A Vast Illumination – My photograph of the year 2025

Dave Powell replied:

Comment posted: 04/12/2025

Thanks Manu, I'm so glad you liked it!

Dave Powell replied:

Comment posted: 04/12/2025

You are most welcome, Hanna. I loved the way the scene expanded my perceptions. The challenge was describing how! Thanks Hanna!

Dave Powell replied:

Comment posted: 05/12/2025

Very much appreciated, Jukka! The receding layers of illumination just hit me... considering the very short time it takes everyday scene's like this to "form."

Dave Powell replied:

Comment posted: 05/12/2025

Thanks so much Curtis... Very appreciated!

Dave Powell replied:

Comment posted: 05/12/2025

Hi Scott! I was frankly surprised at the photo's quality, since I had replaced an old iPhone 6s with a smaller SE model that didn't come with Apple's "pro-est" camera. (I chose the SE because it was more pocketable.) It did raise the megapixels by 2x though, and is fine for quick grabs like this scene (which hit me as I was getting into a car). Especially surprising was how well the moon came out. When I've tried similar shots with my Lumix pocket camera's 1" sensor and 10x zoom, the moon was nothing more than a dot in the sky. But the little SE phone captured much more. I'm so glad you liked it!

Dave Powell replied:

Comment posted: 07/12/2025

Thanks Geoff... I'm still composing my response. Watch this space!

Dave Powell replied:

Comment posted: 07/12/2025

OK Geoff... Here we go!!! That's a fascinating, thought-provoking observation! Because the subject is so strange, it’s taken me a while to figure out how to respond. When you said that photons “took no time at all between creation somewhere in the sun and destruction here on earth,” it was partially true. It would have been completely true if you had said “between leaving the sun’s photosphere 'surface' and destruction here on earth.” Yes, per Einstein, if photons could “experience” time as we do, they’d see no time pass as they streak through space between the sun and Earth. But launching their journey “somewhere in the sun,” brings us into strange territory! ***** In an effort to describe this territory to non-scientists, many journalists (and even some scientists) have oversimplified a false narrative about it. Their story goes something like this: “In the sun’s nuclear-fusion furnace, temperatures and pressures are so extreme that random Brownian pinballing actually keeps photons inside the star for from 10,000 to 1 million YEARS before they finally escape into space." [NOTE: This would imply that many of the photons captured in my featured photo actually began their journeys out from the sun’s core when our Homo Erectus predecessors trod the Earth’s Pleistocene Ice Age!] ***** But I think this is technically incorrect because “photons” like the ones that make up sunlight aren’t actually born as such in the sun’s core! The entities created there that eventually become photons are high-energy (and deadly) gamma rays. And even they don’t all survive our star’s fiery fusion furnace long enough to escape into space. For while the sun has a massive 432,690-mile radius, scientists currently estimate that gamma rays born in he sun’s core travel only about one millionth of a meter before nearby atoms absorb them and re-emit NEW rays in random directions. This ping-ponging does take 10,000 to a million years before gamma-ray energies are shaved down to those of the "light photons" that escape into space through the sun’s photosphere. ***** Some scientists call this entire process an “energy bounce,” which can make it sound like individual gamma rays can survive the entire ordeal. But it’s really more of a cascading transference and filtering of nuclear energies through the sun’s body until the rays are reduced to safer “light photons” that we can see and photograph. ***** So photons-- as such-- are not born in the sun's core, but emerge instead from the sun’s surface. And as you observed, Geoff, they did indeed experience no passage of time from there to my camera. Thanks again for this mind-expanding journey!

David Hume replied:

Comment posted: 07/12/2025

Ha! I love this. My bachelor's degree was mathematical physics and pure maths. So tell me Dave, as a follow up, was the photo in your piece digital or analogue? (See what I'm doing here?)

David Hume replied:

Comment posted: 07/12/2025

Oops - I missed the bit where you say it was an iPhone photo. I was attempting to be tediously pedantic about people calling film photography analogue...

David Hume replied:

Comment posted: 07/12/2025

Oh - and Geoff if you happen to see this - I'm not at all meaning to have a snipe at you about the time thing... I just love all this physics stuff! (I actually wrote an explanation once about why film photography is not analogue, because "analogue" was getting thrown about so much while quantum interactions are necessary to explain it.)

Dave Powell replied:

Comment posted: 07/12/2025

Thanks Dave... and I'm glad you spotted the iPhone. (I actually looked to see if I'd omitted that little detail!)

Dave Powell replied:

Comment posted: 09/12/2025

Wonderful... I really like that my friend!