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The 5 pictures above are made by myself. They are taken from a camp-site in Praa Sands (between Penzance and Helston, Cornwall, England). Click here to enlarge them all. When the darkness was over and the rooks had settled down, the clouds began to break. This is a normal occurrence during a solar eclipse. Because cumulus clouds are created by heating of the Earth by the sun. When the sunlight is blocked, e.g. by the moon, the Earth is not heated anymore and the clouds will collapse. Of course, when the clouds are too thick (about 29.000 ft, what the situation was in Praa Sands) the clouds will only break and you will only see the last part of the solar eclipse. You have to see the pictures from left to right to see them in time. Technical data Click here if you want to use the pictures, or want to order them. |
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These pictures above are from the totality. The trick with this pictures is that with a longer exposure time you get a larger corona on your film. On the first picture there are several solar flares to see. (These are the red colored dots on the edge of the moon.) They are red because the sun exist for approx. 70% of hydrogen. When hydrogen is in exited condition due to the sun's temperature, you will see the specific red of hydrogen. In the second picture you see that the corona is more luminiscent than the solar flares due to a longer exposure time. The third picture gives a better look of how the corona looks like. Normally it is not visible, because the photosphere is much more luminescent than the corona. Therefore the corona is only visible during a solar eclipse or though a special prepared telescope. The corona is the most outer layer of the sun. In this layer there are many particles. These are heated by the sun's radiation and, as with the solar flares, the atoms are excited. This results in the beautiful corona. The shape of the corona is determined by the sun's magnetic field. Because this is never the same, you will experience that every solar eclipse has a different corona. On the last picture you see the end of the eclipse and also the end of a stage called "Pearls of Baley". Because the moon's surface isn't flat you can see the first sunlight come through the valleys of the moon. Directly after the totality you get the so-called "diamond-ring effect". This is the first ray of light coming through the valleys. After a few seconds more valleys will let light through and you get a chain of pearls. |
