My partial eclipse photos
Hot off the press.
I borrowed someone’s special glasses and looked for a moment when there was just a small crescent of sun. Pretty impessive.
But mostly I used a colander. That was fun, too. So here’s my self-portrait with eclipse-colander:
And here are some images projected from the colander onto a white paper which for some reason looks blue:
I noticed shadows of the bare tree branches were hyper-sharp. I’d never seen that before; anybody know why it happens? Here’s a photo of tree branch shadows on a white car:
It was incredibly sunny today, absolutely perfect for viewing.
Had fun, got to %90 for a few seconds, watched through a few pieces of stained glass, 1 red and 2 blue.
Tried a picture but didn’t work.
Great colander pic!
I imagine the sharpness of the shadows is because the Sun, when operating normally, isn’t a point source of light, but has a certain width. Thus, when it shines on a tree or something, there’s a certain range of angles, though not large, from which the light comes. But when the moon gets in the way, the light source from the sun is cut down practically to a much smaller angular range, the maximum brilliance now being concentrated on the center of the sliver that isn’t being occluded, and therefore much more like a point source. It’s an interesting observation and I wish I’d thought to pay more attention to it at the time.
The colander is inspired.
Philip Sells:
I think you are correct.
I wouldn’t have noticed the sharpness if I hadn’t been standing where I was, where a tree was casting shadows on the pavement and on a white car, which made it very noticeable. The shadows were SO sharp, and I suddenly realized hey, I’ve neer seen anything like that before or even read about it. So interesting.
I read about doing the colander thing online. Many many years ago I was in the Boston area for a total eclipse and made some sort of pinhole camera out of paper, but it was very disappointing. The colander was fabulous and very easy to do. You can see the tree branch shadows on the pavement for the colander self-portrait. They were just so sharp it was strange.
So it got darker, and then it didn’t. I thought, “Big Deal,” but after looking at some of the videos from the band of totality, yes, it does look like a very big deal.
Abraxas:
Where I was, even though it was a very high-percentage partial, it was so sunny a day that I didn’t perceive it as getting noticeably darker at all.
We drove up to the Adirondacks from Central New York to watch totality, and when we realized that clouds were rolling in from the west, we drove east to a wildlife refuge in Vermont and watched from there. The day was bright but with high cirrus clouds. They interfered a little with photography but luckily didn’t prevent seeing the eclipse itself. Totality was just astounding, indescribable, a true reason to use the word “awe.” It was not like anything else. I haven’t entirely absorbed it yet. Plus, we had a good time with the other thrilled people where we watched.
The temperature dropped a good five or ten degrees, and the dome of the sky was so dark that we could see Jupiter, while there were sunset colors all the way around the horizon. Everybody put on sweaters or extra jackets. I’m still chilled.
As for colanders, they’re perfect for partial eclipses. My children in PA and MA used colanders to watch the show, but in PA were sadly defeated by clouds. I have a photo somewhere of myself back in high school during a partial eclipse, taken by a friend who was holding a colander over my face with holes in star patterns that cast little eclipse crescent-moons onto my face — so the sun was making moon shapes in a star pattern! Very mystical, we thought at the time. Maybe mystical isn’t the word I’d choose now that I’m not fifteen anymore, but it’s still a favorite shot.
What a thing it was, though. I had never seen totality before, and as the next time in the US isn’t until 2044, I likely won’t have another chance unless I fly to some other part of the world, which is improbable. I’m glad we did so much driving and fussing and reading weather reports and studying maps and driving some more. It was entirely worth it and then some. Wow.
Yes, effectively the sun becomes much more of a point source of light rather than a big giant light bulb, hence the sharper shadows.
Now, the interesting question is, did anyone spot Baily’s Beads?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baily%27s_beads
Great photo. Since the subject is holding the colander how did you take a selfie? I suppose only the shadow knows…
The eclipse has the effect of collimating light from the sun articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/2019ASPC..516..427T
crasey:
Voice-activated.
Yet another interesting thing I’ve learned here. Thank you
When I was in grade school we had one and the leaves were on the trees. Hundreds of spot where the sun shone through there was an image of the eclipse. It was pretty cool.
Overcast and rain where I was today. It wasn’t that long ago we had the annular eclipse. I always thought the coolest thing was what Neo showed with every little break in the shadow becoming a lens casting multiple little eclipses. That only happens because the sun is truly blocked by something preventing the light from reaching Earth.
As good, if not the central concern of eclipses is the lighting around you. Like Neo’s comment on her photo of tree branches, I find some things sharp at the same time that the world goes flat around you in terms of color. Feels like a still from a Hitchcock movie.
No partial eclipse apple! 🙂
That is neat about the shadows.
