One more photo of the sun’s corona during the eclipse. Because of the huge variation of light intensity across the Moon’s face and the corona, astronomers use a variety of techniques to tease out the structure of the corona. In the photo below I have exaggerated the contrast and sharpened the image to bring out some of amazingly complex structure. Astronomers will take hundreds of exposure during totality to explore the corona in order to better understand why it is millions of degrees hotter than the sun’s surface. If you want to get a real deep dive into the scientific importance of the eclipse, this PBS Nova special is a must see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/eclipse-over-america.html.
More photos to come this weekend.
