Although San Francisco was just below the path of the eclipse to see a proper ring of fire, it has been quite amazing to see the tiny crescent of the sun right above the South tower of the GGB. Great day over the Bay!
Composite of 34 exposures spaced by 5 minutes.
The track of the sun was followed shooting at about 50mm using a DIY
ND5 solar filter made out of Baader film.
Please, see on black!
shhflights, Leighton Wallis, RuloCIMA, Krissy_77, and 128 other people added this photo to their favorites.
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mhlwfg 12 months ago | reply
Great composition! What puzzles me a little bit is the path of the sun, curved the "wrong" way. Ideally (i.e. no lens distortions, no atmospheric refraction) I would have expected a nearly straight path, slightly curved the other way around.
Pelo78 12 months ago | reply
I was a bit puzzled by this little mystery too...
The curvature is emphasized by the change in shape of the sun but definitely it is there.
I thought of 4 different explanations, one does not exclude the other:
- During the eclipse at the maximum I unscrewed the filter to take a background shot that eventually wasn't included in the final composition. When I did it the tripod (which is not the sturdier you can find around....) moved a little bit... Assuming that this is the reason I should see a broken trajectory with a clear angle in the middle...
- The lens I used shows some distortion which in this picture was particularly evident in the line of the water. I tried to compensate it in PP but maybe it's overdone or the geometry of the distortion I chose to compensate a straight line at the bottom of the frame resulted in a curved path of the sun...
Or the curvature is real...
Here are three examples of similar pictures I found on the web (the last two from the same eclipse but from different locations) where a similar curvature is noticeable....
www.mreclipse.com/SEphoto/SEgallery2/image/TSE94-50mmSeqw...
www.flickr.com/photos/ricoshanchez/7247066148/
www.flickr.com/photos/katiedarby/7252220922/in/photostream/
In the first picture the sun is significantly higher on the horizon and the curvature is extremely subtle, in the last ones, where the sun is lower the curvature appears to be stronger...
The reasons might be:
- The apparent curvature is caused by refraction from the atmosphere.
An finally
- The path of the sun in the sky is actually curved! I'm not an astronomer and maybe my reasoning is flawed but, if in the arctic summer the sun raises in the sky during the day and goes down without ever setting its trajectory in the sky must have two inflection points. We are somewhere between the equator and the north pole so maybe that's what I see in the pictures... (The sequence was shot starting from about 270Deg Azimuth and the sun on May 20 set at 297deg, pretty far north!)
If there is someone out there with some experience in sun photography it would be fun to hear his/her thoughts!
97Starlight 12 months ago | reply
Wonderfully done!
Wildabeast71 12 months ago | reply
Very nice! Thanks for sharing.