The Eclipse, The Moon and The Corona
The weather was clear. I went out to get the moon in front of the sun’s corona, and here is an early shot.
I have a lot of processing to do and to create a montage. But here is one shot with minimal processing with the Moon’s shadow coming in from the right before first contact. Just happened to be over a nice active region. Remember, the dark black thing in the middle is my cone (that creates the artificial eclipse). The Moon is to the right of that.
This is taken from Comb Ridge in SE Utah at 9:07 local time in my 50mm coronagraph.
I have never been at the centerline of an annular before, and I found it a lot more moving than expected, best in the eclipse glasses. Just something about that perfect ring.
So this is the Moon approaching and covering the Sun, set against the solar corona, starting before first contact. Taken from Comb Ridge in southeast Utah in my 50mm homemade coronagraph at 5303 Angstroms during the annular eclipse. Universal times label the images, and they all have south up. The dark black disk in the center is the shadow of the coronagraph’s obscuring cone. The moon is a more subtle grey disk due to scattered light in the atmosphere. At 14:59UT, the moon is seen just coming in from the left (west). At 15:08, it is more prominent just before first contact. At 15:57, it is between first and second contact. At 16:15, the far edge of the moon can be seen against the corona. At 16:26, minutes before second contact, the west corona can been seen well peaking from behind the moon, and the coronal streamers can be seen all around.
