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| Series of 162 images saved together in a Gif animation showing the Green Flash. Shot in Tenerife, Canary Islands. Credit: S. Lamoureux/Astronomy club Toutatis. |
I have been chasing the Green Flash for some time now. I
tried my luck in Cambodia on
the shores of the bay
of Thailand, but some
strange dust veil covered the setting Sun and I couldn’t see a proper Sunset.
Read my other post on Green Flashs: What is a Green Flash?
This time while taking a vacation on the island of Tenerife
in the Canary Islands with my family, the
infamous Green Flash revealed itself to me.
An easy downhill walk from the hotel to the beach was
enjoyable every night. I have to add also that the setting Sun was just to the
left of the Island of La Gomera. A few degrees more and the Sun would have set
behind the island. So I was lucky.
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| Sun setting just at the left of the island of La Gomera, Canary Islands. A few degree more and the Sunset would have set behind the island. Images taken from Tenerife, Canary Islands. Credit: S. Lamoureux/ Astronomy club Toutatis. |
I had a Canon 550D with an old 300mm teleview lens equipped
with the Magic Lantern software. My plan was to take a couple of shots to focus
and frame the Sun correctly and just take pictures like crazy. I used the
intervalometer mode added by the Magic Lantern software and took shots every
second or so. The software is loaded onto the SD card in the camera simple
reboot installs the software into the camera. This type of shooting permits you
to do individual picture (in this case a still picture composition of the green
flash), Timelapse animations or videos and in other cases Startrail pictures as
well.
Here you can see that I used all my shots to produce two
short animations of the setting Sun and a still picture composition. The
animations give you a real sense of movement to it and shows well the green
flash in action. On the other hand the still picture give you time to observe
the phenomena in details (click on still picture to enlarge).
To do the animations I used Photoshop to crop the images,
there are no colors or levels or nothing adjusted only crop to get an adequate
size for the animations. Then I dropped all the images in Gimp and made a Gif
animation out of it. Simple and effective!
The still composition is made from 3 images and put together
in Photoshop. (No levels adjustments has been made either on the still
picture). It was important to keep all the true data from the images and show
the real thing. All images where recorded in RAW.
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| A still picture composite of 3 different images of the Green Flash. Tenerife, Canary Islands. Credit: S. Lamoureux/Astronomy club Toutatis. |
As I was watching the Sun going down, I was looking through
the camera eye to see the Green Flash in action. No knowing too much what to
expect I saw the Sun setting and saw the greenish colors on top of the Sun on
different occasions during the Sunset.
My first reaction was a loud laugh and a sense of
achievement. I had the Green Flash in my back pocket! What a feeling! I guess
the people around me felt it too.
Enjoy the animations and pictures. If you are like me and
want to chase the Green Flash, just do it. It was very worth it and this is a
phenomena that not much people have seen. Good luck and great Sunsets.
About Astronomy Club Toutatis
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