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Debojit Chakrabarty | Sydney

@afterrearth

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"@afterrearth | Astrophotographer | Capturing the beauty of the night sky"
📍Sydney|Kolkata|Bangalore

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The Galactic core’s last act. An entire valley disappearing beneath it. 🌌

As the Milky Way’s brilliant core prepares to vanish from our evening skies for a few months, Yass offered something extraordinary.

An untamed valley blanketed in fog, vibrant natural airglow sweeping across the horizon, and the final glimpses of the Galactic core — a fleeting fusion of cosmos, atmosphere and landscape.

📍 Yass, NSW, Australia 🇦🇺
📸 Stacked astrophotography
@afterrearth
[Milky Way photography, Galactic core, Milky Way core, astrophotography Australia, nightscape photography, landscape astrophotography, natural airglow, green airglow, magenta airglow, stacked astrophotography, Yass NSW, Yass astrophotography, NSW night sky, Australian night sky, southern hemisphere Milky Way, Galactic centre, Galactic dust lanes, foggy valley, sea of fog, dark sky photography, Milky Way season, night sky landscape, astronomy photography, Australian landscape photography, cosmic landscape]

#astrophotography #nightphotography #milkywaygalaxy #sonyalpha #milkywayphotography Wide-field stacked Milky Way astrophotography captured near Yass, NSW, Australia. A copper-pink Galactic core stretches across the night sky above natural green and magenta airglow, rolling hills, silhouetted trees and a rural valley filled with fog. taken in Yass, New South Wales by @afterrearth

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a day ago

The clouds are part of the show. ☁️🌌

Watch them sweep across the stars, hiding and revealing the Milky Way over Lake Keepit, NSW.

No distractions. Just the night sky in motion.

↻ Turn your phone. Watch the night unfold.

📍 Lake Keepit, New South Wales, Australia
📷 Sony A7S | Astro-modified
🎥 Night-sky timelapse | Real footage
🌌 @afterrearth

[Milky Way timelapse, night sky timelapse, Lake Keepit astrophotography, Lake Keepit NSW, Australian astrophotography, Milky Way photography, nightscape photography, cloud timelapse, moving clouds at night, stars behind clouds, clouds and stars, Milky Way through clouds, dark sky Australia, New South Wales night sky, astrophotography timelapse, astronomy photography, starry night sky, Southern Hemisphere Milky Way, landscape astrophotography, astro-modified Sony A7S, Sony A7S astrophotography, night sky photography, Milky Way over water, cloud movement timelapse, Australian nightscape.]

#astrophotography #nightphotography #createwithsony #nightsky #astroreels taken in Lake Keepit by @afterrearth

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4 days ago

There’s a promise to a little girl hidden beneath this Milky Way. 🌌

At 420 Swamp Road in Jamberoo, NSW, Australia, this tracked and stacked Milky Way photograph captures the Galactic Centre above a weathered roadside building.

But the most meaningful detail isn’t in the night sky.

In 2021, artist Samuel Hall painted the building for his niece, Madison. They had connected over the animated series Spirit, and he wanted the horses on these walls to remind her that life has no boundaries, that she should follow her dreams, and that her uncles will always have her back.

“Let your spirit run free.”

I came here chasing dark skies and the Milky Way. What stayed with me was the story beneath the stars.

Billions of stars overhead. A message of love and freedom on the walls below.

Sometimes, the most meaningful part of landscape astrophotography isn’t the galaxy you capture.

It’s the story you discover here on Earth.

📍 420 Swamp Road, Jamberoo, NSW, Australia
🎨 Mural: @samwellwellwellwellwell
📸 @afterrearth

📷 BEHIND THE PHOTOGRAPH

🌌 Sky: 9 tracked exposures, stacked
24mm | 122s × 9 | f/4 | ISO 1250
Total integration: 18m 18s

🏚️ Foreground: Single exposure
24mm | 30s | f/7.1 | ISO 2000

🔭 Technique: Tracked / Stacked / Blended

[ Milky Way Photography ] [ Astrophotography Australia ] [ Landscape Astrophotography ] [ Milky Way Core ] [ Nightscape Photography ] [ Night Sky Photography ] [ Star Tracker Photography ] [ Tracked Milky Way ] [ Stacked Astrophotography ] [ Long Exposure Photography ] [ Australian Night Sky ] [ Jamberoo NSW ] [ Kiama NSW ] [ NSW Landscape Photography ] [ Australian Street Art ] [ Southern Hemisphere Milky Way ] [ Fine Art Astrophotography ] [ Milky Way Galaxy ]

#MilkyWayPhotography #astrophotography #NightscapePhotography #jamberoo #createwithsony Tracked, stacked and blended Milky Way photograph above a street-art-covered building at 420 Swamp Road, Jamberoo, NSW, Australia. The Galactic Centre reveals colourful nebulae and dark dust lanes, while red light trails cross the foreground. The building features artwork by Samuel Hall, dedicated to his niece Madison. Astrophotography by @afterrearth. taken in Jamberoo, New South Wales by @afterrearth

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5 days ago

Sometimes getting the shot isn’t the hardest part.
Sometimes it’s getting yourself back to the camera.

