HarbingerDawn, that is awesome.

Trying out a corona image processing technique given by Fred Espenak (and my own tweaks on it for use in GIMP) 

1)  Crop your base image to a square, centered on the center of the Sun.


2)  Make a duplicate of this layer and rotate it about 5 degrees clockwise.  Set the opacity to 33%.  Make another duplicate of the layer and rotate it counterclockwise.  Again set to 33% opacity.

3)  Merge these two rotated layers with a copy of your base layer.  The effect of this is to blur the original image through that angle, yielding something like this:



4)  Now set this new, radially blurred layer above a copy of your base layer, and set the mode to Grain Extract.  Merging them will produce a new layer which contains details of the corona, without the brightness information:



5)  Set the mode of this "detail layer" to Hard Light.  Merging with a copy of the base layer will now emphasize those corona details:




This is just a quick and dirty proof of concept, but it seems to work pretty well and really brings out the finer details, especially in the radial spokes emanating from the poles of the Sun.  I'm sure with some of the better photos that Harbinger and others took it may yield some very stunning results.

all of your images look amazing! i wish i could experience this with you 

Watsisname,I have my large raw images still, I will give this a try and post results.

4)  Now set this new, radially blurred layer above a copy of your base layer, and set the mode to difference.  Merging them will produce a new layer which contains details of the corona, without the brightness information:

Mode "difference" produces a nearly black image, quite unlike what you showed. Mode "grain extract" gives a close match. Did you mean to say difference, and forgot some extra step, or did you mean grain extract?

Watsisname, I applied the technique you outlined to my HDR image, and got this result. Very cool

That is a far better result than I had.

Did Regulus disappear?

Did Regulus disappear?

It was cut out in the cropping process.

Mode "difference" produces a nearly black image, quite unlike what you showed. Mode "grain extract" gives a close match. Did you mean to say difference, and forgot some extra step, or did you mean grain extract?

Oops!  Yes, I did mean grain extract instead of difference.  (Edited to fix).  Your result with it is awesome!  I think that's the closest representation for what I remember in my mind's eye than any photo I've ever seen before.

In particular, the rays of the corona are extremely detailed and high contrast to the eye, whereas in photos it looks softer, and almost never stretches out the full extent.  I was also surprised that to the eye, there is a sort of inner inner corona -- a very thin bright shining ring all the way around the Moon which seems lacking in photos.  It was so beautiful.

I was perplexed by the emotions myself because I thought that it would be just like any other day when day turns to twilight, but having it happen in the middle of the day must do something psychologically.  I can understand why people feared eclipses so much in the historical past.

I think an important aspect of the reaction to totality's approach is because it is unlike any twilight you've ever seen before.  To mirror the talk Midtskogen linked to earlier, "we've all seen twilight".  But I have never seen a twilight like that.  A bright sun in a pale sky, the colors all wrong, a growing chill in the air, an ominous darkness like the mother of all storms rising in the west.  I knew intellectually what was happening, yet I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by it.  And it happens so fast, which must add some impact since all the changes during the partial phases before that are very slow and subtle.

Wat, your pictures are quite stunning, but I think we can all agree there is nothing like witnessing it directly.  Not just because the eye has a greater DR than any camera, but also because of the 3D/360 degree immersive effect of actually being there in person to see it, and to be a part of the amazing experience.

Neil deGrasse Tyson certainly means well and tries hard, but he's not the ambassador of space sciences that Carl Sagan was.

-Alex

Not a fan of his.  Carl Sagan was far better in terms of where we were headed and what we need to do for the future.

On my flight from SF I extracted every 10th frame from a 20 second period of the video I recorded (50 frames) and stitched them together with Hugin, partly to get a wider view (the recording wasn't completely steady) and also to cancel the noise.  The result wasn't that bad at all.  In fact, had I known, I should have deliberately moved the camera a bit around and perhaps also have adjusted the exposure on the fly during totality.  Camcorders have such good image quality these days that they can replace a DSRL (but the same could be done with DSLR's with video capabilities with likely better results).

The result: Now I need to combine that with the shorter exposure.

(but the same could be done with DSLR's with video capabilities with likely better results)

Probably not true unless that DSLR was specifically designed with that in mind.  Considering video cameras, and DSLRs, shoot in standard HD and up to 4k nowadays it still doesn't compare much in quality to the higher resolution captures done with a timelapse/single picture.

That is a good picture though.

I've combined the 4K video from my camcorder with the 1000mm DSRL image and got this: Then I tried the enhancement technique: A lot more detailed (more detail than I can remember), but it also enhanced some banding artefacts, possibly from the previous blending.