Solar Eclipse 2024

Solar Eclipses as a Gift of God

Hi folks, Jason Lyle here with Discerning Truth, the webcast of the Biblical Science Institute. Today we're going to take a look at solar eclipses and why these are so neat. And I wanted to, in particular, share the experience I had with the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse.

I got to see it. We got some photos, we got some video footage. I wanted to share those with you today because this is a neat thing to see. Maybe you got to see it. If not, hopefully my experience will give you something of a taste of what it's like to see these remarkable events that the Lord has given to us.

And they really do declare his glory, as the Bible teaches in Psalm 19. 1. So first a little background information on eclipses. An eclipse is when the shadow of one object falls on another. So in particular, from our position here on earth, we're going to talk about either solar or lunar eclipses, both of which involve the sun and the moon.

How Lunar and Solar Eclipses Work

So when the earth is in between the sun and the moon, the earth casts a shadow on the moon, and that's a lunar eclipse. And the nice thing about a lunar eclipse is everyone who's on the night side of earth, weather permitting, gets to see a lunar eclipse.

I've seen many. And because the moon is orbiting the earth, it passes into the earth's shadow. And so you can watch, you know, from our perspective, it looks like the earth's shadow is gobbling up the moon, and you can see a very dark kind of an orange moon, and it's quite lovely, and they're fun to look at.

The even more spectacular eclipses, though, are a total solar eclipse, and that happens on the opposite side, where the moon comes between the earth and the sun, and the moon casts its shadow on the earth.

And unless you're in orbit around the earth, the only way you can see a solar eclipse, if you're on the earth's surface, is to be under the moon's shadow. And so they're less, although they're about as common as a lunar eclipse, fewer people have seen a solar eclipse, because you have to be under the moon's shadow, and not everyone on earth is, because the moon's shadow is smaller than the earth.

And so they're not all that common. Furthermore, any object in space, including the moon, really casts two shadows, and that's because the sun has some size to it. If the sun were a point source, everything would have only one shadow.

But because the sun is, you know, it's a sphere, and looks like a disk in our sky, it causes two shadows to be cast. There's an inner, darker shadow called the umbra, and basically anyone in the moon's umbra would not see the sun at all.

The sun is completely blocked by the moon. And then there's an outer penumbra, and anyone in the penumbra would see part of the sun, but part of it would be blocked by the moon. So it's a partial shadow.

And if you just think about the geometry of it, the umbra would tend to get smaller with increasing distance from the moon, whereas the penumbra gets larger with increasing distance from the moon. And in fact, the umbra of the moon actually gets down to a point where it's zero, and then beyond that, there is no more umbra.

And that leads to some interesting effects. That's what's responsible for what are called annular eclipses. You might notice that the moon and the sun look about the same size in our sky, and that's because they have approximately the same angular diameter.

In fact, the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, but it's also 400 times farther.

Away.

And so its apparent size, its angular size, is about the same. But there's some variation there. Because the Earth's orbiting the sun, sometimes it's a little closer to the sun, sometimes it's a little further away.

And so the sun can look a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller. The effect is pretty small, but it's there. And then the moon has a similar effect, because it's orbiting around the Earth in an elliptical path, the moon sometimes being further away from Earth and sometimes closer.

And that effect is a little more noticeable. You might notice that sometimes the moon looks bigger than it would other times, and perhaps it is because it's closer to the Earth. And so for that reason, sometimes the moon is quite a bit larger than the sun in terms of its angular diameter, and sometimes it's smaller.

And so if a solar eclipse happens when the moon is at its farthest point from the Earth, the moon won't completely cover the sun. And so even if the moon is directly between the sun and the Earth, it'll leave a ring around it where the sun's light's still visible, and that's called an annular eclipse.

And those are interesting, but they're not as cool as a total solar eclipse. Because when the moon completely blocks the photosphere, the visible surface of the sun, you can suddenly start seeing things that you couldn't normally.

For example, the sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona, which is beautiful and stunning and enormous, and the only way to see it is during a total solar eclipse. And so that's one reason why these eclipses are well worth seeing.

They don't happen all the time. And you might think, well, an eclipse would happen every month, because the moon is orbiting the Earth and it comes between the sun and the Earth.

Yes.

But the plane of the moon's orbit is not exactly the same as the plane of the Earth's orbit around the sun, which is called the ecliptic. The moon's orbit is tilted by about five degrees relative to the ecliptic.

