APOD: Annular Solar Eclipse over Utah (2023 Nov 01)

[APOD Robot]

Annular Solar Eclipse over Utah

Explanation: Part of the Sun disappeared earlier this month, but few people were worried. The missing part, which included the center from some locations, just went behind the Moon in what is known as an annular solar eclipse. Featured here is an eclipse sequence taken as the Moon was overtaking the rising Sun in the sky. The foreground hill is Factory Butte in Utah, USA. The rays flaring out from the Sun are not real -- they result from camera aperture diffraction and are known as sunstar. The Moon is real, but it is artificially brightened to enhance its outline -- which helps the viewer better visualize the Moon's changing position during this ring-of-fire eclipse. As stunning as this eclipse sequence is, it was considered just practice by the astrophotographer. The reason? She hopes to use this experience to better photograph the total solar eclipse that will occur over North America on April 8, 2024.

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[Ann]

I'm typically bored by solar eclipse photos. They usually just look something like the first picture here, but not today's APOD! Today's solar eclipse sequence is gorgeous!

Solar eclipse. Credit: Aubrey Gemignani/NASA

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Annular Solar Eclipse over Utah. Image Credit & Copyright: MaryBeth Kiczenski

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APOD Robot wrote:

The rays flaring out from the Sun are not real -- they result from camera aperture diffraction and are known as sunstar.

They are not real? Who cares, they look gorgeous! Especially since they are just seen around the full - well, the fullest - annular eclipse version of the Sun! (And I love the name "sunstar"!)

APOD Robot wrote:

The Moon is real, but it is artificially brightened to enhance its outline -- which helps the viewer better visualize the Moon's changing position during this ring-of-fire eclipse.

The Moon has been artificially brightened? Yes, obviously, and it looks great. Just look at the Lady in the Moon as she is crowned by her sunstar tiara and made to look like a queen!

The Lady in the Moon in her glory.

The Queen of England.

---

I applaud today's photographer, MaryBeth Kiczenski! And me being me, I even like the colorful reflections seen in front of Factory Butte. What a name, by the way, and what a gorgeous mountain.

Yeah. The Earth, and the Moon, and the Solar System are impressive.

Ann

[De58te]

Something unreal about his picture, besides the artificial full moon.

I understand that during the full annular eclipse that the sky gets dark because the moon is blocking the sunlight. But then why at the top right when the moon has passed away from in front of the sun is the sky black instead the normal blue color?

[orin stepanek]

Very beautiful photo today!

[Chris Peterson]

Something unreal about his picture, besides the artificial full moon.

I understand that during the full annular eclipse that the sky gets dark because the moon is blocking the sunlight. But then why at the top right when the moon has passed away from in front of the sun is the sky black instead the normal blue color?

There is nothing about this image that remotely reflects the actual appearance of the event. It is synthesized from different times and different light levels in order to illustrate some aspects of the event that are not visible to the human eye. Do not attempt to analyze anything other than the geometry. Not the optics!

[Umbraphile]

If one finds this image not as boring as real eclipse images, then perhaps one is not actually interested in real eclipses.

I'm a bit disconcerted to find such a very artificial image as an APOD. It is an imaginative illustration, inspired by a celestial event but not remotely representing the real event. The caption, claiming that the image of the Moon was real and merely brightened, is utterly implausible.

I will acknowledge that this may be a piece of art that took some effort and skill to create, even though it's not my taste as I admire the real beauty of celestial events. But I cannot view it as an astronomical picture, hence I don't see how it deserves to be an APOD.

A pity, but tomorrow's another day.

[canopia]

There is nothing about this image that remotely reflects the actual appearance of the event. It is synthesized from different times and different light levels in order to illustrate some aspects of the event that are not visible to the human eye. Do not attempt to analyze anything other than the geometry. Not the optics!

The geometry is not realistic, either. At the coordinates of Factory Butte, annular eclipse happens when the Sun is 30 degrees (~60 solar diameters) above the horizon, whereas this picture has the Sun barely 15 solar diamaters above.
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/so ... oom=7&LC=1

By the way, the Moon's features lit by earthshine can only -and barely- be photographed during the total phase of a total Solar eclipse. There is no current technology to catch the features of the dark Moon during daylight, which can be "artificially brightened to enhance its outline" as the informative text suggests. This might be an astronomy art of the day (AAOD), but not an accurate picture and hugely misleading in my opinion.

