Catching the Sun

IPC Visual Lab student Tomas Hauff is fascinated by the sun as it slowly ascends into the the morning sky.  For past few months, Hauff has transformed his morning cycling escapades into a subject of visual enterprise.  "No two sunrises are the same" proclaims Hauff as he documents the ordinary into spectacular collective images of sunrises.  Hauff makes the sun his primary subject hoping to catch the visual promise of a better day.  




Hauff quickly learned of the upcoming hybrid eclipse and knew that the capturing of this eclipse would require research and technical improvisation. So began the great experiment of placing sheets of wielding glass together and mounting them in front his zoom lenses. Though Hauff had preferred to have long glass, the experiment yield still an amazing image of the special hybrid eclipse of 2013.






The Greek poet, Homer, understood the power and beauty of the sun and wrote about its travels as the Greek god, Helios, who gives light both to gods and men: he rises in the east from Oceanus, though not from the river, but from some lake or bog (limnê) formed by Oceanus, rises up into heaven, where he reaches the highest point at noon time, and then he descends, arriving in the evening in the darkness of the west, and in Oceanus. (Il. vii. 422, Od. iii. 1, &c., 335, iv. 400, x. 191, xi. 18, xii. 380.) Source: http://www.theoi.com/Titan/Helios.html

On Sunday, November 3, 2013 at 6:48am Hauff captured the hybrid eclipse of 2013 from Matheson Hammock just as the sun and the moon emerged from behind the low hanging thick clouds that was covering the horizon. It was a partial solar eclipse, one of only two this year. It started in Africa, crossing the Atlantic. In the US it could only be seen from the East Coast as this was the end of the eclipse's path.  The hybrid eclipse of 2013 was visible from only within a thin corridor, which traverses the North Atlantic and equatorial Africa. It was seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes eastern North America, northern South America, southern Europe, the Middle East and Africa according to NASA official website.