And so normally when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, the moon will be a little bit above the sun or a little bit below it, and so you don't get an eclipse. But twice a year, where the planes intersect, line up with the sun, the points of intersection are called nodes, and if the moon happens to go through a new phase or a full phase while it's on a node, you'll get either a solar or a lunar eclipse.

And so you can get as many, theoretically, as four per year. But normally it'll miss, because the timing's just not right. So that would be a maximum. In order to see a total solar eclipse, where the sun is completely blocked by the moon and you get to see all this other cool stuff, you have to be in the moon's umbra.

And the umbra, again, gets smaller with distance, so by the time the moon's umbra reaches the Earth's surface, it's only like 100 miles wide. And so it makes this little spot on the Earth, and anyone in that spot sees a total solar.

Eclipse.

And so you might think, well, only a tiny fraction would get to see that. But it's a little better, because the moon is moving, it's orbiting the Earth, and the Earth is rotating. And so the moon actually traces out a path, as its shadow touches the surface of the Earth, it moves along the surface, and creates a path, which we call the path of totality.

And so anyone that's along that path will eventually get to see a solar eclipse. But again, the path isn't very wide, it's typically like 100 miles, and again, it depends on how close the moon is. It can be a little more than that, or a little less, but typically around 100 miles wide.

And you have to be in that path of totality to see the total solar eclipse. Those who are outside the path of totality will see a partial eclipse, because they're in the moon's penumbra, but not the umbra.

And so they'll see the moon partly cover up the sun, but not completely, and it'll pass.

On by.

Now some people think, well, I'm very close to the path of totality, but I'll just stay.

Here.

I mean, it's 90 eclipsed here. It's not the same. 90 eclipsed is nothing compared to 100 eclipsed, because 90 eclipsed, it's cool, because the sun looks like a little crescent as the moon takes a big bite out of it.

But it's only when it's at 100 eclipsed that you can see the solar corona, the sky gets really dark, you start seeing stars, crickets chirp. It's a weird effect that only happens during a total solar eclipse.

So it's well worth making the trip. If you're in the 90 bracket, please make the trip to go see it at 100%. It's well worth the trip. So if you're in that path of totality, you first experience the partial phases.

Using safety equipment, you can watch the moon slowly cover up more and more and more of the sun until that moment where it covers the sun completely, the sky gets very dark, the temperature drops about 10 degrees, crickets chirp, you see the brighter stars.

But the most amazing thing is you see these outer layers of the sun, this corona, which is huge. It's at least like the diameter of the sun beyond the sun, if not several times that, depending on the time of year and so on.

It's amazing. It's this light blue cloud that kind of extends away from the sun, and normally you can't see that because the sun's photosphere, the bright visible surface of the sun, totally overwhelms it.

It's so much brighter than the corona that it wipes it out. But only during a total eclipse does the sky get dark enough to where you can see the solar corona. And it's really neat to see, along with all the other earthly effects that kick in as.

Well.

Predicting Eclipses and Choosing a Viewing Location

Now, if you decide, I'm not going to go anywhere to see an eclipse, but I'll just stay here and hope that one happens, statistically, you're going to have to wait about 400 years. A given spot on the earth, pick a spot randomly, statistically, it's about 400 years between solar eclipses for that spot, a total solar eclipse, which is kind of interesting because that means the pre-flood patriarchs, Adam, Methuselah, Noah, statistically in their life, they probably saw two total solar eclipses without ever actually having to go anywhere just because they lived long enough.

But for those of us who don't live to be nearly a thousand years old, if you want to see a total solar eclipse, statistically, it's likely that you will have to travel to see one. And perhaps some of you watching this were those lucky guys that were in the path of totality.

That can happen. But it's statistically 400 years between eclipses. Normally, you have to go to see one. So how do you do that? Well, the first thing you have to do is you have to figure out when and where the next total solar eclipse is going to happen.

And there's different ways to do that. But we can predict them centuries in advance because we understand how things move in space. We understand how the earth moves around the sun, how the moon moves around the earth.

And so we can calculate when the moon's shadow will fall on the earth and where that will happen and so on. And I've been doing that for a long time. When I was relatively young, when I was a young student, one of my hobbies was writing computer programs.

This was a long time ago. This was back before Windows. This was back in the days of DOS. And so these programs wouldn't even work on modern computers anyway. But I wrote programs to calculate the positions of the stars and the sun and the moon for any given spot on the earth.

