Image of the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 captured during totality. 

What an experience witnessing a total solar eclipse was!  By far the most amazing and awe-inspiring phenomenon I have seen.  I traveled to Northeastern Ohio where we had about 3.5 minutes to observe totality.  The weather was dodgy, but worked out in the end.  There were high clouds of varying density for the duration of the event.  The partial phases were clearly visible through eclipse glasses and telescopes.  We were anxious as to whether the clouds would spoil totality, but when the moment came we had a wonderful view.  Hard to describe that moment other than glorious. It was like someone flipped off the light switch, then pulled back a curtain to allow a view into another universe.  First I was drawn to the shimmering silvery corona, then to the dark hole in the center, and finally the beautiful pink prominences ringing that central darkness.  I had what I thought was a well thought out a rehearsed plan for an automated set of exposures, but that failed and I ended up just pulling the usb cable from the camera, manually thumbing the exposure wheel and clicking away with the cable release while I stared at the main show.  Probably lucky in the end since my automated exposure sequence was based on clear skies...  I have lots of data to go through but from what I have seen I wont be pulling much detail out of the corona likely due to the filtering from the high clouds, but no bothers I've got is all etched in my memory...

Imaged with a Astro-Tech AT60ED, 1.6x Antares Barlow, UVIR Cut Filter 2", and Nikon D5300 (astro modified). Imaging train was configured to give ~F/11 (FL=650mm).  Single exposure of 1/1600 second at ISO-1600.

Processed in Pixinsight from RAW files:  debayering, noiseXterminator, color calibration, generalized hyperbolic stretch, ezHDR, masked curves adjustment.  Final image is a blend of a lightly stretched image highlighting the prominences and a more heavily stretched image to bring out the corona.

Original image:  Blend of images stretched to highlight the corona and prominences

Rev B:  Image stretched to highlight the prominences

Rev C:  Image stretched to highlight the corona

Rev D:  Image processed using easyHDR

Rev E:  Image stretched to highlight the corona.  Applied PI's Larson-Sekanina filter to corona stretched image in an attempt to bring out details in the corona.

Rev F:  Blend original image and Larson-Sekanina filtered image