Short eclipse reports

by John R Pierce
Glenn Hirsch
Ben Haller
David Staples
Eileen Chun

John R Pierce

I took a piece of tinfoil and made a nice clean pin hole in it, and taped it over a hole in a large cardboard box, then projected light from the kitchen window onto the kitchen door about 10' away. image was quite clear, could see a few faint sunspots.

Glenn Hirsch

It's great to share the mysteries of Nature with others... awakens a sense of wonder which Carl Sagan said is our only way to rekindle a sense of hope for the planet ... My wife and I had an impromptu eclipse party on the Marina Green near Fort Mason in SF... 80 mm Celestron scope with filter (plus two pairs of safety glasses) ... we also made a "pin hole" camera just with our hands ... felt like magicians shooting crescents on to the ground... around 50 people stopped by to look. Enjoyed telling everyone that the largest sunspots are @ the size of the earth so it's easy to visualize the relative size of our Star.

At maximum we all thought the temperature dropped just a little and our cast shadows appeared to have a funny double-edge on only one side ... hallucination or observation?

Ben Haller

I walked around my neighborhood with a friend, giving people pairs of those $1 solar-viewing glasses, since I bought a 25-pack and didn't need most of them. Most of my neighbors didn't know there was an eclipse -- it was quite fun to see them go from being suspicious of me to being amazed by the eclipse!

If you're referring to what I think you're referring to, it's a real phenomenon that is due to the altered shape of the sun. Normally, because the sun subtends a half-degree in the sky, shadows have a fuzzy penumbra around their edge. When the sun is just a crescent, shadows edges oriented in one direction will still have a strong penumbra, while shadow edges oriented orthogonally will have a much narrower penumbra -- they may appear to have none at all. See p.201 of the excellent book "Color and Light in Nature" by David K. Lynch and William Livingston.

And the temperature dropped and the light dimmed quite noticeably and took on a strange quality. People who didn't know there was an eclipse kept saying to us "so that's why the light is so funny today!"

Thanks to Jeff Crilly for the Baader filter material I put on my binoculars -- seeing the sunspots go behind the moon and then re-emerge later was a real treat.

Now I need to go see a total eclipse somewhere... hmm...

David Staples

I was set up in my front yard with my C8 and Baader Astrofilm filter and a pair of Astronomy mag glasses from the Dec. 2000 partial.

All of my nearby neighbors came by and to a one they said it was the first time they had ever seen an eclipse as well as sunspots. So with the kids running through the sprinkler and a crowd around the scope it was great fun.

The highlight for me was when my daughter (she's two and a half) wanted to look through the scope. I didn't want to give an suggestions of what she might see so I just held her up to the eyepiece and asked her what she saw and she said "Umm...sunshine, Daddy". Wahoo!!! I can't wait until she is old enough to join me for a night under the stars.

We also notice a slight drop in the intensity of the sun, kind of like the sun behind high thin clouds, and a noticeable drop in temperature.

Eileen Chun

I set up between my neighbors house and mine (cursing the trees that got in the way), and it was an absolutely great view. It was pretty noticeable in the drop in temperature as well. It is a no wonder that ancient folk used to get pretty worked up about solar eclipse even it was a partial.