This month we had the privilege of interviewing Doctor of Molecular Biology and world renowned astro-imager, Nicola Beltraminelli. Nicola shared with us his background in amateur astronomy and his journey to become an astro-imager with an eye for capturing and processing a vast number of incredible images. Without further ado, here is Nicola’s story.

When Nicola was a child, his mother showed him the stars of Orion. He was intrigued by the beauty of this constellation but had no idea what astronomy was. In 1982, when he was thirteen years old, his science professor gave an introductory lesson on astronomy, and he fell in love with the science. Following this initial lesson, Nicola got more passionate about astronomy and in 1984, he purchased his first telescope. It was a classic Celestron 8.

Nicola first became interested in astro-imaging when he purchased his first scope. In relation to this, he stated, “one can imagine how rudimental astrophotography was at that time. I learned to develop my own silver pictures and started taking B&W pictures with my scope. The results were of course very poor. This pushed me to find solutions, and at that time, increasing the aperture of the telescope was the only way to increase sensitivity, so to achieve better deep sky images with shorter exposures. I therefore decided to build my own 40-centimeter scope in diameter, with a focal ratio of 3. This took me several years of effort, and I achieved its completion when I was 21. This extremely bright scope was supposed to take amazing images, but unfortunately the optics were poor. So, despite the fantastic experience of learning how to build a scope, the result from the photographic perspective was a deception. After 17 years of astrophotography, attempts and some contributions to astrophotometry (and few publications), I decided to put this activity on hold. This was in 2000 when I switched to alpinism, where I climbed the major summits of the Alps during the following 20 years. In 2015, I had the opportunity to travel to Chile and rediscover astronomy. I realized that during these 15 years, the technological progress was incredible, thus I became interested again in restarting astrophotography. In 2018, I purchased a RASA C11 and coupled it with a refiltered color CMOS camera. My first pictures were already massively superior to my best images achieved in the late 90s, thus providing a strong motivation to pursue this activity. By learning the processing skills, I then became more demanding and progressively replaced my setting to achieve higher quality images. Among the elements of my new setting, I decided to purchase Stellarvue lenses.”

We wanted to understand what exactly sparked Nicola’s interest in imaging the night sky. He responded by saying, “I am passionate about deep sky photography, in particular nebulas. What sparked my interest was to achieve the highest possible quality of nebulas to illustrate how beautiful and how rich our sky is. Furthermore, by playing with narrow band filters, it is possible to introduce a personal interpretation to night sky images, in particular emission nebulas, that have strong emissions not only in hydrogen, but also in oxygen and sulfur. This is what we call SHO astrophotography using the Hubble Space Telescope color palette. Using this technique, we associate artificial colors to hydrogen, sulfur and oxygen signals enabling us to generate unique images without distorting them completely from reality. It is a kind of astrophotography art with a strong scientific background. So, conversely to my initial period, where I wanted to contribute to the scientific knowledge of astrophysics with astrophotometry of variable stars, my purpose today is essentially contemplative. The initial objective was to generate my own gallery, containing all the major deep sky objects with technical excellence. Since then, I slightly shifted the objective by considering also much less iconic objects to illustrate, not only the beauty of the universe, but also its incredible diversity.”

Next, we asked Nicola if there was anyone in particular who got him interested in astro-imaging. He shared with us the following. “My initial inspiration was fed by the beautiful images generated by professionals with huge scopes and of course, this was also very frustrating, because I knew that I would have never achieved such results with my own setting. In 2018, when I restarted astrophotography, I discovered AstroBin and understood that what seemed to be absolutely impossible in the late 90s was now a reality. Without willing to compare to what HST brought, images from brilliant astrophotographers such as Alan Pham and Gary Lopez were a strong source of inspiration and instilled in me the conviction that at an amateur level, with high-quality settings, it is possible to achieve amazing results. Today I am also very impressed by the images of Wolfgang Promper and Jeffrey Bax, but of course there are many other exceptional astrophotographers.”