Tunç Tezel

[Chris Peterson]

There is nothing about this image that remotely reflects the actual appearance of the event. It is synthesized from different times and different light levels in order to illustrate some aspects of the event that are not visible to the human eye. Do not attempt to analyze anything other than the geometry. Not the optics!

The geometry is not realistic, either. At the coordinates of Factory Butte, annular eclipse happens when the Sun is 30 degrees (~60 solar diameters) above the horizon, whereas this picture has the Sun barely 15 solar diamaters above.
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/so ... oom=7&LC=1

By the way, the Moon's features lit by earthshine can only -and barely- be photographed during the total phase of a total Solar eclipse only. There is no current technology to catch the features of the dark Moon during daylight, which can be "artificially brightened to enhance its outline" as the informative text suggests. This might be an astronomy art of the day (AAOD), but not an accurate picture and hugely misleading in my opinion.

For reference (and with everything to scale) I made this sequence in NM, about 2 degrees south of Factory Butte. (Camera was fixed, taking an image every 5 minutes, stacked with a single background image made without the solar filter in place.)

Today's APOD doesn't do much for me. I agree that too many liberties were taken. It would be a better APOD without the landscape pasted into the background. (Although even then the geometry has problems.)
_

Click to view full size image

[jfgout]

I find this part of description extremely misleading: "The Moon is real, but it is artificially brightened to enhance its outline".

Reading this, one might think that the photographer just stretched the levels or used some sort of HDR technique to make the outline of the Moon visible. In reality, what was done was obviously to paste an image of the Moon (taken at a different time) in the photo. This is so fake that it might as well have been taken on a different day than eclipse day (although the sunspots seem to match those visible on that day - the image of the Moon was obviously taken on a different day, at least 2 weeks before/after the eclipse).

So, yes, it is "real" in the sense that it is a real picture of the Moon taken two weeks before the eclipse and pasted in the montage

And if anyone wants to believe in some sort of miracle / magic filter that would reveal the full Moon less than one degree from the Sun, they can look at the actual libration/orientation of the Moon on that day/time. Mare crisium should have been at almost 12-o-clock while it is at ~2-o-clock in the picture.

Finally, the scale is also horribly wrong. On the full resolution image, the solar disk has a diameter of 63 pixels, which translates to a sampling of 0.5' per pixel. The horizontal (Azimuth) distance between the first position of the Sun and the last one in the picture is ~1,170 pixels, which translates to a bit less than 10 degrees. However, from this location the first picture (bottom left) should correspond to a Sun at an Azimuth of ~121 degrees and the last one to an azimuth of ~157 degrees (= 36 degrees of travel). In other words, the Sun appears ~3-times too big relative to its motion in the sky. Another way to say this is that if the scale was respected, the first half of the eclipse would still not be over by the time the Sun was in the right-most position on this montage... So, clearly the photographer just pasted the pictures of the Sun for the partial phases wherever they thought it looked nice, with no concern with respecting the scale of things.

Note that because of projections/distortions, the exact numbers will be a bit different than my basic back of the envelope calculation, but the main point remains.

I apologize for sounding so harsh, but IMO this image has no educative value and the description is extremely misleading.

jf

[jfgout]

The geometry is not realistic, either. At the coordinates of Factory Butte, annular eclipse happens when the Sun is 30 degrees (~60 solar diameters) above the horizon, whereas this picture has the Sun barely 15 solar diamaters above.
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/so ... oom=7&LC=1
[...]
Tunç Tezel

Absolutely! One thing I will not though is that the Azimuth seems correct. The photographer must have been located to the North-West of the Butte to have this angle and a rough look at Google Earth suggests that the Azimuth of the tip of the Butte would be ~130 degrees from this position (aligned with the length of the Butte). With the annularity happening at Az=132 degrees, that is coherent.
In other words, there might be a real picture of the annular eclipse above the butte (but with a Sun MUCH smaller than in this image) onto which the photographer then pasted the images of the Sun taken with a longer focal length (and pasted the images of the Moon taken at least 2 weeks before...).

For reference (and with everything to scale) I made this sequence in NM, about 2 degrees south of Factory Butte. (Camera was fixed, taking an image every 5 minutes, stacked with a single background image made without the solar filter in place.)

Today's APOD doesn't do much for me. I agree that too many liberties were taken. It would be a better APOD without the landscape pasted into the background. (Although even then the geometry has problems.)

