Solar Eclipse - June 10, 2002

On June 10, 2002 around 6:00 PM PDT, some of you may know we had a partial eclipse of the sun. Well, with the help of my friend John, we were able to set up a means to safely watch the stellar event, as well as record a few pictures here for your viewing pleasure. This picture to the left was the first shot we got. The eclipse started about 5:15 local time, but we didnt get set-up until about a half-hour later with some basic binoculars, that weren't even aligned.   

Scott works for Zeiss, a world leader in optics, so we upgraded to a very nice set of binoculars.  This also gave us two images on our background.  The picture at right shows the double image we got to enjoy about 15 minutes before the eclipse peaked.  The new binoculars also gave us much more power to focus the images. Unfortunately the pictures from the digital camera I use do not show just how much cripser the crescent shapes were, especially as the sun began to set....

This was not a planned event, it just kind of fell together with the three of us hanging around.  We propped up some optics on a empty fish tank and a 2x4, using a hand towel to create a shadow around the binoculars.  We noticed we also got a reflection of the image in the glass fish tank.  At left you see the set-up we used, as well as the reflection of the sun.  This picture was taken probably about 10 minutes before the climax, which was at 6:20 PM.

Maximum Coverage
6:20 PM PDT

Right as the eclipse reached its maximum, the sun began to set behind some trees. Because of the quality of the optics, we could actually see details from the leaves that were at least 100 yards away. You can get an idea at right, but we knew the camera wouldn't catch the detail, especially on the right crescent.  But we all agreed it looked very cool.

After that, we had to move to the front yard so we could still get an unobstructed view as the moon moved away from the sun.  Not only did it change the orientation of our image, but we also started playing with "shadow art"  It started when we recognized a feeding elephant.

Then we started playing with the shadows.  We moved around the cardboard  and re-arranged the hand towel.  This gave us the sheep at left and the and the pirate on the right.  At least that is what we thought they were. 

That was our fun with the eclipse.   Now hopefully one of these days, I'll actually get to see a TOTAL Solar Eclipse.  Hope you enjoyed the pictures.

June, 2002