And as a result, I could calculate when the sun and the moon would be in the same place at the same time and get a solar eclipse. But there's a lot better software available today that will do that and do it a lot faster than my program did.

One of these is called Celestia, like Celestial but without the L. Celestia, it's free software. You can download it from the internet. The creators of the program were gracious enough to release it for free.

I'm very thankful for that. Celestia allows you to go anywhere in space that we've mapped. It's not limited to earth. But for our purposes, you'll stay on earth. And it's got an eclipse calculator. It can calculate when the moon will be between the earth and the sun and when it will cast its shadow on the earth and where.

And it'll even simulate the event. You can actually watch the shadow move as it did in this last eclipse. It moved up through Mexico and then up through Texas and then up into the Midwest and eventually all the way up into Maine.

And you can actually simulate it and see where the shadow moves. You just really need to be able to do that. So we've got software that will do that for free. Or frankly, somebody else has already done it for you.

All you have to do is Google, when's the next solar eclipse and you'll get that information. And then you're going to want to download the eclipse map, the path of totality. And you can Google that. Or just do path of totality solar eclipse and then put in the year that you're interested.

In.

And it will show you where the shadow of the moon will fall during that eclipse. Those are the places you're going to want to be for that next eclipse. Now I've had the privilege of seeing two solar eclipses.

I got to see the one back in 2017. That was a spectacular eclipse. It was what's called a transcontinental solar eclipse, meaning the shadow of the moon went from one side of a continent all the way to the other side of a continent.

Those are always neat to see. So a lot of people got to see that one. We traveled to Tennessee, I did, and some friends of mine. And we documented that one and it was a lot of fun. Totality lasted two and a half minutes.

It never lasts long because that shadow is moving at thousands of miles per hour. And so even though it's only a hundred, it's a hundred miles wide, but it doesn't take very long for it to completely move over a spot on the earth.

And it depends again on how close the moon is to the earth and all the different geometrical parameters and so on. So that one lasted two and a half minutes. I got to see it. I brought binoculars. It was a blast.

For the 2024 eclipse, it was better because it lasted over four minutes. And that's pretty good. Keep in mind, the maximum time theoretically that an eclipse could last would be about seven and a half minutes.

They can't be longer than that just due to the geometry and the motion of the earth and the moon and so on. So you're going to want to download that path and you're going to want to try to get close to the center of the path if you want to see the longest time of the eclipse.

If you're near the edge of the path, it won't last as long. Now some people like being toward the edge of the path because you get different effects. You can get an effect called Bailey's Beads and so on.

And that's cool. I like being kind of in the center because you get the longest eclipse if you're in the center of that path. Now I recommend keeping your options open in terms of where you're going to go for the eclipse.

You know, some people say, well, here's the eclipse path. I see it's going through this city. I've got relatives there. I'll call them and plan to stay with them on that day. That's fine. Just keep in mind, it might be cloudy there.

So and then in your two and a half or four minute window, if it's cloudy, that's it. That's it. I mean, you'll still see the sky darken, but you won't get to see the cool effects of the sun's corona and things of that nature.

So I like to keep my options open. I like to think, OK, how far am I willing to drive and how, you know, and so what are the possibilities? So when people asked me both in 2017 and then again in 2024, Dr. Lyle, where are you going.

To go?

Where are you going to go to see the eclipse? I said, I have no idea. I'll let you know about two days in advance because two days in advance, you can get a fairly accurate weather forecast that's going to tell you where it's most likely to be cloudy, where it's most likely to be clear.

So for this past eclipse, I had tentatively planned to go to Dallas because I'd lived in Dallas and the weather tends to be nice, not too many overcast days. And I live in Colorado Springs, so that would have been relatively close.

But two days out, I noticed the weather in Dallas didn't look very promising, whereas it looked much better in, you know, kind of the Missouri-Illinois area. And so we ended up going to Carbondale, Illinois, and that added an extra four hours to our trip, but it was worth it because the skies were totally clear in Illinois, and so that was fantastic.

What a blessing. Now, in retrospect, some of my friends in Dallas did get to see the eclipse there, so it wasn't overcast. But I think we still had better skies in Illinois because it was very clear and a very pretty.

Day.

There were a few puffy clouds, but they didn't interfere with the eclipse. So keep your options open if you can. So now I want to talk about how to safely view a solar eclipse. And we need to think about the phases because, you know, when you start out the day, the sun is fully visible, and then the moon gradually encroaches on it.

