Astrophotographer Ian Griffin took an unusual photo of the solar analemma, which shows the path of the Sun throughout the year, using a pinhole camera with a small glass plate. Analemmas show the positions of the Sun in the sky from a fixed place on Earth. The path looks different depending on the location of the camera, but it always turns out to be an “eight”.
To fix the analemma, Griffin opened the shutter of the pinhole camera for 20 seconds every day for 12 months at exactly 04:00 p.m. local time. The astrophotographer shot everything in the backyard of his house in Portobello, setting the camera facing west and began shooting on September 23, 2021. The experiment ended on September 22, 2022.
“Inside the pinhole camera was a 10×12 centimeter glass plate coated with a photosensitive silver halide emulsion,” explains Griffin.
Griffin took pictures every day, not knowing for sure if his experiment with photographing the Sun was working. When the project was completed, he anxiously retreated to a dark room to see the results as soon as possible.
“I took the plate off and took it to an improvised dark room in the laundry room. Under the red light, I pulled out the plate, putting it in a chemical bath for development. After a few minutes, I even screamed with delight. My annual project to shoot the solar analemma turned out to be successful!” – said the astrophotographer.
Griffin considers his work very important for science, because few people have made solar analemmas from the southern hemisphere of the Earth. Moreover, pictures taken on an old photographic plate are even rarer.
Earlier we talked about how the astrophotographer showed the moon dance.
According to Petapixel
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