Ho Hum, Another Sunset...

As you know, we get our share of spectacular sunsets in Arizona. It has something to do with the clarity of the air, and for the western horizon to be clear to enable the setting sun to shine through and illuminate clouds at the observer's location. This one was from last Wednesday, the very evening I went out and photographed the second set of images of Mars and Neptune. Once the clear strip at sunset came over, I headed west of town to shoot the night time targets.

But that sunset! It was a sunset for the ages! If you aren't ready they can pass in an instant, so not much time to prepare if you aren't ready. This time I had collected my camera in preparation of going out to observe, but didn't have the right lens on when I grabbed it and went out to the cul-de-sac in front of the house. I had my 100mm macro, a reasonable telephoto - difficult to shoot a needed wide-angle view.

Well it was spectacular, so as a compromise, rather than run inside to change lenses, I did a mosaic - Took about 5 photos, then moved up a field and took 5 more, then later assembled them in Photoshop to appear as a single image. It worked well, as you can see here. Sometimes the software gets lost and can't combine them, or distort them wildly, but it really did look pretty much just like shown here. Enjoy!


At left is one of the individual frames from a slightly earlier sequence than went closer to the horizon...