The 2024 solar eclipse was a brilliant cosmic display. While I didn’t get to see the totality for myself (I was out of town at the time, unfortunately), a lot of photographers have captured the spectacle on film, providing us with beautiful photos to drool over. While I’ve been extremely impressed by all of them, one 2024 eclipse photo really stands out, and that’s because it captures every phase of the moon’s journey in front of the Sun.
The photo was shared by Reddit user u/Acamamm in the r/space subreddit earlier this week. The image, which is a composite of multiple images put together, showcases the solar eclipse as the sun was slowly but surely covered by the moon before the moon eventually passed beyond the sun, returning it to full brightness.
It’s a stellar image that stands up there with the likes of those seen by acclaimed astrophotographers like Andrew McCarthy, and it wowed many members of the subreddit when the photographer shared the 2024 eclipse photo on social media. You can see it for yourself on Reddit.
The photographer says that they aren’t an astrophotographer but that they wanted to capture the event and composite the different phases together to create something special. I’d say they achieved just that, and the image does a great job of showing what the eclipse looked like over the course of several hours while also adding some artistic flair.
These types of photos, of course, are only possible if you have the right equipment, and this photographer seems to have been set up for success from the start. The photographer says they made some minor rotations during composition, so the image isn’t exactly how it was captured.
Based on the comments, it sounds like they’ll release an updated version with the correct rotations at some point. For now, though, this 2024 eclipse photo is still one of the most breathtaking that I’ve seen of the event, even if it went through a little editing.