USA's Total Solar Eclipse April 8th, 2024

[dragontamer5788]

I can easily believe the image from 2017 is genuine. Just a little beyond human perception but easily capured on digital.

IMO: Its close but not quite there. The wisps are moving, and "softer".

The wisps are clearer in some respects, its like multiple wisps are overlaid on each other (clearly the HDR-algorithm capturing multiple moments in time as the wisps move around). The HDR-effect makes the photograph "sharper" than what my eyes / brain remembers of that day.

The main problem is this "overlaid" effect. The wisps don't look like that. There's "one wisp" curling in the sun's atmosphere extending out like that, moving around. Its not the "copy" of the wisp (which are clearly "copies" due to the HDR image-stitching effect).

HDR is great if the picture is still for all the HDR pictures. But when the wisps are moving around (as they were for the 2017 eclipse), you get this "cloned" effect, where they're copied.

Then again: I'm nearsighted. So maybe my eyes blurred them all together.


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For the "dots" in 2024:

I distinctly saw Jupiter and Venus shining through the clouds. They were very bright.

I saw something "red" under the sun+moon. Looking around, it seems like people are calling the red-dots "Baily's Beads", a weird moon/sun interaction where the red-light bounces around the moon and eventually "pops out" in a random direction as a dot. A bit of an illusion only available during the eclipse.

 

[buzzlightyear]

Thanks for sharing, haven't heard of Baily's Beads before. You live, you learn.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Thanks for sharing, haven't heard of Baily's Beads before. You live, you learn.

I only heard about them from the astronomer at our Hotel after we were discussing what we saw.

Ya know, free continental breakfast lol. The eclipse was basically the topic of discussion.

So just keep your ears open when you travel, there are a lot of smart people out there!!