Thursday, September 1, 2016

A Beautiful Joint Solar Eclipse!

Today's Joint Solar Eclipse looked beautiful from SDO. Here's a short movie in AIA 193 to show you what it looked like. It starts with the Earth between SDO and the Sun. As the Earth moves out of the way, you can see the disk of the Moon covering part of the Sun. The wobbling of the Sun is due to SDO turning off the fine-guidance system during the Earth eclipse.

Meanwhile, solar physicist Ryan Milligan was traveling in Tanzania and saw the eclipse from the ground. Here is a lovely picture of an annular eclipse — not quite total, but better than partial. This picture is a excellent example of a "Ring of Fire". The different views of the Sun, SDO seeing a partial eclipse of the Sun by the Moon while parts of Africa saw an annular eclipse, come from SDO's position to the East of Africa, a little North, and far out in space.

Thanks to Ryan for letting me show his post. You can see more of his eclipse pictures at https://twitter.com/ryanomilligan.