2017 Eclipse - Third Contact Diamond Ring

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, with the diamond ring effect at the end of totality, or third contact, as the sunlight re-appears from behind the Moon. This is a single exposure through the Astro-Physics 106mm apo refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener for a focal length of 500mm and an f-ratio of f/5. With the Canon 6D Mark II camera. Taken from a site near Driggs, Idaho.

2017 Eclipse – Composite of Contact 2 and 3

A composite of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, with images from both the moments of second contact (start of totality) and third contact (end of totality) combined to show the limbs with the last and first bits of sunlight showing, plus longer exposures of the corona. So this combines images from the start and end of totality, and is not something you could actually see! So this is a but of a cheat to be sure, but it illustrates where on the limb of the Moon the sunlight disappeared then reappeared in Baily’s Beads for me at my site in the Teton Valley of Idaho. And the locations of the Baily’s Beads are not 180° apart on the limb. Why? Because I was not right on the centreline of the path but north of the centreline, by choice, to get a location with a good scenic horizon toward the eclipsed Sun. The star at left is Regulus. This is a blend of short 1/2500 and 1/4000 second exposures for the Baily’s Beads, and longer 1/640 and 1/100 second exposures for the corona. All were through the Astro-Physics 106m Traveler refractor at f/5 with the Canon 6D MkII.

2017 Eclipse - C3 Baily's Beads

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, with bits of sunlight just beginning to shine through the rough edge of the Moon, forming Baily’s Beads at the end of totality, or third contact. This is a single exposure through the Astro-Physics 106mm apo refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener for a focal length of 500mm and an f-ratio of f/5. With the Canon 6D Mark II camera. Taken from a site near Driggs, Idaho.

2017 Eclipse - Third Contact Chromosphere and Prominences

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, with a short exposure to reveal the pink chromosphere at right appearing shortly before third contact, and a large prominence at right. This is a single exposure through the Astro-Physics 106mm apo refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener for a focal length of 500mm and an f-ratio of f/5. With the Canon 6D Mark II camera. Taken from a site near Driggs, Idaho.

2017 Total Solar Eclipse – Contacts and Totality

A composite of the August 21, 2017 total eclipse of the Sun, showing the second and third contact diamond rings (far left and far right) and Baily’s Beads at the start (left) and end (right) of totality, flanking a composite image of totality itself. The diamond ring and Baily’s Beads images are single images. The totality images is a blend of 12 exposures from 1/1600 sec to 1 second, stacked as a smart object and combined using the Mean stack mode to blend the images. Several High Pass filter layers were added to sharpen and increase the contrast in the coronal structures. Regulus is the star at lower left. Placement of the images only roughly matches the actual position and path of the Sun across the sky. However, the time sequence runs from left to right. All taken through the 105mm Astro-Physics Traveler refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener, yielding f/5 at 500mm focal length, wide enough to capture Regulus at left. All with the Canon 6D MkII camera at ISO 100. Shot from a site in the Teton Valley, Idaho, north of Driggs.

2017 Total Solar Eclipse Composite (Mean Stack Method)

A composite of 12 exposures of the August 21, 2017 total eclipse of the Sun, from 1/1600 sec to 1 second, stacked as a smart object and combined using the Mean stack mode to blend the images. Several High Pass filter layers were added to sharpen and increase the contrast in the coronal structures. All taken through the 106mm Astro-Physics Traveler refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener, yielding f/5 at 500mm focal length, wide enough to capture Regulus at left. All with the Canon 6D MkII camera at ISO 100. Shot from a site in the Teton Valley, Idaho, north of Driggs.

Eclipse over the Tetons - Totality Ends

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse over the Grand Tetons as seen from the Teton Valley in Idaho, near Driggs. This is from a 700-frame time-lapse and is of third contact just as the second diamond ring is starting and the dark shadow of the Moon is receding to the east at left. The sky is darker to the left but the foregound is beginning to light up as the sky to the west off camera to the right brightens and lights the scene. Jupiter is just above the Tetons at bottom. With the Canon 6D and 14mm SP Rokinon lens at f/2.5 for 1/5 second at ISO 100.

