The following were taken from a location in the Elqui Valley, Chile, just north of the town of Vicuña. There are more photos of the observing site further down this page.
Location Reference: 29.9691 degrees S, 70.6889 degrees W.
First are 2 animated gifs:- "Beginning of the eclipse", (this is 10 Mb so might take a moment to download), and
"End of the eclipse", with the Sun finally setting behind a distant mountain.
Either can be saved by clicking on image, then using the "save image" option on your browser.
(They restart after a 10 second delay).
The third picture, shows the Sun's corona during totality. I guess you have seen pictures like this before, but this was my first eclipse, and it came as bit of a surprise that when you take photos during totality they look nothing like this. Just how this image was created is briefly described below.
Below these there is a photo pocessed to bring out the promances (bottom and left hand side), and a composite picture made from a wide angle mobile phone image and the processed totality photo which gives a better indication of how it appeared to the naked eye.
When you take photos of a total solar eclipse the results you get are like the first one shown below. Basically you get:- A black blob, where the Moon is; This is surrounded by a bright (overexposed) area around the Moon. The outer edges of the photo shows the black void of the background sky, and between this and the overexposed area is a region where you can start to see some detail, although this detail may not appear as clear and obvious as you'd like. So what's happened to those arcing curves, or thread like patterns that we have all seen in eclipse photos, showing the ionised plasma as it is channelled by the various magnetic fields around the Sun ?
The Sun's Corona is the atmosphere surrounding the Sun, and although it may be as hot, or even have a higher temperature in places than the Sun's surface (Photosphere), it is less than a millionth times the density of the Sun's surface. So most of the light we see coming from the Corona is radiation originating from the Sun's surface and being reflected by the material in the Corona. So if there is, say, some interesting feature within the Corona shown coming away from the Sun on one side, remember the Corona is a 3 dimensional area, so there is still the light coming from parts of the Corona behind and in-front of that feature. So what is needed is to subtract this general background level of light, which of-course is varying in intensity as we move further away from the Sun's surface. The answer is to use something called the "radial blur subtraction" method (now you know what it's called you can Google it). But first, you need to have a series of photos taken at different exposure levels.
I was using a Canon EOS 70D, ISO 200, with a zoom lens set to 150mm f/7.1, on a static tripod, the above Corona image was created from 8 images (shown in the second image below) with exposure times from 1/160 to 1 second. Ideally I would have taken more images and over a wider exposure range.... But being my first eclipse I had to make sure I had some time to look at it with my own eyes (an amazing sight especially when looking through binoculars during totality).
Below another image of the observing site, obviously a good astronomical area as looking behind us we could see several professional Observatories.
