Color of the Solar Corona

[Mr Giovanni Di Giovanni]

Greetings to all of you.
I’m attaching two frames from the total phase of the last eclipse, taken from Ponferrada Castle, northern Spain. My brother (Enzo) shot them with a simple F300 telephoto lens on a Nikon D5000 and without any filters. I’ve never seen images of the corona so red. I don’t know what causes this redness. Therefore, I’d kindly ask a fellow amateur astronomer for an explanation.
Thank you.

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[Bill Ward]

Hi Giovanni,
After many years I finally got to see a totality! I was in Zaragoza, Spain watching at over 40C! The eclipse was nothing like I was expecting from all the pictures and video’s one can see online.
I was struck by the very same fact, the eclipse was not as dark as I had imagined and everything was bathed in a remarkable yellow light. Being interested in atmospheric effects I had hoped to take some all sky images to look at this kind of thing but my camera failed due to the heat. (I’m glad I wasn’t trying to actually record the eclipse!)
I had tried to observe the Perseids on the night before and after the eclipse but it was impossible from my location as the sky was dreadful. In exposures it appeared bright yellow with absolutely no stars! I think this was from a large amount of dust and smoke from the huge wild fires around the country (combined with a lot of light pollution where I was…). The dust/smoke was also variable time wise. On one day I had an extremely clear blue sky, the following day the sky was cloud free but towards the sun there was a lot of scattered light and it looked almost white.
I don’t know how widespread this was over the track but compounded with the relatively low altitude of the eclipse it had a remarkable impact on the view to be sure!
I believe this made this eclipse a particularly unique one indeed.
Cheers,
Bill.

• This reply was modified 4 hours, 49 minutes ago by Bill Ward. Reason: spelling

[Denis Buczynski]

Hi Giovanni,
Would the fact that the eclipse image that you show was taken at a low altitude not mean that the image would look redder due to atmospheric extinction that if the image had been taken with the Sun higher in the sky?
Denis Buczynski
Disclaimer: comment from an inexperienced TSE observer of only one TSE, that of Cornwall in 1999.

[Grant Privett]

I got a very similar result at Lebrancon near Molinas de Aragon.

I assumed the cause was 3 fold:

Extinction due to the low solar elevatio at totality
Dust suspended in the atmosphere – Spain was bone dry (our car was covered with it)
Smoke particles arising from the wildfires

Certainly on a cloud free day in Madrid the day before, the sky was not blue but whitish – I would swear when we left the hotel we could faintly smell burning one day.

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