And this image from Lake Tyrrell, Victoria probably wouldn’t exist without Arnab.

Day 2 of my astro trip. Since the afternoon, I knew I wasn’t in my zone.

I was once diagnosed with anxiety neurosis. The attacks that used to be frequent have become rare and irregular — but somehow, one chose this night.

By the time darkness arrived at Lake Tyrrell, I was in complete mayhem.

I told Arnab @ab_lightpainter , “I can’t do this tonight.”

He stayed calm. More importantly, he had confidence in me at a point when I didn’t have much myself.

Slowly, I recovered.

I got back behind the camera.

What looked like a completely failed night became my favourite astrophotography image of the year — a tracked Milky Way panorama over the abandoned bus at Lake Tyrrell, with natural green, yellow, cyan and magenta airglow running across the night sky.

THE SKY
17-panel tracked panorama
1 panel discarded because of light flare
24mm • f/3.5 • 122s × 3 per panel • ISO 1650
Modified Sony A7III • Benro Polaris

THE FOREGROUND
8-panel twilight panorama
24mm • f/7.1 • 60s • ISO 300

Stacked — Starry Landscape Stacker
Stitched — PTGui
Processed — PixInsight
Final blend — Photoshop

Some nights test your technique.
Some nights test you.

📍 Lake Tyrrell, Victoria, Australia
@afterrearth

#astrophotography #milkywayphotography #nightscape #createwithsony #laketyrrell

[Milky Way photography, astrophotography, Lake Tyrrell astrophotography, Lake Tyrrell Milky Way, Milky Way panorama, tracked Milky Way panorama, nightscape photography, natural airglow, Galactic Centre, Victoria astrophotography, Australian nightscape, modified Sony A7III astrophotography, Benro Polaris, abandoned bus Lake Tyrrell, Milky Way over abandoned bus] Panoramic Milky Way photograph above the abandoned bus at Lake Tyrrell in Victoria, Australia. The tracked nightscape shows the Galactic Centre, dark dust lanes, red hydrogen-alpha emission and natural green, yellow, cyan and magenta airglow above a dark rural foreground. Captured with a modified Sony A7III on a Benro Polaris tracker using a 17-panel sky panorama and separate 8-panel twilight foreground. taken in Lake Tyrrell by @afterrearth

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12 days ago

20 seconds of my astrophotography so far. 🌌

From deep-sky objects and wide-field Milky Way mosaics to tracked nightscapes and timelapse — this is a small collection of where the journey has taken me so far.

Different cameras. Different focal lengths. Different skies.
But the process remains the same: photographed, tracked, stacked and processed.

No AI regeneration. Every frame started under a real night sky.

Still a lot more I want to capture.

📷 Deep Sky • Wide Field • Nightscapes • Timelapse
@afterrearth

[astrophotography, Milky Way photography, Milky Way panorama, deep sky astrophotography, nightscape photography, tracked Milky Way, stacked astrophotography, wide field astrophotography, nebula photography, astro landscape photography, Milky Way timelapse, Galactic Centre, Carina Nebula, Orion Nebula, Rho Ophiuchi, Australian astrophotography, night sky photography]

#astrophotography #milkywayphotography #deepskyphotography #nightscapephotography #nightphotography taken in Planet Earth by @afterrearth

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16 days ago

This wasn’t narrowband data.

Normally I would process this as a broadband Milky Way image.
This time I wanted to test something completely different:

How far could the colour information recorded by a modified camera be interpreted using HOO-style colour logic — without pretending it was true narrowband data?

The sky started as 24 × 122s tracked broadband RGB exposures captured at 70mm with my modified Sony A7III.

APP handled registration and integration.

In PixInsight, I created several channel-derived maps from the same RGB stack, using the strong red/Hα response of the modified sensor and testing different G/B weightings — 50/50, 70/30 and 80/20 — for the contrasting component.

Then those derived signals were recombined into an experimental pseudo-HOO interpretation.

