The first images from today’s total solar eclipse have been released, and they are spectacular.
Captured on Wednesday (Aug. 12) by NASA scientists during a special eclipse livestream from Spain, the photographs show the moon completely blocking the sun’s visible surface, plunging the daytime sky into twilight for roughly 90 seconds and revealing our star’s elusive corona.
In one striking image taken with a solar‑filtered telescope, the moon appears as a dark silhouette cloaking the sun, while bright white streamers of the corona encircle it. The corona is a mysterious layer of the sun that is rarely visible to the naked eye; it is millions of degrees hotter than the solar surface, a phenomenon scientists still do not fully understand.
On the left side of the picture, a bright‑pink blob extends from the solar surface. This is not a solar flare but a solar prominence—a towering structure of plasma held aloft by powerful magnetic fields. Prominences can be many times taller than Earth and remain visible from about 150 million kilometres away.
Another frame captured just before totality displays “Baily’s Beads.” This effect occurs when the last bits of sunlight shine through the moon’s uneven terrain, creating a bright, jagged pattern in the gap between the sun and the moon.