2017 Eclipse - Third Contact Composite

A composite of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse showing third contact – the end of totality – with sunlight beginning to reappear and the array of pink prominences along the limb of the Sun. Seconds later the emerging Sun and diamond ring overwhelmed the large prominence. Regulus is at lower left. This is a composite of two images taken seconds apart: a 1/15th second exposure for the corona and a 1/1000 sec exposure for the prominences and chromosphere. Taken with the 106mm Astro-Physics apo refractor at f/5 and Canon 6D MkII camera at ISO 100. On the Mach One equatorial mount, polar aligned and tracking the sky.

The Eclipse Sky – Start of Totality

An ultra-wide angle view of the total eclipse sky from the Teton Valley, Idaho. The Tetons are at left, still partly in sunlight. The lunar shadow has approached from the west at right and its edge is just past the Sun, ending the diamond ring and starting totality. Venus is at upper right from the Sun. Sirius is a tiny speck at lower right, likely not visible in low-res views on social media. Procyon, Rigel, and Betelegeuse are faintly visible in the original image. The horizon had colours mostly to the south. This is a single frame from a 660-frame time-lapse of the motion of the lunar shadow, taken with the Nikon D750 and 12mm full-frame Rokinon fish-eye lens.

The Solar Corona at the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse

Here is my composite image of the 2017 total solar eclipse, from a range of exposures from 1/1000 second to 0.4 second, to retain details in the inner corona while bringing out faint streamers in the outer corona fading off into the sky. The blue sky contains several stars, including first magnitude Regulus at left, a rare sight at any eclipse. The disk of the New Moon illuminated by Earthshine is also faintly visible. As such, the image shows a bit more than the eye saw, as the Earthshine is usually not visible to the eye, as it is overwhelmed by the bright inner corona. However, in other respects I have tried to retain a more “natural” appearance to the merged images, to replicate what the eye did see, both naked eye and through binoculars. I’ve avoided a more garish or overly sharpened image, as interesting and scientificially useful as those can be for revealing the finest structures in the corona. The location was the Teton Valley north of Driggs, Idaho off the West 5000 road on the Wydaho Lane. I shot the images through a 106mm Astro-Physics refractor with a 0.85x Reducer/Flattener for an effective focal ratio of f/5 and focal length of 500mm. The camera was the Canon 6D Mark II, at ISO 100. The telescope was on a polar-aligned equatorial tracking mount. Even so, some manual alignment of images was required, mostly due to the motion of the lunar disk relative to the Sun. This is a composite of 7 images blended with luminosity masks applied using ADP Panel+ Pro extension for Photoshop. Adjustment layers of successively smaller High Pass filters were also added to bring out the coronal structure. I tried both merging images with HDR software (Photomatix Pro 6) and with stacking images as a Smart Object and applying a Mean stack mode. While both methods did produce a good result the HDR image exhibited edge artifacts, as HDRs often do, while the stacked smart object lacked detail in the inner corona, and allowed no control over the relative contribution each exposure made to the image.

2017 Eclipse Time Sequence Composite

Here’s a variation on creating a time-sequence composite of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse. In this case, time runs from left to right, from the last filtered partial phases I shot, through unfiltered shots of the rapidly changing last glimmer of sunlight disappearing behind the advancing Moon at “Second Contact,” forming “Baily’s Beads, to totality at centre. The sequence continues at right with the Sun emerging from behind the Moon in a rapid sequence at “Third Contact,” followed by two post-totality filtered partials to bookend the total eclipse images. The C3 limb had a beautiful array of pink prominences. The Contact 2 and 3 images were taken in rapid-fire continuous mode and so are only fractions of a second apart in real time. Most are 1/4000th second exposures. The totality image is a blend of 7 exposures, from 1/1600 second to 1/15 second to preserve detail in the corona from inner to middle corona. These were aligned, and merged into a smart object and blended with a Mean combine stack mode. It is not an HDR image. I added a couple of layers of High Pass filtering to sharpen structure in the corona. The partials are 1/2500-second exposures through a Thousand Oaks metal-on-glass solar filter for the yellow colour. All were taken through an Astro-Physics 105mm apochromatic refractor with a 0.85x field flattener/reducer for an effective focal length of 500mm at f/5. The flattener added some flares off the diamond rings. The telescope was on an AP Mach One equatorial mount, aligned and tracking the sky, a rare circumstance for me for any total solar eclipse. The placement of the frames here only roughly matches the actual position and motion of the Sun across the sky during the time around totality. Partials and C2 and C3 images layered into Photoshop and blended into the background totality image with a Lighten blend mode, and masked to reveal just the wanted bits of each arc. The site was north of Driggs, Idaho in the Teton Valley, north of the centreline. Thus the diamond rings are above the centre of the Moon’s disk.