Great picture! It does not look as impressive as the APOD, but things are to scale. The scale issue is obvious to anyone who has taken a real composite image of a solar eclipse. Thank you for illustrating this with your picture.

jf

[Rauf]

For anyone interested, you can read how the photographer herself has described her picture in her Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=93 ... 0313900670

"We sat and continued photographing to capture the entire sequence. As in my mind, I really wanted to create a composite image that shows the phases and path of the moon and sun. Which is what you see here!

As you can see, it wasn't completely clear. We did have clear skies when the eclipse first started, but because the lighting during totality was SO unique; I knew that was the base image I wanted to use for the entire composite. Which also meant dealing with the clouds in the frame, and lens flare. The lens flare is something I went back and forth on about using, as it starts to "read" like a total eclipse (as the corona) but obviously is not the case. Ended up liking how it came together, so just rolled with it!"

[jfgout]

One last details, and then I stop beating the dead horse: the size of the Moon changes between the different images

It has a diameter of 63 pixels on the partial phases, but it is scaled down for the annularity, otherwise it would completely cover the sun

It is even more obvious on the other version of the montage that the photographer posted on facebook. In fact, one can see that the Moon n the partial phases would be big enough to completely cover the Sun.

How NOT to illustrate an annular eclipse...

jf

[varadinagypal]

There is nothing about this image that remotely reflects the actual appearance of the event. It is synthesized from different times and different light levels in order to illustrate some aspects of the event that are not visible to the human eye. Do not attempt to analyze anything other than the geometry. Not the optics!

The geometry is not realistic, either. At the coordinates of Factory Butte, annular eclipse happens when the Sun is 30 degrees (~60 solar diameters) above the horizon, whereas this picture has the Sun barely 15 solar diamaters above.
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/so ... oom=7&LC=1

By the way, the Moon's features lit by earthshine can only -and barely- be photographed during the total phase of a total Solar eclipse only. There is no current technology to catch the features of the dark Moon during daylight, which can be "artificially brightened to enhance its outline" as the informative text suggests. This might be an astronomy art of the day (AAOD), but not an accurate picture and hugely misleading in my opinion.

For reference (and with everything to scale) I made this sequence in NM, about 2 degrees south of Factory Butte. (Camera was fixed, taking an image every 5 minutes, stacked with a single background image made without the solar filter in place.)

Today's APOD doesn't do much for me. I agree that too many liberties were taken. It would be a better APOD without the landscape pasted into the background. (Although even then the geometry has problems.)
_

Click to view full size image

I remember we talked not that long ago. However, I don't follow APOD precisely because of the _censored_ like this digital painting -- but this painting, brought into view by apod, so both are so much a laughing stock that Damian Peach published an homage, so I had to come and see. And look who I find.

[Bird_Man]

Something unreal about his picture, besides the artificial full moon.

I understand that during the full annular eclipse that the sky gets dark because the moon is blocking the sunlight. But then why at the top right when the moon has passed away from in front of the sun is the sky black instead the normal blue color?

The sky is dark because of the solar filter the photographer used to reduce the brightness from the sun which also darkens the sky.

[johnnydeep]

Well, I'm not qualified to disagree with the other comments here about how inaccurate and deceiving this image is, but I will still admit to finding it gorgeous, however more "art" than "science" it may be!

[johnnydeep]

There is nothing about this image that remotely reflects the actual appearance of the event. It is synthesized from different times and different light levels in order to illustrate some aspects of the event that are not visible to the human eye. Do not attempt to analyze anything other than the geometry. Not the optics!

The geometry is not realistic, either. At the coordinates of Factory Butte, annular eclipse happens when the Sun is 30 degrees (~60 solar diameters) above the horizon, whereas this picture has the Sun barely 15 solar diamaters above.
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/so ... oom=7&LC=1

...

Tunç Tezel

Wow - what is this magical site that I haven't seen before - http://xjubier.free.fr/en/index_en.htm !!??

[varadinagypal]

Now for some original content of mine (for those skipping googling, 25 years of amateur astronomy under my belt) let the following discrepancy sink in:

(a) With a fellow amateur astronomer, architect during the day (and btw APOD photographer from the olden days) I have discussions about reverse granulation (in say Ca K) vs a dopplergram recorded in one of the Barium lines, an image he found, for the two may look similar depending on the data visualization rulebook used, but are depicting totally different phenomena.