For context, true HOO astrophotography captures Hα and OIII through separate narrowband filters. That is not what happened here. These are broadband-derived proxies being used to explore similar colour-mapping logic.

Photoshop was then used for colour separation, tonal shaping, masks, local contrast and the final blend with the separately captured Lake Tyrrell foreground.

Same captured photons.
Different interpretation.

No AI regeneration.

📍 Lake Tyrrell, Victoria, Australia

[Lake Tyrrell astrophotography, Milky Way photography Australia, broadband astrophotography, pseudo HOO astrophotography, HOO colour palette, modified Sony A7III astrophotography, astro modified camera, hydrogen alpha Milky Way, broadband RGB processing, PixInsight astrophotography processing, Astro Pixel Processor stacking, APP astrophotography, Photoshop astrophotography editing, tracked Milky Way photography, wide field astrophotography, nightscape photography Australia, astrophotography processing experiment]

#Astrophotography #WidefieldAstrophotography #MilkyWayPhotography #PixInsight #laketyrrell taken in Lake Tyrrell by @afterrearth

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17 days ago

This wasn’t the frame I went to Lake Tyrrell for.

Day 2 of the trip, and the original plan was to find the old salt excavator and build the composition around it.

I couldn’t even find the way to it 😅, so eventually I gave up on the frame I had planned and settled somewhere else.

Then darkness arrived.

The night felt completely alive — stars everywhere, structure running through the Milky Way, faint emission across the sky — and standing there, this was the frame I started visualising instead.

🌌 Sky: 24 tracked frames × 122s
70mm • f/3.5 • ISO 1600

🏞️ Foreground: single 30s exposure
70mm • f/3.5 • ISO 6400

📷 Sony A7III • visible-Hα modified

Back home, I decided not to process it as a conventional RGB Milky Way. The broadband data became an experiment in PixInsight, building an emission-enhanced pseudo-HOO base before finishing the colour, dust, stars and foreground blend manually in Photoshop.

Not true narrowband data — just seeing how far I could push what the modified camera actually captured.

Swipe → the next two slides show almost the entire processing journey.

Tracked. Stacked. Blended.

No AI regeneration.
No generated sky.
No generated foreground.
Every photographic element originated from captured data.

📍 Lake Tyrrell, Victoria, Australia

Sometimes the composition you couldn’t find leads you to the one you never planned.

Would you have guessed this started as broadband RGB?

[Lake Tyrrell astrophotography, Lake Tyrrell Milky Way, Milky Way photography Australia, Victoria astrophotography, Australian nightscape photography, Sony A7III astrophotography, modified Sony A7III, visible H-alpha modified camera, tracked Milky Way photography, stacked Milky Way photography, tracked stacked blended astrophotography, astro landscape photography, broadband astrophotography, pseudo-HOO astrophotography, emission enhanced Milky Way, PixInsight astrophotography, Photoshop astrophotography, 70mm Milky Way photography, Lake Tyrrell night sky, Milky Way emission structures]

#astrophotography #milkywayphotography #createwithsony #cygnus #nightscapephotography A crimson and magenta Milky Way filled with bright emission structures and dark dust rises vertically above Lake Tyrrell in Victoria, Australia. Fine stars surround the Milky Way against a dark night sky. Several people and camera equipment stand on a narrow platform over still water in the foreground, with small coloured lights reflected below. The astro-landscape combines a 24-frame tracked and stacked sky with a separately captured single-exposure foreground. taken in Lake Tyrrell by @afterrearth

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20 days ago

This RAW looked almost empty. It wasn’t. 👀

One exposure. 122 seconds.
No stacking. No sky replacement.

Just faint signal, dust and colour already sitting inside the RAW — waiting to be pulled out.

📷 Sony A7III • Astro Modified
🔭 70mm • f/4 • 122s
🖥 PixInsight + Photoshop

Sometimes the biggest transformation isn’t about adding more data.

It’s about finding what you already captured. 🌌

Would you have guessed all of this was hiding inside one RAW?

#Astrophotography #NightPhotography #NightSky #MilkyWay #astrophoto

[astrophotography RAW processing, single exposure astrophotography, astro modified Sony A7III, 122 second exposure, PixInsight processing, Photoshop astrophotography, RAW to final astrophotography, night sky photography, Milky Way processing, astrophotography editing.] taken in Planet Earth by @afterrearth

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22 days ago

The sky wasn’t just moving. The atmosphere was.

Night two of our astro trip at Lake Tyrrell, and the airglow was so strong that its colours and banding became unmistakable once 420 frames were set in motion.

While the Milky Way slowly moved across the western sky, waves of green, yellow and warmer atmospheric glow seemed to drift underneath it.

