The eclipse has started. The digital video camera picks it up nicely.
Light spillage in the unfiltered shot prevents the contact being detected.
This one was taken holding the eclipse shades in front of the lens. It reduces the light spillage somewhat, but you can only see a small indentation in the sun; however, the eclipse is quite well advanced.
The sun is well over half occluded. The digital video has very little light spillage.
Despite the massive light spillage, the occlusion is clearly visible.
A pinhole was drilled in a board and then the image reflected onto a screen. The eclipse is nearing totality.
The sun's limb is starting to disappear.
My last effort at a filtered shot before the sun disappears completely. Possibly the aperture was kept open.
In the last few seconds the light begins to diminish rapidly as the shadow comes upon us. The sky turns a deep twilight blue as the remaining part of the sun fades into the diamond ring.
It's like a giant black eye in the sky. With the brightness of the sun gone, the previously invisible solar corona glows eerily, low in the western sky.
A dark star shining in an almost black sky, low on the horizon, reflected in a salt lake makes an alien landscape. The feeling was like looking at an illustration from a science fiction story.
At 3rd contact we get a brilliant diamond ring effect.
A couple of seconds later, the glow from the body of the sun is now drowning the corona.
The limb of the sun now out. Its shape can be seen only in the internal reflection image.
The sun has appeared again and life returns anew to the planet.
Totality is now well and truly past, and the filtered video camera is once again doing its job. It recorded nothing during totality as the filter is too dark to see the solar corona.
