                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                 2024 May 6

                  A Total Solar Eclipse from Sliver to Ring
    Video Credit & Copyright: Reinhold Wittich; Music: Sunrise from Also
                sprach Zarathusra (R. Strauss) by Sascha Ende

   Explanation: This is how the Sun disappeared from the daytime sky last
   month. The featured time-lapse video was created from stills taken from
   Mountain View, Arkansas, USA on 2024 April 8. First, a small sliver of
   a normally spotted Sun went strangely dark. Within a few minutes, much
   of the background Sun was hidden behind the advancing foreground Moon.
   Within an hour, the only rays from the Sun passing the Moon appeared
   like a diamond ring. During totality, most of the surrounding sky went
   dark, making the bright pink prominences around the Sun's edge stand
   out, and making the amazing corona appear to spread into the
   surrounding sky. The central view of the corona shows an accumulation
   of frames taken during complete totality. As the video ends, just a few
   minutes later, another diamond ring appeared -- this time on the other
   side of the Moon. Within the next hour, the sky returned to normal.

             Celebrate the Voids: It's Black Hole Week at NASA!
                       Tomorrow's picture: black hole
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Amber Straughn Specific rights apply.
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                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

