A composite image of the 2009 total solar eclipse based on dozens of images taken at Tianhuangping, China, by Jay Pasachoff, Sara Dwyer ’11, and Rachel Wagner-Kaiser (Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Summer Fellow, Vassar ’10) and computer-processed by Wendy Carlos.
A total solar eclipse image from Tianhuangping, China (outside Hangzhou at 900 m altitude) during the 22 July 2009 eclipse, merged with a SOHO Extreme- ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) disk image in the helium 304 Å emission line and a Large-Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) image of the outer corona. The corona was very sparse because of the exceedingly low phase of the sunspot cycle, really a cycle in the solar magnetic field known as the solar-activity cycle. Williams College Eclipse Expedition: Jay M. Pasachoff, Bryce A. Babcock, Katherine DuPré, Sara Dwyer, Rachel Wagner-Kaiser, Yung Hsien Ng Tam, Huajie Cao; EIT image courtesy EIT Team, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; LASCO image courtesy of LASCO Team, Naval Research Laboratory; compositing by Steele Hill, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; eclipse image processed by Wendy Carlos out of many individual images in order to bring out coronal detail.
