I was excited all day about the annular eclipse - oh, I'll admit, I've been excited for days: obviously I was a soothsayer in a former life. But when it came to the point (and I was watching for that point carefully, since it was due to happen over Albuquerque around 7.34, which I reckoned must make it a tiny bit earlier for us) - the most exciting aspect was the shadows. Here's the tree in our back yard - its normal very clear-cut leaflets swirled up into a curiously textured mass.
But photographing the actual eclipse was a different matter. I knew it was happening - or when it was about to happen fully, having made my own pin-hole contraption so that I could project it onto a white board. Below - in the middle - there's just a tiny sliver of the sun left.
But of course I couldn't point a camera directly at the sun itself. One, I just shot off numerous times in the right direction - and managed to produce a wonderful image of New Mexico turned into a kind of Victorian tropical landscape under the strange eclipse-light.
I thought I'd do much better with the other camera, which has a screen that one can fold down, and therefore use like a periscope, and point the lens at the sun. Ignoring the missile-like clouds that determinedly came across at eclipse time - I realize the problem. One needs a strong, strong lens filter - my usual UV one was very underwhelmed - there's simply so much solar flare that one couldn't guess that the moon's sitting in front of the sun at this point. Ah well - I'll know better the next time round, in 2023.
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