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Meiying Lee
Taoyuan, Taiwan
12/14/2023
09:42 pm

Equipment Details:

Canon R7 with Tamron SP 24-70mm F2.8 Lens

Post-processing Details:

Combine two photos together using PowerPoint.

Image Details:

When the sun goes down on December 14th, the temperature, which was originally like summer, drops rapidly and the water vapor condenses quickly. The continuous shooting for the Geminid meteor shower was originally thought to be a failure, but when I checked the photos, I found that the brighter stars all formed a very obvious "Star Corona"!
The familiar Solar Corona arises from sunlight diffracting through surrounding water droplets, causing a spectrum of colors to separate. If the light source is white, the Corona's color sequence from the inner to outer regions is blue to red. For a yellow-red light source, the Corona displays only yellow-red hues. In addition, the smaller the water droplets are, the larger the radius of Corona is.
Stars, being sources of light, undergo diffraction when passing through water droplets, forming “Star Corona”. The color distribution of star corona is just right to see the colors of stars! Betelgeuse in Orion and Aldebaran in Taurus (upper left corner) are very famous red giant stars with a reddish color, so the Star Corona formed is mainly yellow-red. Bellatrix, Rigel and Sirius are blue-white, so the color of the surrounding Star Corona is mainly blue. Procyon in the constellation Canis Minor is yellow-white, and its Star Corona color is richer. The color of stars is related to their surface temperature. The higher the temperature, the more bluish-white they become.
Over the course of nearly two hours of shooting, it was observed that the radius of the Star Coronas progressively decreased while becoming brighter. This indicates that the water droplets were growing in size. The photos will be posted in the comments.