APOD: 2026 August 17 – A Golden Corona Eclipse

APOD

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.

Explanation: This total solar eclipse appeared not only poetically beautiful but scientifically interesting. Usually the solar corona appears white, and to some observers the corona of last week's total solar eclipse did appear this pearly color. But this time, totality observers in Spain saw a corona that appeared unusually golden. For one reason, from Spain, the totality occurred when the setting Sun was near the horizon. That low, sunlight travels through a large amount of air which scatters out blue light. An unusual amount of smoke in the air from nearby forest fires acted as a second filter, further scattering the remaining blue tones and deepening the already gold-dominated light. The HDR-processed, multiple-exposure featured image was captured from Benavente, Spain last week. One thing that did not appear golden was a hydrogen-glowing prominence that hovered over the Sun's left edge -- its original bright pink color survived.Gallery: Solar Eclipse of 2026 August 12Tomorrow's picture: fast meteors

Full text from nasa.gov (public domain).