This is Mak, and his mom Valerie. They first came to ASLI in January of 2025. He was interested in astronomy and of seeing galaxies. So he learned some things about astronomy from many of the people in the club and decided he wanted to be able to photograph faint galaxies and nebulae. So his mom went to an astronomy store and bought him a semi-automated telescope which finds objects in the sky and then it starts taking long exposures of them. It "stacks" one image on top of another and then another until a faint objects is captured, and you can do this for an hour or 3 hours or 6 hours, or for a number of different nights until you have a good photograph. That's because some objects are so faint. Then you have to use some sophisticated software to work on the photograph to make it better. Mak did that, gathering 14 hours of exposures on something called the "Eagle Nebula." He worked on it for days and days in an image program like Photoshop, but more complicated and only used for night sky images. In the end he got a stunning photograph and at the urging of one of our members, he entered it in a contest called the "Youth Imaging Award" from "The Astronomical League" and he won Second Place! This included amateur astronomers and imagers from all over the United States! His mom asked me to present him with his plaque at the meeting tonight, which is what I did. What an astounding compliment this was to his skill and determination and patience to create his prize winning image! We are all so proud of him!
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