Facebook and too many people sharing too much. On the contrary, I found Instagram very useful as I found the right community for me there, a community for photography enthusiasts. I started posting there. From there, I started getting familiar with many different astrophotographers. I got inspired by their craft. All of them were from abroad. I knew no one locally back then. Now my audience is mostly foreigners."
"My true passion for astrophotography is the deep sky. I wanted to take more and more photos of the galaxy and the nebulas. That's how all this began actually. It has been five years now since I've been doing this. I started back in 2019. From the beginning, I did all of it entirely with my own homemade telescopes because it was like a personal challenge to me. That challenge kept me moving forward. I got inspired by the old school astronomers who had to make their own equipment to observe the universe."
Who are your inspirations in the field of astronomy?
"Early astronomers are my biggest inspiration, namely Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, William Harshel, Charles Messier and many others. They had it rough, yet persevered and pushed the boundaries of knowledge. They all built their own telescopes. So, that's something I can relate to. I want to follow in their footsteps and try my best to further our understanding of the universe and our place in it."
So, how did you start your journey with astrophotography?
"I was interested in photography in general ever since I was a kid, actually. That continued throughout my life. I have been working with professional imaging thus far. Animation, computer graphics, and filmmaking basically work with different formats of images. Everything is interconnected. Astrophotography happened to me more recently. It is my passion, but lately it has turned into an addiction."
Did you attend any professional training to master this craft?
"Strange fact about me is that I am an anti-academic. I have nothing against academia but to me, it's more like if you want to learn something passionately, you will be able to do so. You just need to know what you're looking for. I couldn't even study science because of my low scores in school, which led to me studying business. Turns out, it actually helped me with my own business later on," Zubuyer said.
"I have absolutely no training whatsoever on astrophotography. I learnt it all by myself. Information is out there, everywhere," he added.
What is the origin story of your homemade telescopes? What made you decide to build one yourself?
"It came from a promise I made to myself."
"I made my first telescope back in 1998, when I was just 12 years old. I tried many things when I was 12. I got my first computer at that age with my own saved money and with the help of my mother. My interest in animation and coding came from that age. I read books on science which led me to explore what the universe is, what galaxies are. I also found out about telescopes and lenses back then. The simple math of focal length for lenses was something that seemed easy to me and attracted me. That led me to visit nearby eyewear shops and get the lenses I needed to make my telescopes. After that I collected paper tubes from my mother as she was doing some sort of course on interior design or architecture back then. I would cut the paper tubes with kitchen knives and bring them to shape. Then I would stitch everything together and look through it. Objects that were far away became closer through that homemade telescope. I even looked at the Pleiades [also known as Kritika] and found out there are more than what meets the naked eye. At that point, I made myself a promise that I would make better telescopes when I grow up."
"Now as I look back, that promise wasn't even meant for photography, it was purely meant for my thirst to explore more of the sky."
"I would look at foreign photographers taking photos of the galaxy, the nebulas from their backyards and I would be amazed at how that was even possible at that time when James Webb wasn't even a thing. That made me think about getting a camera to take photos of the deep sky. I absolutely ate everything I could find on the web regarding this genre of photography."
"In astrophotography, I would say 70% is technique and 30% is the equipment. I spent a lot of time learning the technique behind those incredible images of the galaxies. The intricate details that go behind achieving those magical images is outstanding."
"I started building my telescope in 2019. From 2017, I have been working with 3D Printing professionally and from 2018, I started working with electronics. Since I was familiar with 3D already, working with softwares like CAD was easy for me. It was just like any other software."
"I will never forget this one particular day, 26 December 2019. I had just finished building my first telescope and went to my roof just as I always did to look up at the sky with my own eyes. It was around 7am. I realised the brightness of the daylight was not much, the sun was half eaten. It was an eclipse! a partial eclipse. I instantly placed my newly built telescope on my camera, although the focus needed more work, but I ignored that factor at that moment, and I took a couple of photos of that partial eclipse," he recalled these memories and shared that, that photo was used as his profile picture for many days in the beginning. It still can be found on his account.
Zubuyer then shared another of his Facebook experiences, "There is this small Facebook group called 'Star Party Bangladesh' where people roam around various places in Bangladesh and take photos of the sky, the stars, the galaxy. That's where I posted my photos of the Orion Nebula besides my Instagram account, and it blew up."
Zubuyer expressed that it made him feel very good that his work made people discuss more about the galaxies, the nebulas and everything it comes with. People started raising questions about this dimension, which felt very interesting to him. People wanted to know more.
"I thought people here would appreciate photos of the moon more but to my surprise, I found out that they were more fascinated by the photos of the nebula instead. That seemed very interesting to me. It created a contrast with my usual foreign audience."
Let's talk about the financial aspect of this passion project. What were some of your struggles?
"I am still struggling!" Zubuyer expressed as we took a little walk.
"You see, at the end of the day I am an artist. The thing is, business is an 'ups and downs' thing. I do not have a job. I have been running my own animation studio, Ogniroth Studios, since 2010. We work with VFX and animation. I'll share that part of my story another time perhaps. So, the struggle has always been around me more or less. I had to save up to buy my first mount. During the COVID pandemic, we got big animation projects and that helped me fund my big purchases such as buying the tracking mount, my astronomy camera and so on. So, my professional work helped me to fund my passion project. And to be practical, I cannot earn much from this passion project. Even if someone buys one of my photos, it still will not be enough to buy a cup of coffee to be frank with you. I did sell a few of my photos, but it was not profitable for me. So, financially I have to be self-reliant at all times."