(b) Colleagues in the r&d, engineers, come to my desk (also called ersatz-obsi, for my solar telescope is right next to it at the window, quite popular during lunch breaks), holding out their phones with something astronomy themed, "found on the internet" for me to explain and perhaps judge what we are looking at. And I would go around explaining about narrow band imaging, false colors, stacking and cosmic radiation, oddities like albedo mapping via transits, aesthetics and ethics, and HOLY SHHHHHH, are you trolling me? No, no trolling, published by NASA. Wait, what? Really? Let me see... let me read the fine print, maybe it's not that bad, there sure is an expla .... oh fffffffffffff, they do mean it

So I stopped following these simulacra published in the name of public outreach, and its publisher, because of two reasons:
(1) the general attitude, both from the publisher, and the (targeted?) audience, I cite: "not real? Who cares, they look gorgeous!"
(2) the fanboys, even veteran forum goers and moderators, defending (1) and more often than not, going ad personam.

Kudos

[Chris Peterson]

Something unreal about his picture, besides the artificial full moon.

I understand that during the full annular eclipse that the sky gets dark because the moon is blocking the sunlight. But then why at the top right when the moon has passed away from in front of the sun is the sky black instead the normal blue color?

The sky is dark because of the solar filter the photographer used to reduce the brightness from the sun which also darkens the sky.

No. The filter required for this results in a totally black sky. A separate exposure of the sky was made and composited in with the eclipse images.

[stephenramsden]

this is pretty much the most absurdly fake APOD ever published. It’s even worse than that ridiculous Saturn ISS transit from a couple years ago.
I get that they want likes and distribution etc. but this nonsense has just gone way too far.

“sure it’s fake but, who cares, it’s a beautiful image” from one of the above commenters pretty much encapsulates today’s APOD.

[Chris Peterson]

Now for some original content of mine (for those skipping googling, 25 years of amateur astronomy under my belt) let the following discrepancy sink in:

(a) With a fellow amateur astronomer, architect during the day (and btw APOD photographer from the olden days) I have discussions about reverse granulation (in say Ca K) vs a dopplergram recorded in one of the Barium lines, an image he found, for the two may look similar depending on the data visualization rulebook used, but are depicting totally different phenomena.

(b) Colleagues in the r&d, engineers, come to my desk (also called ersatz-obsi, for my solar telescope is right next to it at the window, quite popular during lunch breaks), holding out their phones with something astronomy themed, "found on the internet" for me to explain and perhaps judge what we are looking at. And I would go around explaining about narrow band imaging, false colors, stacking and cosmic radiation, oddities like albedo mapping via transits, aesthetics and ethics, and HOLY SHHHHHH, are you trolling me? No, no trolling, published by NASA. Wait, what? Really? Let me see... let me read the fine print, maybe it's not that bad, there sure is an expla .... oh fffffffffffff, they do mean it :(

So I stopped following these simulacra published in the name of public outreach, and its publisher, because of two reasons:
(1) the general attitude, both from the publisher, and the (targeted?) audience, I cite: "not real? Who cares, they look gorgeous!"
(2) the fanboys, even veteran forum goers and moderators, defending (1) and more often than not, going ad personam.

Kudos

The overwhelming majority of images that appear in APOD are conventionally collected and reasonably processed astronomical objects.

[whwiii]

have to say i'm also pretty disappointed by the claim that the image of the moon is "real, but...artificially brightened" when it's clear that it was taken on a night at least 2 weeks distant from the event.
perhaps the only redeeming feature is that the word "real" links to an image of a laughing cat

[whwiii]

There is nothing about this image that remotely reflects the actual appearance of the event. It is synthesized from different times and different light levels in order to illustrate some aspects of the event that are not visible to the human eye. Do not attempt to analyze anything other than the geometry. Not the optics!

The geometry is not realistic, either. At the coordinates of Factory Butte, annular eclipse happens when the Sun is 30 degrees (~60 solar diameters) above the horizon, whereas this picture has the Sun barely 15 solar diamaters above.
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/site_pages/so ... oom=7&LC=1

By the way, the Moon's features lit by earthshine can only -and barely- be photographed during the total phase of a total Solar eclipse only. There is no current technology to catch the features of the dark Moon during daylight, which can be "artificially brightened to enhance its outline" as the informative text suggests. This might be an astronomy art of the day (AAOD), but not an accurate picture and hugely misleading in my opinion.

For reference (and with everything to scale) I made this sequence in NM, about 2 degrees south of Factory Butte. (Camera was fixed, taking an image every 5 minutes, stacked with a single background image made without the solar filter in place.)