Those are the partial phases where the moon is blocking part of the sun. And during a partial eclipse, it is not safe to look at the sun because, again, the photosphere is very bright. It's pumping out a lot of ultraviolet light, and that's dangerous.

So you don't want to look right at it. You will go blind if you stare at the sun during the partial phases of a solar eclipse. It's not safe. So there are safe, but there are safe ways to view it. And there are several that you can do.

One of the ones that's really easy and I highly recommend is to get solar eclipse glasses. They look like this. They're cheap. You can get them almost anywhere. You can order them online. I ordered these online.

And you'll know they're eclipse glasses because they'll either be black or silver. And you put them on, and you will see nothing. So please don't drive with your solar eclipse glasses on. That would be a bad idea.

When you put these on, the only thing you're going to be able to see is the sun. And it is safe to put these on and look at the sun with your solar eclipse glasses. There are similar filters you can get for binoculars.

I've got a nice pair of binoculars here, and I have filters that I can put over the ends of these that are designed. They're solar filters. And then I can put those on and look at the sun that way, and it's perfectly safe.

There are solar filters you can get for a small telescope as well. I've got a telescope you can see in the background there. Now, I don't have a solar filter for this one, but you can get them. You can get solar filters, and then you can use your telescope to look at the sun during the partial phases.

So those are filter options. Those are great. Another option, you say, I don't have anything, I don't want to buy anything. One option you can do is make a pinhole camera. Take a piece of thick, like construction paper, and take a pin and put a little hole in it, and then put a piece of paper below that, and it will cast an image of the sun on the piece of paper behind the cardboard.

And normally it'll just look like a little circle, but during a solar eclipse, you'll see the moon has taken a bite out of a chunk of the sun. And so it's neat to see that. So that's the pinhole camera method.

And there are folks who make kind of like an enclosed cardboard box, put the pin there, and then you look in here, look down at the image, and that, because it's dark, it creates a better contrast, you can get a bigger image, and it looks really nice.

But you get a pretty small image that way, honestly. That's the pinhole camera method, perfectly safe. And then the other method is the projection method. And this is where you take something like binoculars or a small telescope, but let's say binoculars, and you leave the lens cap on one of them.

You don't have a filter or anything, you just leave the lens cap on one end of them. And you hopefully have like a tripod or something you can stabilize them with. If not, you'll have to hold them. You put the lens cap on one end, because you're using them like a telescope, and you point them as if you were going to look at the sun, but don't, and it will project an image.

You have a piece of paper down below the eyepiece at a right angle, put it several feet away, it'll create a nice image of the sun, and then you just, you focus the binoculars to get the image in focus.

And that'll create a nice crystal clear image of the sun, it's a great way to look at it. You don't have to wait for an eclipse to do that, you can, it's a nice way to look at the sun, and you can see sunspots on it if they're there, which right now, the sun being close to solar maximum, there should be a lot of sunspots on it.

So that's a neat way to view the sun. If you move the paper further away, the image will get bigger, and you have to refocus. Or you can move it closer to the sun, the image will get smaller, but it'll get brighter.

So there's a trade-off, small and bright, or big and fainter. But that's the projection method, that's a nice safe method, as long as it's just a regular piece of paper. Don't use like a mirror or anything like that, use a piece of paper, and that's going to be safe to look at directly.

Now you can also use the projection method with a telescope, but you have to be a little bit careful. I recommend using a 6 inch telescope or smaller. If you use a larger telescope than that, that's an 8 inch in the background there.

If you use a larger telescope to use the projection method, that's a lot of light to pump through a telescope like that, okay? And that can create internal heat. If there are any imperfections in your eyepiece, it can crack your eyepiece.

Which is not devastating, eyepieces are anywhere between $50 and $150. So I mean, it's not going to ruin your life, but it might ruin your eyepiece. Whereas with a 6 inch or smaller telescope, it's generally safe, you're not going to crack your eyepiece if you want to project the sun.

Again, you're not looking through the telescope, you're pointing the telescope as if you were going to look through it, and then project an image on a piece of paper. And that will get you a really nice big image of the sun, and a fairly bright one.

And depending on the type of telescope, it might be at a right angle to where the sun is, and so you get a little better contrast that way. So the projection method is a nice way to view the partial phases of a total solar eclipse before the sun is completely covered by the moon.

And as these partial phases are happening, also pay attention to the environment around.

