No image can capture all of the dynamic range of brightness in a total solar eclipse that the human eye can see. Accordingly, many images of different exposures varying from 1/4000 of a second to several seconds need to be combined into a single image to approximate what the eye sees. This image is a combination of more than 20 different exposures captured by my friend and astrophotography colleague Captain Nicholas Clarke of the U.K. and myself during the Lowell Observatory Expedition at Madras, Oregon. Nicholas used a massive telephoto lens to capture the outer corona and Earthshine, while I used a Celestron Super C8 Plus with f/6.3 focal reducer/corrector to capture the chromosphere, prominences, and details in the inner corona. I combined images from both datasets using special techniques I developed into this single image of totality.

Image Credit: Nicholas Clarke and Rod Pommier