Reply To: Color of the Solar Corona

Forums Eclipses and Transits Color of the Solar Corona Reply To: Color of the Solar Corona

#642542
Dr Paul Leyland
Participant

My site was at Albarracín. To the naked eye the corona looked golden, which I ascribed to the low altitude.

Through a 100mm spotting scope at 60x, the corona was a very pale yellow. An enormous prominence on the left (east) limb was a brilliant red. The line on the other limb didn’t extend as far out but was much longer; it was the same colour. As soon as the first Bailley’s beads appeared I stopped watching through the telescope.

We were incredibly lucky at that site. As the sun set it went behind a bank of clouds at about 40% phase. It reappeared a minute or so before totality and remained in clear sky until sunset. A few kilometres away in Teruel they had the opposite experience: clear for the majority of the partial phase and totality completely obscured.