Total Solar Eclipse over Svalbard
Image Credit & Copyright:
Thanakrit Santikunaporn
Going, going, gone.
That was the feeling in
Svalbard,
Norway
last month during a
total eclipse of the Sun by the Moon.
In the
featured image, the eclipse was captured every three minutes and then digitally merged with a foreground frame taken from the
same location.
Visible in the foreground are numerous gawking
eclipse seekers,
some deploying pretty sophisticated cameras.
As the Moon and Sun moved together across the sky --
nearly horizontally from this far north --
an increasing fraction of the Sun appears
covered by the Moon.
In the
central frame, the Moon's
complete blockage
of the disk of the Sun makes the immediate
surroundings appear like night during the day.
The exception is the Moon itself, which now appears surrounded by the
expansive corona
of the Sun.
Of course, about 2.5 minutes later, the surface of the Sun began to
reappear.
The next
total eclipse
of the Sun will occur in 2016 March and
be visible
from Southeast Asia.