Imagery from Total Solar Eclipse 08/04/2024

[Sam Warfel]

A little off-topic? Perhaps.  But hey, there's solar activity visible in some of these images!
Anyway, I traveled to southern Indiana to image the total solar eclipse.  At a little lavender farm way out in the country, I had a perfect view in a quiet area, basically on the centerline with 4 minutes and three seconds of totality.
Here are some of my images I took!
(Click into the images to see them in full resolution)

Here's the main star of the show, the corona during totality.  This image uses 18 photos from two different cameras.  The corona itself is an HDR blend of 9 different length exposures, which are required to capture the exponential range in brightness from the inner corona to the outermost.  I added two more extremely short exposures to recover the detail in the terrific red prominences that put on such a good show this eclipse.  The large triangular one on the left was so bright it was visible to the unaided eye during totality as bright red point.  Finally, the detail on the moon is "earthshine," the near side of the moon that is totally devoid of direct sunlight, but dimly lit by light reflecting off of the "full Earth" as seen from the moon.  To bring out this detail, I had a second camera and zoom lens running throughout totality, taking long 1.3 second exposures to capture the dim detail.  Of these, only 7 were free from the high clouds that drifted over during totality and contained usable data.  I stacked those 7, and was able to create the earthshine moon as seen in the image.  This was totally captured during the eclipse, no full moon shots from night months prior overlaid here, like there are in some floating around the internet.  I chose to leave the image with a blue tint rather than the black you often see people do, because to the eye the sky was not black during totality, but a deep blue, so I feel this represents my memories better.
All in all, a fantastic experience and I'm super happy with the image!  I achieved everything I had hoped for: HDR corona, prominences, and earthshine moon.

 

Here's Baily's Beads, the last of the solar disk disappearing behind the moon at the start of totality, shining through mountains on the limb of the moon breaking it up into several beads of light.

 

Here's the "Diamond Ring", showing the sun re-emerging from behind the moon, but with the corona still visible, forming the "Diamond Ring"

 

And here's a composite imaging showing the partial phases of the eclipse before and after totality, with sunspots visible:

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 18 by Sam Warfel

[WA1ZJL]

Thanks for sharing!  Those are just gorgeous!!

[Sam Warfel]

53 minutes ago, WA1ZJL said:

Thanks for sharing!  Those are just gorgeous!!

Thank you! You're welcome!

[KW2P]

Neato!  You got all the classic effects!  Nice job.

[Philalethes]

10 hours ago, Sam Warfel said:

A little off-topic? Perhaps.  But hey, there's solar activity visible in some of these images!

A total Solar eclipse will never be off-topic anywhere even remotely related to space in my book, heh.

Awesome images, composites always look the coolest, would be hard to capture all the different interesting details in one picture otherwise. The blue-green glow of the earthshine is a detail I love to see in such images.

[Marcel de Bont]

 These images are beyond amazing Sam, well done!

[Sam Warfel]

15 hours ago, Marcel de Bont said:

 These images are beyond amazing Sam, well done!

Thank you Marcel!

[cgrant26]

Awesome pics! This is the best one I managed to get: