An ‘H-Bomb’ over the South China Sea

I was shooting surfers at San Juan, La Union, Philippines, last February 2011 when the sun got so low there wasn’t enough light to freeze the waveriders. Seeing no clouds obstructing my view of the South China Sea, I quickly mounted 2.8x worth of TCs to get a bigger sun.

It would appear as if an H-Bomb had exploded to the west in this shot taken just as the setting sun was about to touch the horizon. The two spots in the center of the sun’s disk were sunspots no. 1161 and 1162.

Shooting Info - San Juan, La Union, Philippines, February 19, 2011, Canon 7D + EF 500 f4 IS + stacked 2x/1.4x TC II, 1400 mm, f/16, 1/400 sec, ISO 200, manual exposure, 475B/516 support, single exposure, no filters, uncropped full frame resized to 800x533.