Yesterday we were in the path of a partial solar eclipse. The beginning of the eclipse was at 10:23 AM, its maximum was at 11:53 AM, and it finished at 1:31 PM.
About 30 people from church were doing some door-knocking in the morning, and then having lunch together at the church building. Dan and I offered to provide some entertainment. Our goal was to set up our telescope to photograph the entire eclipse sequence, and project it on a screen, indoors. Sadly we had a bit of a technical issue at the very beginning, so didn't catch the very start of the eclipse. However, once we got it going, everything worked perfectly. Here are a few of the images we took, showing the different stages of the event.
Some of us went outside when the eclipse was near its maximum. We noticed these little crescent shadows on the wall of the building. They were created by light from the eclipsed sun passing through the leaves of a tree. It is actually the pinhole camera effect, which works by letting light through a tiny hole and creating an image of the sun. The second photo is a zoomed in selection of the first photo.
Other strange shadow effects were happening. People were holding up their hands to cast a shadow, and between their fingers a short "stubby" finger seemed to appear.
We were pretty happy with our first time effort to image an eclipse. This was a practice run in preparation for the upcoming total eclipse in April 2024. Our town, Temple, will be in the direct path of that one, so we are hoping for good weather.
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