On 8 April 2024, the total solar eclipse occured over Mexico, USA and Canada, bringing unique opportunity to many people to see the ghostly solar corona during the solarmax. I was lucky to spot the eclipse from Durango, Mexico, with some short cloud period of clouds, but mostly the view was amazingly clear. Thus I also made it happen to process some deep images of (not only) solar corona during the 3 minutes and 26 seconds long totality. Would you like to purchase a high-quality copy for print? Find out more here.
A short documentary (in Czech language)
Sotal Solar Eclipse 2024 – wide view
Here comes the first image after the eclipse. For the final composite, I used 200mm focal length (wide corona) and 1100mm focal lenght (inner corona), all taken from Durango, Mexico. It was truly windy and partly cloudy, totality took 3 minutes and 25 seconds and the image is the result of HDR shooting (exposure from 1/4000s to 2s with 200mm, and 1/500s to 4s with 1100mm), A total of 83 usable images from 200mm were used (dark frames and flat fields applied) and another 17 images from 1100mm calibrated as well. Wide angle view shows many stars, but especially lucky is the shot with the doomed comet SOHO-5008, which was discovered just before the eclipse.
Sotal Solar Eclipse 2024 – wide view with comet SOHO-5008
Sotal Solar Eclipse 2024 – comet SOHO-5008
Full credit: Petr Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava), Josef Kujal (Astronomy Society in Hradec Králové), Milan Hlaváč.
Comet SOHO-5008 in LASCO C2 field of view. Source: SOHO/NASA, ESA.
Since the shadow was almost 200 km wide, people inside it could enjoy an indescribable type of unusual darkness. While the Sun was hidden behind the Moon, its plasmatic atmosphere called corona appeared in the sky. And not just that. Did you know that all bright planets, one comet, and many constellations could be capturable? I made an experiment with a wide-angle lens pointing to the northwest. Using my extreme HDR (200mm) in my 12mm sequence, which I stacked with 23 exposures (1/2s) with the frozen ground I was able to create a bit deeper view from Durango and reveal some brighter stars and planets. Comet Pons-Brooks is there too. From the image I surprisingly extracted so many objects which appeared in the shadowed sky during the 3 minutes and 26 seconds long total eclipse over Durango, Mexico. Check the image on a wider screen and find how many stars were visible in the lunar shadow!
Used Canon 6D, Samyang 12mm, f2.8, ISO100, stacked 26 exposures of 1/2s. The eclipse is HDR taken from 200mm (f2.8, ISO100, vary exposures) and registered to the wide-angle view.
The Stars in the Lunar Shadow
The Stars in the Lunar Shadow – Annotated
