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Chris Gibbins | profile | all galleries >> Galleries >> Solar Eclipse 2015 tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

Solar Eclipse 2015

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On 20th March 2015 a partial solar eclipse was visible in the south of England, beginning at around 9.00 am local time and lasting about 2 hours.
(Further north, in the Faroe Islands, for example, the eclipse was total.)
Conditions were not particularly good, there was a layer of cloud present throughout most of the eclipse, sufficiently thin,
and with the occasional break, to allow the solar disc to be mostly visible, though somewhat hazy and lacking in definition,
as a result of light scattering within the clouds.

These images were taken with a variable ND filter attached to the front of the lens, set to near maximum density (about 7-8 stops).
The curious double images are possibly the result of some internal reflections either in the ND filter, which consists of two polarizers, or
between the ND filter and the UV filter which I omitted to remove! I was a little late in starting, as it was really very cloudy at first,
and the sun wasn't visible at the beginning of the eclipse. Gradually, the clouds thinned, the sun started to become visible and I rushed
outside with my camera and tripod to take these images, leaving no time to check everything was working properly! Shame, really, as I
probably won't get another chance like this again, since the next eclipse of this magnitude at my location won't be until many years hence!

Images were captured approximately every 30 seconds, repositioning the camera twice during the entire period, as the sun moved from one side
of the frame to the other. These are a select few, together with some composites of the sequence.

A certain amount of post processing has been done on these images, pushing the clarity, vibrance and saturation sliders in Adobe Camera Raw,
to emphasize the colours.

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1st sequence
1st sequence
2nd sequence
2nd sequence
3rd sequence
3rd sequence
Full sequence
Full sequence