Pune (Maharashtra), May 19 (IANS): Stunning photographs of the Moon, painstakingly shot by a 16-year schoolboy from Pune have gone viral on social media platforms and earning him accolades from all over, here on Wednesday.

The lad, Prathamesh Jaju is also an amateur astronomer and astro-photographer, studying in Vidya Bhavan High School in Class X.

Last fortnight, on May 3, he captured thousands of images of Moon from 1am-5 am, and then spent another 40 hours processing them for the outstanding results.

"The reason behind the 50,000 pictures was to get the clearest picture of the Moon. I stitched them together and sharpened the images to see crisp details of the Moon," he said in his social media posts.

In one of his social media sites he has uploaded the photo and explained: "Last Quarter Mineral Moon. This image is an HDR Composite of two different images made to give it a 3 dimensional effect. This is my most detailed and clearest shot of the third quarter Mineral Moon. I captured around 50,000+ images over 186 GigaBytes of data which almost killed my laptop with the processing."

Actively connected with the Jyotirvidya Parisanstha - the oldest amateur astronomers' association in India - Prathamesh said he captured around 38 panels at 1500mm and 3000mm focal length with a 1.2 megapixel.

For this, he used Celestron 5 Cassegrain OTA with EQ3-2 GO-TO Mount, ZWO ASI120MCS, GSO 2X BARLOW to click the images, in which the lunar surface, its craters and other stark details are visible with great clarity.