Night Sky Excursions and Techniques

Sridhar Pursai graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from NIT in India in 1989. After working on converting train stations from manual semaphore based signaling and manual track switching to automated color light signaling and switching, he worked at the Indian Institute of Technology in the Chemistry department on high voltage plasma electronics and co-wrote a book called "Introduction to Microprocessors for Engineers and Scientists", published by Prentice Hall. He then attended graduate school at Purdue University (where he met his future wife DeAnna), and graduated with a master's degree in Computer Architecture.
 
Since then, he has been in California, working at various companies as a silicon hardware designer and architect. He recently retired from NVIDIA after a 20 year stint leading Silicon-On-Chip design and Architecture teams that delivered products aimed at various PCs, MACs, handheld gaming stations, AI servers, and automated self driving vehicles.
 
Along the way, Sri acquired an interest in travel and Photography and has been on tours focused on wildlife and landscape photography. Of late he has started dabbling in night time photography, mostly focusing on framing the Milky Way against interesting landscapes in the Andes in Peru and the Atacama desert in Chile and Bolivia, as well as the northern lights in Iceland. He is also learning to play acoustic, electric, and bass guitar, and drums.