The Diamant Ring 2024!! 😀

The pale blue dot to the lower right of the sun/moon is an illustration of the comparable size of Earth!

The red “flames” are called Prominences and are flares of heated plasma ejected from the Sun along its magnetic field lines. Usually they are pulled back down onto the Sun by its gravity, but they can twist and turn and if cross themselves they “short circuit” and break, which then ejects lots of the plasma into the Solar System!
This can generate the beautiful phenomenon of Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) here on Earth.

During a total solar eclipse there are several interesting phenomena – one of them is the Diamond Ring seen in the photograph above from the 2024 total solar eclipse, which I experienced in the small town of Paris in Texas, USA.

“The Diamond Ring” is the last single ray of sunlight passing through a valley on the Moon, whereas the rest of the sun is fully obscured by the moon!
The moment is extremely short – but fortunately there are two of them the last sun-ray before totality and the first sun-ray after totality 😀
This photograph is the latter.

Next Diamond Ring to look out for is in Northern Spain on August 12th 2026!
See you there! ☀️