I'm still not super great at photographing the sun, but here are some of the best shots I got during the eclipse, from Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Enjoy!
This is a composite video of still images.
I took roughly an image every two minutes, with more taken during totality. There are a couple of small jumps where I missed a couple of minutes. Also, there are a couple of brightness changes where I changed the exposure on the camera - totality in particular is much dimmer than the exposed sun, and so the brightness changes significantly for that. Actually, the whole video is more exposed than I would have liked - I'm still getting used to photographing the sun.
A lot of my images were more exposed than I would have liked. However, one advantage of overexposing during totality is that I was able to capture a little hint of detail in the darkness of the moon. The face of the moon is lit by light reflected off the Earth, and you can barely make out some detail in this image. I have included a picture of the moon, rotated to the same orientation as the moon in my image, so you can compare and see if you can detect any of the details.
During totality, the sun is dimmed to the point that stars can be seen. The star to the left of the eclipse here is Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo.
Just after totality, as the sun begins to peek back out from behind the moon. If my exposure had been lower, I might have been able to capture "Bailey's Beads," but I was too enthralled by seeing it live.
There was a cluster of distinct sun spots near the center of the sun on the day of the eclipse. Here you can see a close up view of them, with the moon having just moved away enough to expose them again.
Here is another view of the sunspots, at a lower magnification, after the eclipse had ended.
