LOOK: Teen's Incredibly Detailed Image Of The Moon Goes Viral

KEY POINTS

A stunning image of the moon shared by an amateur astrophotographer has gone viral
The teen said creating the image "almost killed" his laptop
The image has since garnered thousands of likes on social media

A 16-year-old created a stunning image of the moon that has since gone viral. The image shows our satellite in impressive detail.

Prathamesh Jaju from Pune, India, describes himself as an amateur astrophotographer and astronomer on Reddit. The teen's work went viral when he shared an incredible image of the moon on social media earlier this month.

The image, which was first shared on Reddit and then on Instagram, shows the incredible details of the moon, from the craters and shadows to the textures that people can't normally see by just looking up at it.

"This is my most detailed and clearest shot of the third quarter Mineral Moon," Jaju wrote on Instagram. "I captured around 50,000+ images over 186 GigaBytes of Data which almost killed my laptop with the processing."

A post shared by instagram

It took more than 40 hours to create the image — the teen had to spend four hours taking photos and videos of the moon and a painstaking 38 to 40 hours to process them. He used 50,000 images because he wanted to "get the clearest picture of the moon."

"I stitched them together and sharpened the image to see crisp details of the moon," Jaju told local news agency ANI. "The raw data was 100 GB and after processing it, the data turned bigger so it was around 186 GB. When I stitched them together, the final file was around 600 GB."

He learned about astrophotography by reading articles and watching videos on YouTube. For Jaju, who is a Grade 10 student, astrophotography is "just a hobby," although he aspires to be an astrophysicist.

The image the teen shared on Instagram has gained over 26,500 likes, while the photo on Reddit has garnered 34,400 upvotes. It also received hundreds of comments, with many users complimenting the image.

"This is by far one of the coolest images I've ever seen of the moon," one user on Reddit commented. "Maybe it's the fact that it's done by some random guy with a camera and a laptop that makes it so impressive, but either way I've never seen the moon like this."