沙漠上空的日食

2023年10月1日

A Desert Eclipse
Image Credit & Copyright: Maxime Daviron

Explanation: A good place to see a ring-of-fire eclipse, it seemed, would be from a desert. In a desert, there should be relatively few obscuring clouds and trees. Therefore late December of 2019, a group of photographers traveled to the United Arab Emirates and Rub al-Khali, the largest continuous sand desert in world, to capture clear images of an unusual eclipse that would be passing over. A ring-of-fire eclipse is an annular eclipse that occurs when the Moon is far enough away on its elliptical orbit around the Earth so that it appears too small, angularly, to cover the entire Sun. At the maximum of an annular eclipse, the edges of the Sun can be seen all around the edges of the Moon, so that the Moon appears to be a dark spot that covers most — but not all — of the Sun. This particular eclipse, they knew, would peak soon after sunrise. After seeking out such a dry and barren place, it turned out that some of the most interesting eclipse images actually included a tree in the foreground, because, in addition to the sand dunes, the tree gave the surreal background a contrasting sense of normalcy, scale, and texture. On Saturday, October 14, a new ring of fire will be visible through clear skies from a thin swath crossing both North and South America.

Tomorrow’s picture: high sprites

沙漠上空的日食
影像提供与版权: Maxime Daviron

说明: 观赏日环食的好地方或许是沙漠。因为在沙漠里，会挡住视线的云和树都相对稀少。也因此在2019年9月底，一群摄影者前往阿拉伯联合酋长国的鲁卜哈利沙漠（世界最大的连片沙漠），去记录会掠过该地上空的日环食景观。日环食期间之所以会出现火环的景观，是因为在绕行地球的椭圆轨道上，月亮的距离够远，所以月盘太小而无法完全遮住日盘。在日环食的食甚阶段，日盘的边缘从月盘的周围露出来，而月亮成为遮住大部分日盘的暗斑。他们知道这次日环食的食甚，会紧随在日出之后。在找到理想的干漠荒野之后，就此展开取像的工作。不过，他们后来注意到，在他们拍摄的众多日食照片里，最有意思的影像都有孤树作为前景。因为这颗树为沙丘架构出的超现实感，带来了正常感、尺标和质感的对比。 10月14日（星期日），在穿过北美洲和南美洲的狭窄食带上，清朗的天空中将出现另一例火之环的景观。

明日的图片: high sprites