Awards & Accolades

 

Williamina Fleming Award (Astronomical League) - August 2021





AstroBin Top Pick - July 2019



AstroBin Image of the Day - September 4, 2017


2017 Oceanside Photo & Telescope / Astronomical League Imaging Award

2nd Place - Deep Sky category



5 comments:

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  2. I've never seen solar eclipse photos like these above and wonder why the light seems regularly distorted around the Sun?

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  3. Hi Molly.

    Great to have your presence at the Weekly Space Hangout last Wednesday, very much enjoyed. Tried posting something here yesterday but it did not seem to be functioning then. I just wanted to comment on the patterns of the eclipses above as I had not seen that type before and wondered if you'd captured them with some clever photography or edited it in. Thanks, Andrew 🖖

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    1. Sorry for taking a while to get back -- the notifications for moderating comments on my blog (which I had to turn on after getting a bunch of spam) sometimes get lost in my inbox!

      Thank you! Yes, so the distortion of the sun's corona is due to the chaotic magnetic field of the sun. The corona is made up of a gas of ionized particles, which is shaped by the magnetic fields and lit by the sun's energy. In a single total eclipse exposure, you can see a little bit of either the inner corona (short exposures) or the outer corona (long exposure), but by compositing together several exposure lengths into one HDR image, you can see detail all the way out. I go through how I created the image here: http://www.astronomolly.com/2017/08/solar-eclipse-corona-composite.html

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  4. Thanks Molly, just bumped into this page coincidentally as I was experimenting on doing a Google search of my name and surname both together as one word, which for a reason unknown to me gives me more hits than when they are separate. Its great as I've been able to retrieve material from years back which I'd forgotten and see how much I've changed and improved.

    Thanks for explaining how that photo was taken and the magnetic reason for the effects, making the area round the Sun look like a surreal creased bedsheet. Its amazing how much magnetism permeates this Universe. Just a couple of months ago I think I heard for the first time that not only the Earth's magnetic field protects native life, but the Sun's magnetic field also affords some protection from cosmic radiation further afield. See you online sometime :-D

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