Totality

Although I've never been particularly interested in astronomy or space and had previously said I didn’t plan on photographing the eclipse, circumstances intervened.

Our son and daughter-in-law live the zone of totality and asked us to come for a visit – of course we were happy to take them up on the invitation. A photographer whose studio isn’t far from their house kindly donated a solar filter that fit my lens. I took over 600 photos but only saved about 25; it took me quite a while to adjust the camera's settings since the recommendations I'd found on-line the night before were, unfortunately, of little help.

The solar filter was only necessary before and after totality and the Sun in those images is orange-colored. During totality the filter was removed and, in the images made then, the colors are what could be seen with the naked eye, without solar glasses.

Below is a short time-lapse video of the total eclipse which took almost exactly two hours start to finish, therefore the video significantly condenses the entire process.

Baily's Beads form as the edge of the Sun shows through gaps formed by valleys and craters on the moon. 

The Sun's corona is the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere, it normally can't be seen except during a total eclipse. 

Those pink -colored spots on the Sun's rim during totality are called solar prominences, eruptions of plasma from the surface of the Sun.

 

The Diamond Ring Effect forms just as the moon completely hides the Sun or, as in the video, just barely exposes the Sun once again. 

During the eclipse our surroundings didn’t become totally dark and there was a 360 degree sunset as the light dimmed –

Earlier, as the eclipse progressed, the light developed an odd gray tone very unlike ordinary twilight. Then after totality that gray light returned until the sky brightened to a normal late afternoon.

During the eclipse the air became noticeably cooler and then warmed again after the eclipse was over. Because of the open pastures around us, we could watch the moon's shadow approach and then recede.

There were some high thin clouds during the beginning of the eclipse, those clouds increased markedly over the two hours and made later photos less clear. In spite of that, sunspots can be seen as small dark spots on the surface of the Sun in some of the 600+ photos I took  –

We had the benefit of astronomers' predictions and solar glasses and camera filters so we could anticipate, understand and view the Sun during the eclipse. It's easy to understand how, lacking that knowledge, our ancestors in the dim distant past could have been superstitious and perhaps terrified as the light dimmed and the Sun appeared to vanish.

The eclipse was fascinating and wonderful, I'm glad we had a chance to experience it and happy I got a few images that I can share.