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Photo: Fred Bruenjes
What would the total eclipse of the sun look like from the end of the world? It would look exactly like the photo above:
In 2003, the Sun, the Moon, Antarctica, and two photographers all lined up in Antarctica during an unusual total solar eclipse. Even given the extreme location, a group of enthusiastic eclipse chasers ventured near the bottom of the world to experience the surreal momentary disappearance of the Sun behind the Moon.
One of the treasures collected was the above picture — a composite of four separate images digitally combined to realistically simulate how the adaptive human eye saw the eclipse.
As the image was taken, both the Moon and the Sun peaked together over an Antarctic ridge. In the sudden darkness, the magnificent corona of the Sun became visible around the Moon.
Quite by accident, another photographer was caught in one of the images checking his video camera. Visible to his left are an equipment bag and a collapsible chair.
From the incomparable Astronomy Picture of the Day: Link
Astrophotographer Thierry Legault (featured previously at Neatorama) went all the way to Oman to take a picture of a solar eclipse. The shot he wanted was only available for a split second today, and he got it! Not only is the moon moving across the sun, but you can see other things in the picture (see the full-size version at the link). The small spot towards the bottom is a sunspot twice the size of the earth, and toward the top is something that looks like a TIE fighter. That is the International Space Station (ISS)! The Bad Astronomer explains how rare this picture is:
That’s why Thierry sojourned to Oman; due to the geometry of the ISS orbit, it was from there that he had the best chance of getting a picture of the station as it passed in front of the Sun during the relatively brief duration of the actual solar eclipse. But talk about brief; the ISS was in front of the Sun for less than second, so not only did he have one chance at getting this spectacular once-in-a-lifetime shot, but he had only a fraction of a second to snap it!
The ISS was only in front of the sun for .86 seconds during the eclipse. Link
(Image courtesy of Thierry Legault)
On July 11, thirty people set a world record when they observed a total eclipse for over 9 minutes. What’s so special about that? Well, the longest anyone can observe an eclipse is just over 7 minutes, and this one would have only lasted about 5 minutes had they been on Earth. Actually they were racing through the sky in a plane, parallel to the lunar path.
The plane made a right-angle turn to intercept the moon’s shadow at about 9:15 a.m. At the moment of totality, the plane fell quiet.
“Normally on the ground there’s a lot of screaming, oohing and aahing, and a lot of noise going on, but for some reason it was very quiet in the plane,” Brown said. “People were astounded.”
The plane flew along with the shadow at 500 miles per hour, about a third of the shadow’s speed across the Earth’s surface. At that speed, the time in totality stretched from the 5 minutes, 20 seconds visible from the ground to 9 minutes, 23 seconds. It was the longest totality ever observed from a non-experimental and non-military aircraft. Brown said the team is submitting a DVD to the Guinness Book of World Records.
The image above is a composite of five pictures from the flight (Glenn Schneider and Rick Brown). As stated, the record set was for non-experimental, non-military aircraft- an early supersonic Concorde chased the shadow for 74 minutes in 1973.
Previously, an even more stunning Composite Picture of a Solar Eclipse.
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Epsilon Aurigae is about 2,000 light years from earth. Every 27 years, it darkens for two years. With the use of advanced thermal imaging technology, astronomers now think that this event is a solar eclipse:
The eclipse was first observed by the German astrologer Johann Fritsch in 1821.
Dr Ettore Pedretti and Dr Nathalie Thureau, from St Andrews, took part in the research, which was led by Brian Kloppenborg from the University of Denver.
Dr Pedretti said: “From the image, we can confirm that the eclipse of Epsilon Aurigae is caused by a thin disc of opaque dust trailed by a massive and unseen companion.
“Like David, tiny particles of dust are able to kill the light of this ‘Goliath’ star.”
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Photographer and scientist Miloslav Druckmüller and his team specialize in capturing images of solar eclipses. Pictured above is one photograph that compiles nine images, taken on July 22, 2009 from the Marshall Islands. Of this craft, Druckmüller writes:
Solar eclipse photography if one of the most difficult tasks of astronomical photography. There are at least three reasons for that. The first and main one is the extreme contrast which makes impossible to record the phenomenon on a single image. Neither classical nor digital photography have the ability to master the brightness ratio which is necessary for successful eclipse photography. The second reason is little chance for making experiments. If anything gets wrong it may take years to get an opportunity for a new experiment. The last but not the least reason is the fact that processing of images taken during total eclipse is very complicated and time consuming work with needs of one purpose software being developed specially for this aim.
Link via Geekologie
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Armando Lee of the Astronomical League of the Philippines, F. Naelga Jr., and 100 Hours of Astronomy took this fantastic photo of a partial eclipse of the Sun over Manila Bay, which was showcased on APOD. I couldn’t resist putting on the obvious googly eyes … Come on, you know you’re thinking it too!
