Here's my take of the eclipse, though I have seen a number of vastly superior images from many of you. Part of the fun of this experience was attempting to photograph it, knowing full well that the NASA guys have the corner on photographing the sun. I still love taking pictures, so what the heck.
The first thing I should mention is that this is a composite of 6 exposures, ranging from 1/500s to 1/2s, since the dynamic range of the corona far exceeds what our camera sensors are capable of capturing. However, our eyes are capable of discerning the details of the corona in real time. I used my 2m 30s of totality to try to capture some of that detail. There are 3 Leo constellation stars visible in this image. Regulus is the brightest, at 10 o'clock. The other two, 31 Leo at 8 o'clock and v Leo at 3 o'clock, were not naked eye visible, but the 200mm zoom and 1/2s exposure brought them out.
What a fun experience that was! We were staying at a family cabin in the SC mountains. The plan was to hang out on the dock, but a storm over western NC began to break up around 1:30, sending clouds scattering our way. We raced about 10 miles to the south to find a roadside spot to view totality. We were not prepared for the depth of the darkness that totality brought. Our 2 year old son was terrified by it, despite us spending the morning preparing him with an eclipse art project and playing with a flashlight with a black circle of paper. The darkness was just beyond what we had imagined, since we had never experienced totality either. He did begin to calm down for the last 30s of it, and recalls seeing a "big star" going "round and round and round".
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