We then asked Nicola to share with us the sorts of thoughts or feelings that accompany him when imaging the night sky. His response was very intriguing. “When I select a new deep sky object, I always ask myself if I will be able to be at the level of what this deep sky object is offering to us. Will my picture render justice to this amazing object? Will I be able to achieve a technically excellent result? Will I be able to show something? special? Something new that other astrophotographers did not achieve to show? Apart from the technical angle, every time that I look for a new deep sky object, I am totally overwhelmed by the immensity of the universe, its beauty and its complexity. This is far beyond what my brain can imagine.”

Another question we had for Nicola was what image he is most proud of. He went on to say “I am proud of my last image on M42, which was

awarded IOTD (Image of the Day) on AstroBin on December 11th, as well as IOTD on AAPOD2 on January 8.

All astrophotographers know how challenging it is to appropriately show the dim regions of the outer nebula, without burning the trapezium. The light difference between the brightest and the dimmest regions can surprise the most skilled astrophotographer. Although several techniques are described to circumvent this issue (in particular using HDR) obtaining a well-balanced image remains a major challenge. My solution was to play not only with PixInsight, but also to apply progressive light masks using Adobe Photoshop. This combination is from my perspective, a winner enabling us to solve almost any technical challenge, so as to generate innovative images on iconic objects. The published image is a combination of an excellent setting and successful processing. Another image I am proud of is Melotte 15. This young star cluster is embedded in gas and dust illustrating a fantastic complexity. This complexity is of course related to the nature of the object, but by focusing exclusively on the photographic challenge, these tiny nebulas show emissions of hydrogen and sulfur and detect the color nuances within these tiny objects (on the image) required to appropriately master the astro-imaging tools. The core is embedded in a dim oxygen emission with faint transitions not easy to show. I was very happy to achieve a balanced image illustrating such fascinating complexity, both by looking at the image in its entirety, as well as at every detail."

We also wanted Nicola to tell us which telescope got him into what he does now. He said “when I restarted astrophotography in 2018, my objective was to select a scope with a reasonably large diameter to achieve high resolution images and at the same time, to have a short focal ratio, so to access easily challenging targets of very low luminosity. Thus, I initially oriented my choice for a RASA C11. However, despite the extreme focal ratio of the scope and its 297 mm diameter, the resolution of my images was significantly inferior to the results published on AstroBin by astrophotographers using lenses. From that observation, I reconsidered my criteria and decided to select a lens-based scope with a longer focal ratio enabling to generate images of very high resolution.”

To continue, we asked Nicola when he first discovered Stellarvue Telescopes and how that has made a difference for him. He responded with the following. “When I decided to transition from a mirror-based scope to a lens one, I made a survey of the images posted in AstroBin. Among the selection criteria, I primarily considered the level of details achieved by the astrophotographers both on LRGB and SHO images, as well as the star shapes on the image corners. According to my evaluation, Stellarvue scopes were always among the best ones. As a matter of fact, as soon as I purchased my first Stellarvue lens (the SVX080T), the images were incredibly sharp allowing me to highlight exquisite details of the deep sky objects. Even though I use a full frame

camera (an ASI6200), I achieved an excellent level of details with round stars up to the corners illustrating a consistent quality on the entire imaging field. My recent acquisition, the SVX180T scope, delivers images beyond my own expectations with an impressive level of detail and again, an excellent consistency along the entire field. The images in my AstroBin gallery are the best demonstration of what can be achieved with this class of instruments.”

When we asked Nicola if his knowledge and experience with astro-imaging has taken a long-time to build-up, he said, “considering that I restarted almost from scratch in 2018, it took me 1-2 years to achieve the first results of reasonable quality. But to achieve results according to the state of the art, this required 5 years of learning and still today, I have so much to learn.” 