2017 Eclipse - Inner Corona

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, with an exposure showing details in the inner corona, including loops in the corona around the prominence at right, and polar brushes from the north and souht polar regions of the Sun. This is a single exposure through the Astro-Physics 106mm apo refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener for a focal length of 500mm and an f-ratio of f/5. With the Canon 6D Mark II camera. Taken from a site near Driggs, Idaho.

2017 Total Eclipse (Photomatix HDR Version)

A composite of the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse assembled using the HDR program Photomatix Pro v6. The composite is from 11 exposures, from 1/1000 to 0.4 seconds. All taken with the Astro-Physics 106mm apo refractor at f/5 and 500mm focal length with the Canon 6D MkII at ISO 100. In addition to the HDR set, I layered in a 12th exposure taken just before third contact, blended with Darken mode and with a luminosity mask to reveal just its contribution of the inner corona and prominences, to better show the prominences along the western limb that were so dramatic visually. Without this exposure layer the prominences were being washed out by the HDR blend, as good as it was. Photomatix 6 does a very good job merging the corona features and nicely compressed the dynamic range producing a natural result. I used the Contrast Optimizer mode and a Realistic preset to start, then varied the settings considerably to yield a final result that looked natural and best resembled the visual appearance, without undo exaggeration of contrast and excessive sharpening that, while it might reveal more coronal structure, lends an over-cooked and noisy appearance to the image. There’s no point in me saying exactly where all the sliders were set, as any images you try to merge will be different, requiring a different combination of settings. Even so, Photomatix, while it did a much better job than Photoshop’s HDR Pro and other third party HDR programs such as Aurora HDR (which did a poor job), did have its flaws. Notably, it produced badly aliased edge effects along the limb of the Moon despite the images being registered and aligned. This is a common flaw of HDRs along high-contrast edges. So, to remove or hide the worst of the HDR edge artifacts, I’ve performed a cheat here and artifically darkened the disk of the Moon and its limb with mask. Which is why I recommend using luminosity masks instead to merge images, though they are more work and do result in a lower-contrast image. They do not have any of the edge artifacts of HDRs. However, at typical social media resolutions you would never see the difference, nor the flaw I was hiding. Even so, I think the final result looks natural, as the disk of the Moon really does look darker than the surrounding sky to the eye. The bright star at left is Regulus. It is amazing how many people who shot the eclipse had no idea that star was there.

2017 Eclipse - Second Contact Chromosphere and Prominences

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, with a short exposure to reveal the pink chromosphere at left, shortly after second contact, and a large prominence at right. This is a single exposure through the Astro-Physics 106mm apo refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener for a focal length of 500mm and an f-ratio of f/5. With the Canon 6D Mark II camera. Taken from a site near Driggs, Idaho.

Eclipse over the Tetons - Totality Starts

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse over the Grand Tetons as seen from the Teton Valley in Idaho, near Driggs. This is from a 700-frame time-lapse and is of second contact just as the diamond ring is ending and the dark shadow of the Moon is approaching from the west at right, darkening the sky at right, and beginning to touch the Sun. The peaks of the Tetons are not yet in the umbral shadow and are still lit by the partially eclipsed Sun. With the Canon 6D and 14mm SP Rokinon lens at f/2.5 for 1/10 second at ISO 100.

