astrophotography – Ming Thein

Attempting the blood moon

August 8, 2018 by Robin Wong

The above image of the Blood Moon was shot at the start of a total lunar eclipse phase at 3.45am on 28 July 2018 as seen in Kuala Lumpur. The red moon was not perfectly clear due to slight overcast condition hindering visibility. I only had about 15 minutes of shooting time before heavy clouds completely covered the moon during the eclipse. I have not encountered a lunar eclipse before and this was my first time witnessing an actual “blood moon” phenomena, hence I thought it would be interesting to share my thoughts and shooting process to acquire that one shot, which I have come to love despite its apparent imperfections.

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography, Robin Wong Tagged With: article, astrophotography, mingthein.com, moon, photography, robin, Robin Wong, wong

Photoessay: Dusk to dawn in Queenstown

January 29, 2015 by Ming Thein

Sunset cloud shadow

On my recent trip to New Zealand, I spent some time exploring an aspect of photography which I hadn’t really done much work in up til now: long exposures, night work and astrophotography. Unfortunately there was only one clear night for the latter, and the duration of exposures + noise reduction meant not a whole lot of individual shot opportunities; still, I’m fairly pleased with the outcome – definitely something I’ll have to revisit in future.

POTD: Seeing stars

April 15, 2013 by Ming Thein

The Milky Way Galaxy

I posted this image on the site’s Facebook page yesterday and received both a record number of likes, shares and responses/ questions – some doubting the authenticity of the image – so I thought it’d be a good candidate for reviving POTD.

Here’s the backstory: the image was shot out of an airplane window at 32,000 feet while returning from the USA tour; my wife was in the window seat and idly wondered if she could see stars, after the crew turned off the cabin lights for the night to encourage passengers to sleep (I suppose to theoretically help them get over jetlag). She stared for a while, acclimatising her night vision, and said there were quite a surprising number. I finished editing the batch I was working on, and joined her at the window. I could actually make out a very faint band of something running through the middle; I thought it might make an interesting photography experiment.

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