The crowning moment of the dark side of the moon
The crowning moment of the dark side of the moon captured from Vicuña in Elqui Valley, east of La Serena. Venus is visible below the sun. Zoomable version here.
These are my memories: I took some simple pictures with a digital camera (above), and looked through regular binoculars, sharing this with my family, 20 sec. each! It was an "earth-shaking", humbling experience to see the Sun vanish behind the Moon. It got cold and windy. I saw the coronal streamers clearly through the binoculars, and one red prominence and the first Bailey bead before I had to look away. WOW! After totality was over we could see wavy, chaotic and "gaseous" patterns on the ground, probably due to the small light source at the time and turbulence in the atmosphere, bending/refracting the light. My legs went completely jello after having seen all this. People were cheering and happy and we felt united. When is the next one?
Other images
The following images are available on the internet (generally copyrighted). A few of the many awesome ones follows:
Eliot Herman These are both close to the binocular view as I remember it. The Baily bead and the prominence to the left is what I saw through the binoculars.
Nicolas Lefaudeux An impressive composite image showing coronal detail and the lunar seas bathed in earthlight.
Fred Espenak captured this mind-blowing image of the prominences and the Sun shining between the lunar mountains. This is also the header image.
Petr Horalek made this exquisite sequence composite.
A cosmic butterfly on a lepidopterist’s board
Based heavily on the poetic article by Dennis Overbye, New York Times.
And so began, once again, one of the great spectacles available to the inhabitants of the Earth. The great cosmic rinse cycle of death and rebirth. The dying and return of light against the ethereal wallpaper of stars. A total solar eclipse. In their ceaseless rhythmic dances through the sky, the sun, moon and Earth line up like cosmic billiard balls. Along a narrow arc of Earth, the shadow of the moon sweeps across the world, the day dies, colors melt and dissolve the landscape, the stars step out of sudden twilight, animals go to sleep and wake up, the temperature drops, the wind blows. The whole shadow, moving at a thousand miles an hour, is ringed by a wall of rainbow. Pinned to the sky by the dark side of the moon, ghostly streamers of light spread out like a butterfly on a lepidopterist’s board. A revelation so brief and spiritually violent that grown-ups find themselves inexplicably screaming and crying...
....and then booking flights to the next eclipse as soon as they can.