Today's APOD doesn't do much for me. I agree that too many liberties were taken. It would be a better APOD without the landscape pasted into the background. (Although even then the geometry has problems.)
_

Click to view full size image

yup

[Ann]

I was delighted by this APOD, but many others have been very critical of it.

I must defend my enthusiasm. It all boils down to the fact that I have never seen anything more than a partial solar eclipse myself. I have never seen day suddenly turn to night, and I have never seen the luminous corona light up around the darkened Sun. I know that this is what I would see if I actually saw a total solar eclipse myself, but since I have never actually seen one (and been, as it were, "immersed in the reality" of one), seeing a "generic picture of one" doesn't evoke any emotions in me. I remain unmoved.

There is a Swedish poem about a man who is in a museum, looking at a painting of the sea. He is thinking to himself, Yes, there it is. The sea. There it is.

But if you have never seen the sea yourself, if you haven't stood at the shore looking out over the huge expanse of water and listened to the sounds and smelled the smells of the it, then "the sea" is just an abstract concept to you. There is no way, no way, that any painting of the sea can show you what it is like to be out in the open right next to the sea itself. If you know what the sea is like, then a painting of a sea can move you. If you don't, the concept of the sea remains abstract to you.

Also, importantly, the fewer details the painting the painting provides to anchor the scene in anything that you do "deeply recognize", the more abstract and, well, "unreal" it may seem to you.

So if you have never seen the sea, what will paintings like these mean to you?

Where the Ocean is Still. Painting by Julia Everett | Saatchi Art

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Waves Breaking. Painting by Claude Monet.

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The next painting is much better at explaining the sea to someone who has never seen it. "Everybody" has seen a sunset like this one and clouds like these. You may or may not have seen rocky outcrops like these, but you should have at least some recognition of the brown color that is often associated with land. You should be able to guess that the brown objects are land, and that the vast flat glittering body that stretches perfectly horizontally from edge to edge along the lower part of the painting is - well, it is the sea.

Sunset. Painting by John Kensett.

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I have never seen a solar eclipse. So to me, MaryBeth Kiczenski's solar eclipse sequence over a brightly lit landscape provides a most splendid illustration of the eclipse phenomenon to make me really "feel" what is really going on.

Annular Solar Eclipse over Utah. Image Credit & Copyright: MaryBeth Kiczenski

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And yes. I know it isn't going to look like that. That is a very, very minor problem to me.

Ann

[Astronomie-Québec]

It is pure shame that APOD publishes this image which is NOTHING like the true event. Nature is beautiful as it is; why fake it?

The problem with fake images is that the unknowing public sees them and thinks it may be the real thing. Then when they get to see the real thing in real instead of pictures, they are left disappointed and turn away from science because it’s not what they expected.

Publishing and sharing such images is THE WORST DISSERVICE ONE CAN DO TO SCIENCE. I’ve had my share of faked images. Is it so difficult for us to have the truth?

[Thierry Legault]

As previously mentioned, the phrase "the Moon is artificially brightened" is misleading. It lets people suppose:
- that it has been taken during the eclipse, while it has been taken during a previous full Moon and pasted on the eclipse sequence
- that the Moon can be seen or photographed during an annular eclipse: that’s impossible

I also have noted that:
- The altitude of the Sun is not true (30° above the horizon in reality at maximum eclipse)
- The sizes and separation of the different phases are not consistent by a factor of more than 3 times: in this “picture” the eclipse seems to last about 50 minutes (25 solar diameters x 2 min), while the real duration was close to 3 hours. Either the suns should be much smaller, or much more spaced
- The trajectory of the Sun in the sky is too straight, it was more bent in reality
- The lunar surface features do not rotate during the eclipse: they should, because of field rotation in altazimuth
- The spikes around the Sun are not real

I have seen a few comments on FB saying that it can be useful for “educational” purpose. But it is extremely far from what people witnessed live. And considering the discrepancies listed above, I think it’s a good example of what must NOT be presented for education! NASA is already accused of having faked lunar landing photos, is it reasonable to release that kind of deception while there were so many nice and genuine photos of the eclipse available on the web?

After all, I should consider taking one of my ISS from a solar transit image and copy it over a lunar landscape to make a lunar transit "picture". If I use the word "art" or "education", could I submit it to apod? Seriously, it is unfair and discouraging for the astrophotographers who still try to keep a boundary between what is technically possible and what is ethically possible, and I would consider stopping the hobby if I wouldn’t do it primarily for my own pleasure