Last year’s annular solar eclipse left us with many impressions, stunning photos, and timelapse of the phenomenon. But Andrew McCarthy and Daniel Stein’s project is something else. The talented duo of astrophotographers created a stunning 1.69-gigapixel panorama of last October’s eclipse. They kindly shared the image and details with DIYP, so let’s jump right in!
Andrew and Dan set up their gear in the Utah desert to capture the eclipse over a butte. And it’s a pretty unique image, not just because of its size. Andrew explains that they captured it using a combination of white unfiltered light and a hydrogen-alpha telescope. The photo is detailed enough to see atmospheric details on the Sun. He and Dan shared the full-size panorama here, and you can zoom in so far, that you can see prominences and spicula in the solar chromosphere!
The very shooting was a piece of cake compared to the preparations before and editing afterward. Andrew and Dan first had to do thorough research to find the perfect location. Their goal was to have the eclipse line up perfectly with the butte.
Thankfully, everything went as planned, and the weather was perfect, so the duo ended up taking some great photos. Thousands of them. This means that they had to go through a massive amount of data to cull the images, edit them, and create the final panorama. Andrew’s computer that kept crashing didn’t make the job much easier.
Andrew was in charge of photographing the sun, and Dan focused on capturing the landscape. “Dan’s incredible landscape photography expertise next to my experience photographing the sun in h-alpha gave us the skill set needed to make something unique, unlike any landscape photo I’ve ever seen,” Andrew writes. “It seems alien in nature, but it was captured right here on Earth.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/C4TaGlLPKh9/?hl=en&img_index=1
We only have one month left until the upcoming total solar eclipse, so let Ring of Gods inspire you to take eclipse photos of your own this April. Naturally, Andrew and Dan plan on capturing it as well, and we look forward to seeing what they’ll end up with. In the meantime, catch up with them on their websites and social media:
