Solar Radiography – Sun´s Corona Shinning bright during a Total Solar Eclipse
By Year: 2017 | Eclipses on Earth | The Moon | The Sun Star | Time Lapses Photography
One of the most beautiful things about viewing the solar corona during a total solar eclipse is the light from the corona itself with the fine structures and lines coming from magnetic fields. On August 21, 2017, I and millions of people across the United States had the opportunity to witness the unique and unforgettable moment when the Moon itself completely blocks the sun´s disc. The image above was captured in Stanley Lake, Idaho, a beautiful scenario with an amazing atmosphere of happiness vs stress, for being controlling all the equipment.
A corona (Latin, ‘crown’) is an aura of plasma that surrounds the sun and other stars. The Sun’s corona extends millions of kilometres into space and is most easily seen during a total solar eclipse, but it is also observable with a coronagraph. The word “corona” is a Latin word meaning “crown”, from the Ancient Greek κορώνη (korōnè, “garland, wreath”).
The maximum temperature inside of our star is about 16 million degrees (Celsius). The photosphere – the visible surface of the Sun – has a temperature of about 6000 degrees C. However, the temperature increases very steeply from 6000 degrees to a few million degrees in the corona, in the region 500 kilometers above the photosphere.