Just arrived home from Spitsbergen (largest island in Svalbard) last night, so starting to look at 3,500 images taken over a period of a month in the Arctic.
As Joe said, the -25 C temperatures made photography difficult for both the equipment and the operator. I had trouble focusing on at least one occasion, and I didn't take nearly as many images during totality as I had intended. My water bottle froze in my pocket, so imagine how cold my fingers felt every time I took off my outer mitts!
However, in clear skies and great scenery, the eclipse was beautiful. Just as the Moon looks bigger when it's near the horizon, the Moon and Sun at totality looked bigger to me than I recall them looking at Palm Cove in 2012. Shadow bands on the snow were very evident.
Due to weight limits, I limited myself to two DSLRs and two lenses - no telescope this time. Nikon D7100 with 17-55 mm f/2.8, and D7000 with 70-200 f/2.8
The first image below is from a single exposure: 1/15 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 250 at 200 mm. The image is cropped and has a few minor adjustments made via Lightroom.
The other images show:
- the diamond ring (1/250 sec, f/6.3, 200 mm)
- the mass gathering of about 300 people -approximately one third of whom had not witnessed a TSE previously. Note the large marquee.
- general scene about 5 minutes before totality
- general scene during totality. Jupiter can be seen at top left, and lights on the mountain-top mine can be seen also.
- view behind me during totality (towards higher mountains)
Our eldest son said that he'd pay me $1 if we saw an aurora during totality. Well - we didn't; there was a lot of reflected light from the snow, so it didn't go nearly as dark as it did during totality in 2012. But we got to see some great aurorae in the preceding weeks; the brighter ones would easily have been visible during totality had they been there.
Cheers, Chris
Last edited by ChrisM; 29-03-2015 at 12:20 AM.
Reason: Jupiter
I am wondering where you are in Gippsland as I am a fellow (East)Gippslander.
Cheers,
Andrew.
Thanks Andrew - Latrobe Valley. Might I have met you at Barry's at Perry Bridge?
Quote:
Originally Posted by OzEclipse
Fantastic image Chris. Great dynamic range. Looks like a composite.
Congratulations.
Joe
Thanks Joe, but mine doesn't have the fine detail that you've teased out. I virtually always shoot in uncompressed 14 bit RAW, so there has to be some compensation for 30 Mb files!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tamtarn
A fantastic set of images, the diamond ring is outstanding!!
Barb
Thanks Barb - without any scientific approach to timing, it was almost pot luck that I got that shot. The whole totality seemed like it lasted less than 10 seconds (even though it was about 2.5 minutes)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Retrograde
That's awesome. I reckon the difficulty of location/observing just adds to the experience
Thanks Pete - any excuse to go to the polar regions! It will be an eclipse that's hard to beat.
A very realistic image of the Corona and one of the best diamond ring effect shots I have seen - lovely work Chris, well worth freezing your bobbles off for, what a unique environment you were in
Great shots, Chris! The Larson-Sekanina filter algorithm is a good way to bring out detail in the corona.
Cheers,
Rick.
Thanks Rick - Is that one available in PI?
Quote:
Originally Posted by prokyon
What a great compilation, thanks for sharing!!!
Thanks Werner - We were fortunate to be able to travel to this remote location and I'm more than happy to share with others.
Quote:
Originally Posted by strongmanmike
A very realistic image of the Corona and one of the best diamond ring effect shots I have seen - lovely work Chris, well worth freezing your bobbles off for, what a unique environment you were in
Mike
Thanks Mike - and yes it was unique. We didn't hear the birds before, during or after the eclipse, because there are any this time of year. The diamond ring shot was straight off the camera; just fluked the star effect I guess from the aperture chosen?
Quote:
Originally Posted by multiweb
Beautiful shots. Nice to see the crowd and location as well.
Thanks Marc - I think the location and crowd play a large part in any eclipse memories!
Cheers, Chris
Last edited by ChrisM; 30-03-2015 at 11:59 PM.
Reason: typo
Quite a few astro image processing packages include an implementation of Larson-Sekanina, including PI. It is commonly used for bringing out fine detail in comets.
Well done Chris. Too cold for us for this one. The Corona has taken on another shape from 3 years ago and it's very different from 2009. Great capture of the event.
Well done Chris. Too cold for us for this one. The Corona has taken on another shape from 3 years ago and it's very different from 2009. Great capture of the event.
Thanks Paul.
Since the Sun rotates once approx every 25 days, wouldn't its corona potentially look different depending whereabouts in that cycle we viewed it?
Since the Sun rotates once approx every 25 days, wouldn't its corona potentially look different depending whereabouts in that cycle we viewed it?
Chris
Yes, Chris, you are correct that Solar rotation and orientation changes the appearance. The corona is incredibly dynamic and changes on hourly and daily scales. CME's [coronal mass ejections] and the twisting and writhing of the Sun's magnetic field changes the appearance of the corona on even shorter timescales.
The solar sunspot cycle changes the macroscopic structure of the Sun's magenetic field. This then shapes the corona appearance from quite radially symmetrical at sunspot max to one that has large broad equatorial streamers and short polar brushes at solar min over the 11 year sunspot cycle. There is typically nothing that changes fast enough to be observed during the few minutes of a total eclipse.
If you want to see the corona in action, the SOHO site has an animation tool -