You.

What the Environment Looks and Feels Like During Totality

Some strange effects kick in. As you approach totality, the temperature drops by about 10 degrees once you get to totality. Any wind that's there will tend to calm down. Wind is powered by temperature of the earth, it's powered by the influx of solar energy, so it tends to calm down.

And so bodies of water will tend to become very still as the wind dies down. As you get close to totality, crickets will start chirping, wildlife gets confused. It is neat. Another effect, of course, is that the sky is getting noticeably darker.

Now until the sun is at least 50 covered, you don't really notice that too much. But once the sun gets 50, 60, 70 covered, it's noticeably darker out. You notice, you feel like you're wearing sunglasses, but you're not wearing sunglasses.

And so it's just a very comfortable sky that's not as blindingly bright as it normally is. That's a neat effect. And then the other effect that kicks in, especially once you get to like 90 eclipsed, the sky gets really dark and the shadows look really strange.

It's a strange effect because the sky is dark enough you might think it's cloudy, but they're.

Shadows.

So it can't be cloudy. And the shadows look really distinct, very sharp. Normally shadows have a little bit of fuzziness to them, again because the sun is extended. And so when you cast a shadow, say with your hand, your hand also has an umbra and a penumbra.

But as the sun gets increasingly enveloped by the moon, those two kind of converge. And so the shadows get really, really sharp up until the diamond ring phase where they're just like point sources. It's amazing.

So notice how it just gives you this surreal unearthly effect like you're on some other planet, but it's earth. It's really a strange effect and really neat. And also you'll notice that shadows of things like the shadows between the leaves of trees or the little spaces between the shadows, I should say, which normally form little circles because that's what the sun looks like.

They form little crescents because that's what the sun looks like. So you'll see little images of the eclipse on the ground in the shadows between the shadows of tree leaves or anything else that you project.

You can make a small hole with your hand like that and it'll make a little image of the eclipsed sun or the mostly eclipsed sun. And this is one of the effects we actually documented. So check this out.

All right.

We're here for the 2024 total solar eclipse here and we're near, what is it, Carbondale,.

Illinois.

So we're just a few minutes away from totality and already can see the sky is looking quite.

A bit darker.

So that's pretty exciting. And at this time, the way the shadows look is interesting because you can form, if you can see over here on a piece of paper, if you just make a real small little hole with your hand, you can get a little image of the almost fully eclipsed sun.

How about that?

And so you can do multiple images and every shadow that forms is a little image of the sun that you can see there. So that's kind of neat. And in a few minutes, we'll see totality. Isn't that wild? It's an effect you can only see during a solar eclipse and it doesn't have to be a total eclipse.

It can be a partial, but you can make this little hole in your hand and see these weird shadows that, I don't know, it's a neat effect. And we were probably close to, we were just a few minutes away from totality when we filmed.

That.

So already things were starting to look a little dark, pretty dark actually. And then in those last few seconds, just before totality, you can actually see the moon moving as the remaining portions of the sun shrink and shrink down to a little bright, incredibly bright point.

And at that point, you can start to see a little bit of the corona. You can see where the outer layers of the sun are. And this incredibly bright spot, and it is really beautiful. I've seen pictures of the diamond ring phase and you should check those out, but they don't do it justice because all the pictures overexpose the ring, the bright spot, make it look really.

Big.

It's not, it's tiny. It's this little point, but it's incredibly bright. And then the rest of the ring forms around the sun like that. And I admit at that point, when it's in diamond ring phase, I take my glasses off and look at it directly.

There's a little bit, there's still some ultraviolet light there. I'm not telling you to do that. So if you go blind that way, you can't sue me. I'm not telling you to do that. I'm just telling you what I did and I didn't go blind.

So there you go. But that's only for a few seconds and that's why I feel like that's not so bad. And then totality hits and now you can see the entire Corona and it's stunning. These wispy outer layers of the sun, nothing looks like it.

And so it's weird just to look up just with your eyes. And at that point, by the way, when the sun is totally eclipsed, you can look straight.

At it.

You don't need any special glasses or anything. You can get out your binoculars. You can take any kind of protective filters off of them and you can look directly at the sun that way. And it's extraordinary.

I highly recommend bringing binoculars to see a total solar eclipse, even if you're not going to use the projection method, even if you don't have filters. During totality, you get this wonderful view of the sun and this massive Corona that extends beyond it.

