The Magic of a Total Solar Eclipse by AstroβGuiGeek On July 2, 2019, I attended the most unforgettable moment I have ever lived in my life as an amateur astronomer: a total solar eclipse; thanks to the European Southern Observatory (ESO) who invited our MeetESO team to observe this unique event from La Silla Observatory in Chile! As I love astrophotography, I had decided to take up a challenge: capturing a high dynamic range image of the moon covering the entire solar disk. The result here, is quite unusual: it contains more dynamic than what our eyes could see of the phenomenon. It enables us to highlight both the new Moon's Earthshine and the filament-like structure of the highest layer of Sun's atmosphere called Corona. Composed of ionized gas (plasma), the corona is about 10 million times less dense than the sun's surface, making it too faint to be observed for Earth observers except when Sunlight is directly blocked, that is to say during a solar eclipse. The lines and curves we see here are made of charged particles (electron, protons) which follow the direction of the Sun's strong magnetic field. Plus, we can see a part of the chromosphere thanks to a huge solar prominence on bottom-left edge of the lunar disk. This picture is the hardest and longest one I have ever processed since I have started capturing the night sky in 2013. For example, as I did not use any tracking mount for this image, I was obliged to align the lunar disk manually, frame by frame and with one pixel accuracy... The overall editing method I used for this HDR is called the Fred Espenak's , named after his developer, a former NASA scientist . I hope you like this picture even if it is not entirely perfect. Feel free to like, comment, and share! TECHNICAL DETAILS π· Canon Rebel T5i + Sigma 120-300 F/2.8 HSM + Standard Tripod β 10 pictures, bracketed from 1/4000th seconds up to 1,3 seconds. β ISO 200 β 300 mm β f/4 Softwares: Adobe Photoshop / Lightroom Location: La Silla Observatory (Chile) https://flic.kr/p/2hApQyN