He then further shared that he has been receiving orders for telescopes. "I'm even getting order requests for telescopes from random people. And since I have been studying manufacturing design personally, I know it is a complicated process. People think since it is a DIY project, it will be cheap, but no. Instead, it might be more expensive than buying a new telescope. Because then, I'll be making a business out of it and a business needs to run. For a business to run, you cannot sell a product at its base cost. You have to include the cost of its production too. You have to think about the profit as well. Then, even the DIY project will become expensive for the interested customers. So, I do not know how this will work but if we can create these things more locally, maybe there is a good chance for this to be a thing here. We need to figure it out."
Where do you get your materials? Are they all locally sourced?
"Not entirely locally sourced," said Zubuyer.
"In terms of my telescope's build, the main component that I needed was the objective lens, the lens that is on the front of the telescope. I purchased the 102mm aperture 900mm focal length objective lens from a Chinese online store as I had no means to make it myself. It cost me around $100-150, from what I can recall. I fashioned the telescope tube out of 4" and 5" PVC pipes sourced from a hardware store down the alley. I sourced most of the electronic parts from local online shops. Other than these, most of my components are self-made. Since I use my 3D printing skill here a lot, it makes the process easier for me. I use my desktop 3D printer which I purchased from here in Dhaka. The filaments can be found here as well. I make my designs on Fusion360, which is a free CAD software. Then I print them using my 3D printer. All my designs on the telescope are 3D printable. So that leaves out only the lenses which I had to purchase."
"If I were to only take account of my material cost then it would be around Tk25,000-Tk30,000. A big portion of that went into the objective lens and electronics."
"Apart from my telescope, I use a decent robotic tracking mount, iOptron CEM40, which I had to import from the USA as it is not available locally. However, I did start building my own robotic tracking mount back in 2019 but never finished it due to my utter laziness. I hope to finish it at some point," Zubuyer shared with a laugh.
"When I started astrophotography, I bought a cheap second hand DSLR camera and astro-modified it to capture deep-sky objects."
"I have already started experimenting with mirror grinding. I'm working on making a machine that will produce reflector lenses but that's still under process so maybe I'll talk about it once it's successfully completed," Zubuyer further added.
"The thing about telescopes is, the more the elements, the better the telescope will be. If there are 3 elements, the telescope will capture 3 wavelengths of colours, there won't be much chromatic aberration in the images. I have two elements in my telescope. My telescope captures the red and the green colours perfectly. The blue colour, on the other hand, gets abit defocused. This is like a downside of my telescope which I fix in my image post-processing. I have to put a lot of effort into image-processing. I'm actually working on other telescopes which eliminates the problems with my existing build. I'm trying to build a reflector telescope. My current one is a refractor telescope. There is a significant difference between the two kinds. It's been afew years actually since I've been working on it, I'm abit lazy so I still haven't finished it. I never thought my work would suddenly get so much attention."
Can you tell us about how you ended up working with the European Space Agency (ESA)?
"One day, the European Space Agency (ESA) reached out and said, 'We'd love to share your work on our platform," Zubuyer shared with a smile. "I wrote a piece for them about my journey, and it was an amazing experience." He added that other major names like Sony and NASA have also showcased his work, which has only fuelled his passion further. "Having people show interest and share what I do — it motivates me to keep going and create even more," he said.
What are the technicalities you face using your current telescope build?
"I previously mentioned the part about the type of lens I use, which is a refractor lens and not a reflector lens that eliminates chromatic aberration and makes the image more noise free. So, this is one of the technicalities I face at the moment. After that comes the fact about the filter I use to take my photos, which is a narrow band filter which only captures the hydrogen and oxygen portion of the nebula. Hydrogen represents the red spectrum of colours and Oxygen represents the blue & green spectrum of colours. The combination of these enables me to get accurate images of the Nebulae only. On the other hand, taking photos of the galaxy is tough from Dhaka since it requires a wider wavelength or spectrum of colours and there is more chromatic aberration, atmospheric disturbance and light pollution which makes it difficult to take clear images of the galaxy from here."
Zubuyer ended the conversation by emphasising on light pollution.
"I advocate against light pollution," said Zubuyer.
"I want to make everyone aware about light pollution. It's not just about astrophotography, it's more about preserving the wildlife, nature and the natural order of things. Night is supposed to be dark; day is supposed to be bright, not the other way around."
"In the daytime we are covering all our windows, and in the nighttime, we are illuminating everything. I do not understand the logic behind it. We need to be responsible about how we light our environment, our cities, our rural places. I recently visited Cox's Bazar and I witnessed that the big establishments over there are all heavily lit up with lights at Inani Beach, where I once saw fireflies. Now there is not a single firefly around there at night. There was a time when I visited Marine Drive there, and while driving through it I could see a million stars in the sky and on the road too, the fireflies. Now I see none of it and if I do, I consider myself lucky."
"Everyone needs to address this issue very seriously. We can start by reducing the use of white lights. We can start using shades on top of lights in the city streets so that the light only goes down and not up where it is not needed. We should reduce the vibrance and brightness of roadside digital billboards in the city. They are too bright. It would save energy, save electricity cost as well. In terms of private residences, we should avoid using white lights on our roof in the nighttime for an extended period of time. Usage of warm lights would be better with proper shading on top. We should not use lights in the jungle, it's like torturing the wildlife, the animals. Could you sleep if someone held a light on your face at night?" Zubuyer asked.
"Let us be responsible now and in the future, we will be able to tell our kids to look at the sky and learn about constellations and the galaxy. There has been a connection between the sky and humankind for millions of years. I will not accept if this connection is destroyed just for looking at our shoes under the light. So, I would humbly request everyone to be more responsible about light pollution and look at the sky the way it's meant to be looked at."
