Prominences During Totality

These images were taken during the total phase of the eclipse. Rather than use longer exposures to show the corona, short exposures around 1/500 second at f32 ensured that the solar flares near the sun's surface were not bleached out. Also during the printing process the prints were darkened to emphasise the prominences as compared to the corona.

As the total phase was much longer than in 1999, 3 minutes and 45 seconds this time, it was possible to take photographs of both prominences and the corona as totality progressed.

The moon's disk is gradually moving left to right and on the larger images previously hidden flares can bee seen emerging at the lower left.

The images were taken using a 300mm lens with no filter. For the diamond ring and the total phase a solar filter would block out nearly all the available light.

Click on an image to show a larger version.

small_prominence1.jpeg (1437 bytes) small_prominence2.jpeg (1209 bytes) small_prominence3.jpeg (1538 bytes)
PARTIAL 1st DIAMOND RING CORONA PROMINENCES 2nd DIAMOND RING