Napa Photographer Captures Solar Eclipse Phases

Seven photos merged into one spread show the beginning, bottom right, of the May 20, 2012, solar eclipse through annular totality and the post-annular phases upper left.

Typically, during a total eclipse of the sun, when the moon is positioned directly between the sun and the Earth, the moon would block out all of the sun creating a total eclipse.

However, the same slightly elliptical orbit of the moon around the Earth that gave us the “Super Full Moon” two weeks ago gave California the phenomenon of an annular eclipse.

The moon is a few thousand miles farther away from the Earth and therefore cannot completely block out the sun’s disk.

The photo sequence was taken in Redding, which was in the center of the path of annular totality for the eclipse. Napa was slightly outside the path of totality so Napans experienced an .

If one looks carefully at the photos, Sunspot 1486 is visible in the two images at bottom right. In the last photo at top left, are Sunspot groups 1484 (closest to the moon’s disk) and Sunspot group 1482 closest to the sun’s edge.

Sunspot numbers are scientists’ way of keeping track of sunspots as they march across the sun’s disk. Each sunspot appears dark because it is much cooler that the surrounding sun’s surface, or photosphere. Each sunspot is much larger than the diameter of the Earth.

The next total solar eclipse visible from the United States will be August 21, 2017.

For more images from the May 20 solar eclipse, please see . If you have photos to share, please add them to the gallery!