Really spectacular. You can use a telescope at that point too. So I brought that little telescope that you see behind me there. That's an eight inch telescope. What I did is I left the cap on it so it sees nothing, pointed it at the sun, turned the tracking on, so it's going to track and compensate for Earth's rotation.

And then as when totality hit, I pulled the cap off and got a spectacular view of the totally eclipsed sun and the perimeter and the Corona, which is wonderful, really beautiful. So here's what we saw.

Here's a picture of the totally eclipsed sun. The problem with this picture is it's overexposed. What you really want is a camera with HDR, high dynamic range, that can take bright things next to faint things and capture a large range, very high contrast.

I could have fixed that if I could have adjusted the exposure and lowered it quite a bit, but you know, I didn't want to be fumbling around with my phone. You only have four minutes and then it's over.

So I didn't want to spend three minutes fumbling around with my phone. I wanted to look at it with my eyes, want to look at it with binoculars, look at it with a telescope. So we got a couple of okay pictures, but nothing extraordinary.

And then, and that's what I'd recommend too. I'd recommend do take some pictures. If you can, practice being able to reduce exposure time before so you know how to do.

It.

But take a moment to put down the camera and enjoy the event because a lot of people are trying to take pictures of it and then they end up missing most of the event. It is neat to see this. The surroundings, the sky is quite dark.

It looks like it's not pitch black. It's like twilight. So it's still got some blue to the sky, but you can see the brighter stars. We could see, we could easily see Jupiter off to the left of the sun and Venus off to the right.

Really pretty. And just to enjoy the surroundings, the nice cool temperature, the crickets chirping in the middle of the day, just a neat effect. But one thing that really surprised me, and I suppose it shouldn't have, but it did.

As I was looking at the sun, totally eclipsed, I could see a bright pink spot on the bottom. I'm thinking, what is that? I should have known. I'm a solar astrophysicist, but I wasn't expecting it to look that way.

Because normally the chromosphere is thin enough you can't see it naked eye. It takes binoculars or a telescope. But once I put the telescope on it, I immediately knew what it was. It was a solar prominence, a very bright solar prominence, what some people would call a solar flare, but they're not solar flares.

That's something else. A prominence is where a region of the chromosphere gets lifted up above the surface of the sun by magnetic fields. The chromosphere is a thin layer surrounding the photosphere. And normally you can't see the chromosphere because it's much fainter than the photosphere.

It's mostly transparent, so the photosphere just overwhelms it. But when the photosphere is blocked by the moon, you can see this outer layer, not all of it, because the moon's blocking a lot of it as well, but on one hemisphere usually you can see a bit of the chromosphere.

We saw that back in 2017, but I didn't see any prominences back in 2017. So in the 2024 eclipse we saw these wonderful prominences, a really bright one at the bottom limb of the sun, and then another one on the side that was even bigger but was not quite as bright, and then several smaller ones throughout.

And this was the best picture I could get of it. This is a composite. Again, my camera was tending to overexpose the images, and so I combined a number of them and used some little math tricks and was able to get this out.

It's not the best picture, but at least it gives you a feel for it. Some others on the internet were able to take some really good pictures, so here's some examples of that. I would have... Again, you can see that prominence at the bottom, and again, pictures don't do it justice.

That is one of the prettiest things I've ever seen, and it looked bigger to my eyes because I was using a higher magnification with the telescope. A beautiful pink color due to the combination of H-alpha and H-beta frequencies of light.

So very, very pretty. Now I've seen solar prominences before because at the University of Colorado, where I did my graduate work, I had access to the Summers Bosch Observatory right there on campus, and it had a heliostat, a device that's designed for looking at the sun safely.

And this heliostat had an H-alpha filter, which allows you to see these prominences even when the sun is not eclipsed. And so I'm used to seeing prominences, and they're wonderful, and they're fun to look at, but normally, because it's an H-alpha filter, you're only seeing them in one specific wavelength of light.

You're not seeing their true color. You're seeing... In fact, the way we did it, it was on a grayscale screen, computer screen. So this was the first time, during this last eclipse, was the first time I'd seen a solar prominence with my actual eyes in its true color.

And it was so beautiful. That lovely pink and just the way the colors were, really stunning. Like a beautiful watercolor, but from God. We got about four minutes, a little more than four minutes of totality.

It was surreal. It was amazing. And then it starts to come out of it. And you once again get the diamond ring phase. This time, the diamond appears on the opposite side of the sun as the moon continues to move.