The beads of solar eclipse

This surrealistic image shows “story” of total solar eclipse on 21st August 2017 over Guernsey State Park, USA. Story begins from left when total eclipse starts with so called diamond ring phase of the spectacular phenomenon, followed by Baily’s beads and full coverage of the Sun by the Moon. Same is shown on right, when total eclipse ends. In that part, you can also notice big pink solar prominences appearing over the lunar limb. In the middle, the total eclipse is it its maximum, allowing observer to see majestic solar corona.

Images are results of combining three sets of data, one from Canon 6D with 1100mm telephoto lenses on Vixen GP-2 mount (innner corona), Nikon D810 with 400mm lenses on HEQ6 mount (outer corona) and Canon EOS 3000 with Skywatcher MAK 90 mm / 1250 mm and film Fujicolor Superia 200 (Baily’s beads). The brightest star in the sky is Regulus, the alpha of Leo constellation. Details in corona were enanced by prof. Miloslav Druckmüller’s postprocessing works and also NAFE software.

I would like to acknowledge great support for the eclipse expedition, which was made possible by grants from NASA, NSF, the American Astronomical Society to the PI, Shadia R. Habbal of the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, to all the members of the Solar Wind Sherpas expedition, to ASTELCO company, VIXEN company and European Southern Observatory. Without their support the expedition would not have made and materialized. Credit: P. Horálek, Z. Hoder, M. Druckmüller, P. Aniol, S. Habbal / Solar Wind Sherpas.