Annular Solar Eclipse

May 21, 2012 by Jared Smith

View the full quality (3MB) version of the compilation photo above.

An annular solar eclipse occurs when the moon covers most of the disk of the sun. I threw a solar eclipse party and had about 200 people stop by to take a look.

I even got a few nice photos. We had about 85% solar coverage here and very nice weather (though a few clouds right at sunset). Several active sun spot regions made for some fun observing.

This crop of the photo above shows the sunspot details. The small bumps along the rough lunar arc are ridges and mountains on the moon. You could fit several planet Earths inside each of the large sunspots.

Maximum eclipse:

One of the neat effects of an eclipse is that shadows become more distinct with sharper edges. And tree leaves can make lots of pinhole cameras that project images of the eclipse in their shadows…

or on people …