Photo # 1 (June 2011)

TIME LAPSE CLOUDS AND SKY OVER THE CANARY ISLANDS

We clasp the hands of those who go before us,
and the hands of those who come after us;
we enter the little circle of each other's arms,
and the larger circle of lovers
whose hands are joined in a dance,
and the larger circle of all creatures,
passing in and out of life,
who move also in a dance,
to a music so subtle and vast
that no one hears it except in fragments.
- Wendell Berry

Credit & Copyright: Daniel López, IAC
Music: Matti Paalanen, Angel's Tear (Aeon 2)

If you could sit back and watch clouds and the sky move all night and day, what might you see? One answer from the island of Tenerife, captured over the course of the year, includes sequences that are not only breathtaking but instructive. Visible in the above time-lapse movie include clouds that seem to flow like water, a setting sun that shows numerous green flashes, the Milky Way Galaxy rising behind towering plants, a colorful double fogbow, lenticular clouds that appear stationary near their mountain peaks, and colorful moon coronas. The above video was shot solely from the Teide National Park on Tenerife in the Canary Islands of Spain, off the north west coast of Africa. The video also features an unusual type of plant in several scenes -- can you identify it?

Each of us is but a pixel on the cosmic screen of a reality so vast that we cannot conceive or conceptualize its shape, much less its substance. The movements of clouds and stars and other heavenly bodies add further dimensions to our wonderment.

                                             - Dan Benor, MD