One of those nights where the timelapse revealed more than any single frame could.

📍 Lake Tyrrell, Victoria
📷 Astro-modified Sony A7S
🌌 14mm • f/2.2 • ISO 4000
🎞️ 420 frames

[Lake Tyrrell astrophotography, airglow Australia, Milky Way timelapse, Australian night sky, airglow timelapse, Sony A7S astrophotography, astro modified Sony, Victoria astrophotography, Milky Way Australia, nightscape photography]

#createwithsony #astrophotography #nightphotography #milkywaygalaxy #astroreels taken in Lake Tyrrell by @afterrearth

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23 days ago

I thought I was only watching the Milky Way set.

Then the fog rolled in.

This was the final night of our astro trip, somewhere around Yass. I had never experienced fog like this before — at one point it became so dense that for almost 30 minutes I couldn’t see more than 2 feet ahead.

But before everything disappeared, I watched the fog flow across the landscape and slowly spiral beneath the setting Milky Way.

No dramatic foreground. No conditions I had planned for.

Just 207 frames of the night changing completely in front of me.

📍 Yass, NSW
📷 Astro-modified Sony A7S
🔭 14mm | f/2.2 | ISO 4000 | 20s
🎞️ 207 frames
@afterrearth

[Milky Way timelapse, Milky Way setting, Yass astrophotography, NSW astrophotography, Australian night sky, fog timelapse, nightscape photography, astro modified Sony A7S, Milky Way photography Australia, dark sky NSW, astrophotography timelapse, night fog, Australian Milky Way]

#milkywayphotography #astrophotography #nightscapephotography #astroreels #createwithsony taken in Yass Valley by @afterrearth

3k

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a month ago

Last of Core Season

My first season is in the books shooting the Galactic Core. I think this is a strong finish, and I’m stoked to get out this fall/winter with some new gear and try my hand at some deep space targets.

September 2026 | 📷 @sonyalpha A7Riii w/ @samyanglensglobal 24mm f/ 1.8 | Sky: 15 x 10s 3200 iso f/2.0
Foreground: 1 x 13s 1600iso f/9 • taken at blue hour (thanks @shawnrossmiller )

#milkyway #astrophotography #astrolandscape #astronomy #astrophotographer

Last of Core Season

A look at the core with some notes. I’ve never tried plate solving one of my astro pics before. I’ve been sending some of my work to friends that don’t really know too much about the night sky. The first thing they say when seeing the picture is “what am I looking at?”

So here are some of my favorite things in this picture:

- Lagoon and Trifid Nebulas (M8 & M20)
- Open cluster (M23)
- Omega Nebula (M17)
- Great Sagittarius Cluster (M22)
- Eagle Nebula (M16)
- The Galactic Center
- Most of the constellation Sagittarius
- Much of the constellation Ophiuchus
- The constellation Scutum
- The bottom of the constellation Aquila

Getting this annotation done was a bit tricky with the 24mm stretching the corners of the image. If I mislabeled anything let me know down below.

September 2026 | 📷 @sonyalpha A7Riii w/ @samyanglensglobal 24mm f/ 1.8 | Sky: 15 x 10s 3200 iso f/2.0
Foreground: 1 x 13s 1600iso f/9 • taken at blue hour (thanks @shawnrossmiller)
Processed in Sequator + Photoshop

#astrophotography #milkyway #milkywaychasers #astronomy #astrolandscape taken in Idaho, USA by @afterrearth

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5

a month ago

3 frames. 4.5 minutes. One Milky Way core.
Stacked
First night of my latest 3-night astrophotography trip, and this came from our very first pit stop.
Just three tracked 90-second frames at 35mm — only 4.5 minutes of total integration — but enough data to pull apart the dense dust lanes, warm Galactic Core and pockets of emission running through the Milky Way.
Sony A7III — astro modified
35mm • f/3.5 • ISO 1600
3 × 90s tracked
Processed in PixInsight + Photoshop
A small dataset, but a good reminder that integration time isn’t the whole story when the data is clean.

[Milky Way core photography, Galactic Centre, tracked astrophotography, Milky Way dust lanes, astro modified Sony A7III, 35mm astrophotography, Australian nightscape photography, PixInsight astrophotography, Photoshop astrophotography, deep sky landscape photography]

#milkywaygalaxy #createwithsony #astrophotography #milkywayphotography #astrophotographer Detailed tracked photograph of the Milky Way Galactic Core showing dark dust lanes, warm orange-brown stellar clouds, red emission nebulae and a dense field of stars. taken in Yass Valley by @afterrearth

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a month ago