2017 Eclipse - Second Contact Baily's Beads

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, with the last bits of sunlight shining through the rough edge of the Moon, forming Baily’s Beads at the start of totality, or second contact. This is a single exposure through the Astro-Physics 106mm apo refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener for a focal length of 500mm and an f-ratio of f/5. With the Canon 6D Mark II camera. Taken from a site near Driggs, Idaho.

2017 Eclipse - Second Contact Diamond Ring

The August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse, with the diamond ring effect at the start of totality, or second contact, as the last sunlight disappears. This is a single exposure through the Astro-Physics 106mm apo refractor with a 0.85x reducer/flattener for a focal length of 500mm and an f-ratio of f/5. With the Canon 6D Mark II camera. Taken from a site near Driggs, Idaho.

Partial Solar Eclipse in Cloud #2 (Oct 23, 2014)

The partial eclipse of the Sun, October 23, 2014, as seen from Jasper, Alberta, in this case shot through thin cloud but that makes for a more interesting photo than one in a clear sky. This is still shot through a mylar filter, on the front of a 66mm f/6 apo refractor using the Canon 60Da for 1/15 sec exposure at ISO 100. Here the large sunspot group on the Sun that day is just re-emerging from behind the lunar disk.

Partial Solar Eclipse in Cloud #1 (Oct 23, 2014)

The partial eclipse of the Sun, October 23, 2014, as seen from Jasper, Alberta, in this case shot through thin cloud but that makes for a more interesting photo than one in a clear sky. This is still shot through a mylar filter, on the front of a 66mm f/6 apo refractor using the Canon 60Da for 1/25 sec exposure at ISO 100. The colours are natural, with the mylar filter providing a neutral “white light” image. With the Sun dimmed a lot by cloud, the longer exposure allowed picking up light and colours in the surrounding clouds.

Partial Solar Eclipse Wide-Angle (Oct 23, 2014)

The partial solar eclipse of October 23, 2014 as seen from Jasper, Alberta, at a public event in Centennial Park as part of the annual Dark Sky Festival. This is a single-exposure image showing the scene near mid-eclipse with telescopes from volunteers from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and the mostly clear skies above with the crescent Sun visible through the handheld polymer solar filter.

Partial Solar Eclipse and Sunspot #2

The partial eclipse of the Sun, October 23, 2014, as seen from Jasper, Alberta, shot under clear skies through a mylar filter, on the front of a 66mm f/6 apo refractor using the Canon 60Da for 1/8000 (!) sec exposure at ISO 100. The colours are natural, with the mylar filter providing a neutral “white light” image. The big sunspot on the Sun that day is just disappearing behind the Moon’s limb. The mylar filter gave a white Sun, its natural colour, but I have tinted the Sun’s disk yellow for a more pleasing view that is not just white Sun/black sky.

Partial Solar Eclipse & Sunspot #1 (Oct 23, 2014)

The partial eclipse of the Sun, October 23, 2014, as seen from Jasper, Alberta, shot under clear skies through a mylar filter, on the front of a 66mm f/6 apo refractor using the Canon 60Da for 1/8000 (!) sec exposure at ISO 100. The colours are natural, with the mylar filter providing a neutral “white light” image. The big sunspot on the Sun that day is just beginning to disappear behind the Moon’s limb. The mylar filter gave a white Sun, its natural colour, but I have tinted the Sun’s disk yellow for a more pleasing view that is not just white Sun/black sky.

Total Solar Eclipse - 3rd Contact Diamond Ring (Nov 3 2013)

The third contact diamond ring at the November 3, 2013 total eclipse of the Sun, from the Atlantic Ocean on the Star Flyer sailing ship.

Total Eclipse of the Sun from the Atlantic (Nov 3, 2013)

Total eclipse of the Sun, November 3, 2013 as seen from a latitude of 16° 58' 50" North and 37° 10' 37" West in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, from the Star Flyer sailing ship. I took this with a Canon 5D MkII and 16-35mm lens at 19mm for 1/40s at f/2.8 and ISO 800 on a heavily rolling ship. This is one frame near mid-totality of a 360+ time-lapse sequence.