This is a composite of 31 different images, taken in
the shadow of the solar eclipse
Asia and parts of the Pacific back in July of 2009
for 6 minutes and 39 seconds. That’s the longest
solar eclipse anyone on Earth will witness this
century; a longer one isn’t coming until 2132.
Mathematician and eclipse photographer Miloslav
Druckmüller didn’t waste a second of it,
positioned with a team of colleagues on
Enewetak Atoll in the South Pacific, which just
happens to be where the first hydrogen bomb was
tested by the United States back in 1952. The photo
shows the solar corona that make up the sun’s
“atmosphere” in glorious detail. Its whorls and
loops extend millions of miles into space, are
nearly 200 times hotter than the visible surface
of the sun, and yet aren’t nearly as bright (by a
factor of something like a million), hence, we
can only see them during eclipses. I love the
delicate beauty of this photo, and how it makes
various features of the corona so plainly visible,
like the difference in activity around its polar
regions, as well as the dim, cratered surface of
the moon.
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