Here's an actual article that's written by actual people who know what they're talking about. Your eyes are too important to be entrusted to some random advice given to you on a calculator website.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/08/19/cant-find-the-protective-glasses-to-watch-the-solar-eclipse-go-old-school

I'll get to see about a 94% eclipse tomorrow where I live. I plan to bring out my light meter, thermometer, maybe make a cardboard-box-pinhole viewer or something, and see what happens. Oh, and record a bit of footage, obviously.

Now on August 12, 2045, if I'm still around and living in the same place, there'll be something like a 99.8% solar eclipse. If I drive maybe about 1 mile south, I will be able to see a true total solar eclipse.

I'm excited for the 2024 eclipse!

I measured around 85,000 or so lux in direct sunlight before the eclipse started. It ultimately dipped down to a minimum of around 4000–5000 lux at eclipse maximum. Not quite as dark as I was hoping (I was estimating maybe it'd be down to about 1000 lux), but it definitely was noticeably darker than normal. It looks rather weird to see sharp shadows and sunlight yet it being dim like a cloudy sky. But going into the house, the darkness inside was even more dramatic.

Didn't see much of a temperature difference except maybe a drop of a degree or so in the shade. The cats didn't really care; the roosters in the next-door yard weren't going crazy. It'd take far more light attenuation to look convincingly like dusk (well below a few hundred lux, which is about the level of a brightly lit indoor room) But it was still pretty interesting and fun.

Got to see crescent-shaped shadows on the ground through the tree leaves; that was pretty cool.

Me too!



I also used a spatula to similar effect: (my friend held the spatula, I held the camera)

I ripped out the medium from a floppy disk (don't worry, I have like 40 more), folded it in two, and put it in front of a crappy point-and-shoot camera that I have that deserves annihilation :



Cool, so that works. Note that the magnetic medium blocks a great amount of the visible light, but it's still not safe for viewing with human eyes. According to this site, the transmittance of a floppy disk is roughly a shade number of 11.8, whereas safe filters are between 12.8 and 15 (shade numbers >14 do not actually exist, but let's pretend they do). On top of that, the medium is poor at blocking infrared light, unlike a real #12 welding mask.

Let's try it with my phone:



Excellent. Unfortunately, I did not want to try the makeshift filter on my DSLR, even with the UV filter (the medium blocks the visible light, while the UV blocks the ultraviolet, hopefully only leaving only the red part), out of fear that I might drop the camera or something bad might happen. On top of that, the point-and-shoot camera was unfortunately not annihilated, and I'll have to live with it for many years more... Maybe next time

This was the view at my place at peak eclipse.

Also, click here for a GOES-16 view of the eclipse

I had to go to class at 1:15, so I was just barely able to see the peak of the eclipse (about 90% coverage for my area) before having to leave. Even though it was only a partial eclipse, it was incredibly remarkable to experience it for the first time. There was a noticeable difference in the sky color in the north (toward the path of totality), and a noticeable difference in temperature and a very refreshing breeze. Since it was only a partial eclipse, it was still sunny out, but it was an odd sort of sunny - it felt bright and dark at the same time. Long story short, very spectacular show.

I did get some shots of the eclipse, but they aren't super high quality. Here are some crescents on the ground instead:

In Quebec, 1994 was superior.

Wow, Americans got a much better eclipse!
I was at school when it happened, but I did take the time to go out and have a look... The astrophysics teachers got together with a telescope (and presumably a solar filter) to watch it and make a little timelapse. However, up here in Canada, we only had about 58% peak coverage, which doesn't look like much (It lasted something like 2 hours). I got to have a quick look with a telescope, as well as with some eclipse glasses, but didn't grab pictures (taking a direct picture with my phone was obviously unsuccessful and just looked like a bright blob, but I tried anyway)

Cool, we had a few eclipses visible from Australia in the early 2000's that I remember.

You have to wonder what ancient people's thought of such phenomenon.

I have a bit of work todo, the camera didn't stay in the same spot so the sun moved in a bunch of the frames otherwise it would all be pretty easy to piece together. My plan was to take photos of the eclipse and, in photoshop, change the layer blending to bring the Sun through from each photo. Well, because the camera moved they aren't all perfectly lined up but I'll get it there! Here's one of the series of shots that came out all right.

To go into a bit more detail, I shot from when the Sun was in the bottom left to the upper right of the image frame. After that I moved the Sun back into the bottom left again and in my editor, Adobe Lightroom, I group all the photos where I didn't reposition the camera into respective folders. These photos are more or less 2 minutes apart and I sort of which I took them five or so minutes apart. In all, this photo represents roughly 12 minutes of the eclipse.

After I put each group of photos in a compilation like the above I'll put them onto a larger photoshop canvas and trace out the arc the Sun made during the eclipse and rearrange the individual photos to fit into that arc.

Shot this on my Canon T2i using an EF-75-300mm lens. Due to factors between the camera and lens, this is actually at 480mm. This photo is uncropped the Sun was this large in my field of view. Hella huge watermark just because this isn't the final version.


Eclipse Preview by Alex Glanville, on Flickr

Took this on my phone without any filter or anything when the sun was partially behind clouds.

I wanted to stitch every eclipse photo I took but it just got way too big for my laptop to handle. So, I settled with 15 photos from the eclipse. I know how I can make it work, and I fully intend to use all the photos, but I realized it would have been way too many photos anyways. Over the next few days I'm going to work on that and making a gif of the eclipse; and maybe turn this into a gif as well!


Eclipse Portrait by Alex Glanville, on Flickr

That is an absolutely incredible shot, Alex! Great work!

Fantastic image, I am eager to see your other image as well .

Surprisingly enough, Flickr is not blocked. Your eclipse photo is amazing! I am astounded at the clarity you managed to get.

Also, I really like your t-shirt.

Again, great photo, and I can't wait to see more.

Also, for your stitching problem, could you perhaps stitch 5 photos together, then another 5, and another 5, and so on, then just stitch the stitched photos together to get the picture you want?

Thanks guys!



I could! I think the problem is that there's so much empty space in the photos that I could easily crop out that space and leave a square for the Sun. That way Photoshop isn't saving, loading and, manipulating all 14bits of data for each pixel of an otherwise black and empty sky (which I think it bumps up to 16bits) for 96 images.

Wow this is such an original photo. I've never seen such a thing before.

I was playing KSP, and guess what I saw: