Triple APOD - July 30, 2024: Totality and Prominences by Gabe Sewell

Seeing a total solar eclipse with your own eyes is something everybody needs to do at least once in their life if they're at all able. Seeing day change into night in seconds, seeing the planets and the stars in mid-afternoon, seeing this object in the sky you feel like you aren't supposed to be seeing, all framed within the eerie lighting that precedes and follows; it's a truly surreal and unforgettable experience. 

Photographing totality and getting a good image out of it is also said to be one of the most challenging things a photographer can do. It requires capturing extreme contrasts: the solar corona varies in brightness by a factor of over 10 billion. Plus, it's pretty hard to get your equipment working correctly when you're busy experiencing totality within the few minutes you get. 

This image was taken in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on April 8, 2024. This image is a merge of several hundred of the shorter exposures taken at the very start and very end of totality, to show detail in the pink hydrogen prominences and the inner corona. The equipment used was a Nikon 400mm f/2.8 lens and a Nikon D850 on an iOptron CEM25p