Starship Asterisk*

Diamond Ring and Shadow Bands

Explanation: As the total phase of last week's solar eclipse came to an end, sunlight streaming past the edge of the Moon created the fleeting appearance of a glistening diamond ring in the sky. And while most eclipse watchers did not consider clouds a welcome sight, a view through thin clouds north of Cairns in Queensland, Australia also revealed these remarkable flickering shadow bands. Projected onto the cloud layer, the bands are parallel to the sliver of emerging sunlight. Caused by turbulence in Earth's atmosphere refracting the sliver of sunlight, the narrow bands were captured in this brief, 1/1000th second exposure.

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Still no FB "Share" button? C'mon, man!This is a gret pic . . .

Nice work Steven.

hunterr wrote:Still no FB "Share" button? C'mon, man!This is a gret pic . . .

Just copy and paste this link: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121121.html
And put it on your timeline. It's the same thing.

http://www.strickling.net/shadowbands.htm wrote:

_Shadow bands during a total solar eclipse_ by Dr. Wolfgang Strickling

fliegende Schatten Contrast enhanced and processed screenshot
from our Hi8-Video, 18 seconds before the second contact.
Videotaped by Dr. Andreas Dahm. Time is UT +2 h
For a highly resolved picture click on the right picture!
On the left you see an animated GIF of the shadowbands

Atmospheric turbulence (and/or an atmospheric shock wave caused by the supersonic lunar shadow movement) not only bends the light of a much more distant eclipse sliver of emerging sunlight but focuses and brightens it into multiple eclipse sliver images which then optically interfere with each other to produce diffraction shadowbands both on the ground and on cirrus clouds above.
------------------------------------------------------------------
In this illustration, the gravity of a large galaxy cluster
not only bends the light of a much more distant galaxy
but focuses and brightens it into multiple images.
Credit: NASA/ESA/L. Calcada

Exciting and stunning photo! Thank you.

Stephen first posted this in our little Canon astrophotography forum.....congrats again!
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/sho ... ?t=1247784

geckzilla wrote:

hunterr wrote:Still no FB "Share" button? C'mon, man!This is a gret pic . . .

Just copy and paste this link: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121121.html
And put it on your timeline. It's the same thing.

Or, 'like' Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on facebook, and you can 'share' from there.

very nice image, pass me an ice cold on, please !

"Who wants to buyyyy, this Diamond Reeeeeeeiiinng....She took it off her finger, now....it doesn't mean a theeeeeinnng...."


Lovely ethereal shot of the eclipse. Which reminded me of the old song. And my own heartache....

Let's hear it for Boomer.....AWWWWWWWE....

:---[===] *

Gary Lewis and the Playboys 1964 ??? Ed Sullivan show I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan

At the right side of the moon, we may observe a clear anomalous cloudy globule with two little horns at the top?

There have been a lot of really good eclipse photos on APOD and elsewhere . . . but for my liking, this is the best of them all. This image has a grip and does not want to let you go. You could not have timed it any better. Wonderful job, Stephen!

is it possible to get an image like this one from the ISS ?

I cant get enough APODs! This one is great!

Thanks very much for all the comments! Much appreciated.

Cheers,
Stephen

Awesome photo!

Has anyone tried to duplicate the shadow bands with a model of an eclipse? You might have to add a convecting heat source between the 'moon' and a white screen (where you observe the bands) for it to work.