Re the white paper with blue shadows, unless it’s a white balance issue with the camera, shadows on a white surface should be blue if the sky is blue. But it’s not usual that people notice.
The reason for the blueness is that whatever is casting the shadow on the paper is blocking almost all of the direct white light of the sun, but it is not blocking all of the blue light scattered from the sky, which can reach the paper from all directions.
The white paper does not appear to be illuminated solely by the partially eclipsed sun, not sure you could have arranged the colander and camera in such a way as to exclude scattered blue light from the blue sky. It’s coming in through the holes in the colander but at different angles from the eclipsed sun.
Once you start noticing it you’ll never stop noticing it. There are viewing angles that make it much more pronounced.
Just spoke with my 94 year old mom…
Niece bought special glasses for the whole family & my mother was absolutely beside herself with joy that for the first time in her life she’d been close enough to “go dark” like that…and “see” it.
Absolutely giddy…did I mention she’s 94. Couldn’t be happier for her…and thanking God for my niece again.
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This is a weird counterpoint to the pinhole phenomenon and you can see it without an eclipse!
Wear a watch with a small flat crystal and use it to reflect the Sun from outside into a darkened room of the house. You will see a small solar image. It helps to have a helper so one can direct the reflection, while the other watches it inside!
I tried it during an eclipse but when it was total, the image was too dim to see. During the partial phases before and after totality, it gave a nice image however!
Ps. Of course you can use a mirror, but make it a small one… like a watch face!
I’m in the >98% zone, although we had pretty strong cloud cover today, there were moments of sun. Working in my shop, I was watching for them after the eclipse was under way – I had read about the colander trick as well, and tried it out, projecting onto a white cover to a plastic storage box. Worked very well, I gotta say!
I was in 99.67% totality today.
My highlight: springing my 5-year-old daughter from school today so we could watch the eclipse together.
After making us some ice cream cones, and donning our eclipse glasses:
“Dad, this is a cool syzygy”
(h/t: miguel+cervantes)
We were in the eclipse path in 2017, and I wish I had known about the colander thing. I did notice, as others here have said, that the sky didn’t get dark, the air did get noticeably colder (although that won’t clue-in the Global Warming Hysterics), and the shadows of the trees were very sharp, with little eclipsed-sun-spots littering the ground.
Glad for everyone who got to see it this time.
I believe rrea men are hopeless romantics. You can’t learn swordsmanship unless you have someone to fight for. I know the art of the saber.
The commenters at Powerline had some nice pictures of the eclipse,
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cf093941e413032d8fbaf6a7d9000fa5f585ca65c7653cd6a8f42e1f3657d95e.jpg?w=600&h=690
some very funny memes
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8e28778093a72663ac8faa3f5ebfc8f97b88ca685ec67c5384458ea5ed492960.jpg?w=600&h=317
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f5fc8094445aba567e590bade608967d329f63fc0dda82058b1633d39a6b6a4a.jpg?w=600&h=471
and a couple of good stories.
But the Libs discovered the only really important impact of the phenomenon.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/04/total-eclipse-of-the-sun.php
I don’t see how The Babylon Bee can stay in business with this much competition.
Heard of the tin-foil hat people.
Never hear of the colander hat people.
Love this blog.
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}}} Heard of the tin-foil hat people.
Never hear of the colander hat people.
It’s a very straining thing to wear the colander. Not everyone can manage it.
Your colander picture looks like a cave-painting!
Drove from Wisconsin to Ohio with my granddaughter to see the total eclipse, normally a 6 hour drive. About 100 miles north of Indianapolis and going an average of 20 mph, I realized it was going to take a heck of a long time on the interstate, so I pulled out my paper atlas and started taking smaller state highways. We arrived at our BnB about 9 pm Sunday night (around 10 hours in the van).
Monday we joined some other family members out at a farm in the country. We had a grand time. Everyone had the eclipse glasses, someone brought out a colander, and my granddaughter had made two sun viewing boxes out of shoe boxes. They worked terrifically, once we remade the holes much smaller. The sky got darker, the planets appeared, and then suddenly after three and a half minutes Bang! the sunshine came back.
It would have been easier to stay another night, but granddaughter had to be at school on Tuesday, so we headed out. This time I didn’t even try the interstate, and I managed to cut the trip down to 8 hours. A very late night, but I think we’ll look back on it with fond memories once we catch up on our sleep.
I was facing a courtyard, and it was noticeable how the shadows darkened. If I had been out in the open air I might not have noticed any changes.
I remember cutting holes in a box and sticking my head in it. The eclipse back then (partial) wasn’t much of a show. Maybe it was more about cutting holes in a box and making the “pinhole camera” than about what came later.