Next, we asked if there were ever any moments where he struggled to grasp, learn or acquire the knowledge, skills or resources necessary to continue pursuing his passion of astro-imaging and how that worked out for him. “I am a passionate photographer; therefore, I know the basis of several types of photography including landscape, animal, macro and diving. However, astrophotography is among the most challenging disciplines, requiring very expensive equipment, as well as a large panel of technical and processing skills. By technical, I mean being capable of selecting the appropriate solutions to obtain high quality raw data. Selecting the right mount, scope, camera, and accessories by knowing the pluses and minuses of each solution is already a challenge as one can easily make bad (expensive) choices ending up with images of low quality. From the processing angle, thanks to my experience in classical photography, I knew the basis of LightRoomClassic and Adobe Photoshop, thus, by listening to many astrophotography tutorials and by learning how to use few additional astrophotography tools such as DeepSkyStacker and Starnet++, I achieved interesting results. These

results were however inferior to what my peers obtained, and I was quite frustrated by this difference in quality. It took me years to understand my errors and the limitations of this approach. As a matter of fact, I was not using at all the power of PixInsight, which is per definition the key software for astrophotographers. Down to practice, I had to go back and learn the basics of PI before being able to appropriately use all the tools to generate images awarded in AstroBin. Of note, still today my knowledge of the PI tools is very limited and well below standard.

We also wanted to know how astro-imaging has contributed to who and where Nicola is today. His response was “astrophotography is an extremely demanding discipline, where to achieve excellence, one needs to obtain the best performance of each element of the entire value chain including but not limited to, the selection of the mount, the scope, the focuser, filters, camera, the geographic place (weather, seeing, light pollution), as well as the processing tools. Missing the optimal performance of a single element will lead to an irremediable degradation of the image and thus to a disappointing result. Learning to master the entire value chain is not restricted to astrophotography but applies for any discipline where excellence is required. 

We then asked what advice he would give to up and comers pursuing astronomy as a hobby or career. His answer was somewhat humorous. “To select another hobby… (LOL). More seriously my advice is to think from the start on the right setting to achieve high quality results. One can start of course by investing a lot of money on very expensive equipment, but the reality is that, to achieve top notch images, the learning curve is steep and requires a lot of experience. Thus, my advice is to start with a small lens (an 80mm diameter or even smaller), a good mount and a CMOS camera as initial settings. This will enable them to capture large deep sky objects and illustrate the magic of deep sky. For instance, on AstroBin one can find beautiful images generated with 135mm objectives. From the processing angle, my recommendation is to learn how to use PixInsight from the beginning, and at the same time to also learn how to process images with Photoshop. As a matter of fact, for some aspects, the use of PixInsight is superior to other tools in the market. Conversely, for other processing aspects such as masking and the use of the “selective color function,” the use of Photoshop is easier and may lead to better results. I am convinced that by mastering all these tools one can identify the best processing strategy for a given deep sky object and obtain excellent results.”

To wrap up our interview with Nicola, we asked him if there was anything else he wanted to share with us, about his astro-imaging journey, or anything related. He brought things to a close with a cutting-edge topic. He explained that “AI driven processes are progressively becoming standard practice for the processing of astro-images. This is of particular importance, for instance, to optimize the resolution of deep sky objects (BlurXterminator), to eliminate gradients and/or to Denoise images. These tools are very powerful and at the same time they may lead to artifacts under given circumstances. Some astrophotographers have heavily criticized the implementation of AI tools as they may distort deep sky objects from reality. From my perspective, refusing the use of AI may certainly avoid potential artifacts, but at the same time the image quality may remain blurred or noisy. My advice is to use AI processes with a grain of salt by analyzing in detail the image prior and post use of AI tools. I am convinced that, in the future, upon human and machine learning, more powerful and accurate AI processes will be available, thus decreasing the risk to generate artifacts. Clear skies!"

It was a great privilege to interview Nicola and get a glimpse of his background, as well as his knowledge and insights surrounding astrophotography. We at Stellarvue are grateful to have furthered his passion for the night sky and look forward to seeing more of his excellent images in the future. Until next time, clear skies!