February the 26th : a great Annular Eclipse of the Sun from Patagonia

The feelings of living a total eclipse of the Sun are undescriptible so we'll not describe the sensations we got when the Sun disappeared for a few seconds, in that remote land of Southern Chile. Instead we are sharing here the pictures taken in the very particular moment when the Moon almost covered the Sun disk. As you can see in the views below, it was an "extreme" annular eclipse, meaning that the "ring of Sun" left behind the Moon is particularely thin, and hence shortlived... To get these pictures, it was required to be located in a very precise place on Earth, quite aligned with the respectives centres of the Moon and the Sun: the calculations we made brought us to a spot located some 15km north to the city of Coyhaique, in the chilean Patagonia, at the coordinates of 71° 59' 46" West, and 45° 26' 20" South.

The sequence displayed below corresponds to the complete total phase, that is when the Moon disk fits entirely in front the Sun. The 3rd picture is the maximum instant of the eclipse, when the Sun, the Moon, and the observer are perfectly aligned. In the previous and later pictures, the ring comes disrupted by the peaks of the lunar mountains which protude from the limb...

The complete sequence displayed above lasted for some 38 seconds only, but it was definitely worth to be part of it !...

Lastly, we may not forget the partial phases, that never fail to provide a fascinating spectacle. From the many shots taken we selected two particular moments, when the Moon was close to the unique sunspot present that day: can you spot it near the lunar limb, when entering (top view) and when exiting (bottom view)?

Photos: Cristian Valenzuela/Observatorio del Pangue - February, 26th, 2017
Camera: Canon EOS 60D, at prime focus of Celestron 127 Maksutov telescope.