Partial Solar eclipse 2019/12/26

BIG FAT WARNING: DO NOT LOOK AT A SOLAR ECLIPSE DIRECTLY. YOU WILL DAMAGE YOUR RETINA.
Today we had a partial solar eclipse over India.
It commenced in Mumbai around 0800 hrs.
Cloudy weather first hindered visibility. But later clouds thinned down sufficiently, making the spectacle visible.
Here are some images.
Yours truly using welding googles to view the eclipse.


I was able to see the eclipse very nicely. This goggle has a single pixel LCD, two photodiodes to detect light intensity and solar cells to operate the lcd. The electronics is powered by a tiny button cell. The lcd transmissivity (hmm… spell check does not have this word) is AUTO adjusted as per the light intensity and protects ones eyes from damage during welding. Serves the same purpose while viewing a solar eclipse.
I also tried a passive “Tom Cruise” welding goggle, which turned out to be better for viewing this eclipse.

Direct photo using a CanonSX430IS were horrible, with the camera unable to focus.
So I made the camera wear the Tom Cruise. Here are the Images.

Just about visible.

I waited for the moon to eclipse the sun even more…


Missed an annular due to clouds.

Now back to using welding goggles for welding.

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Great pictures. Date time setting of the camera is is behind by few months.

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Noticed that. But did not want to miss the spectacle. Corrected now.

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There is plenty of nonsense being dished out on tv and print media on “negative radiation”

This is utter nonsense and has no basis in science. There are no negative effects.
Plants and animals do react as though it is nearing dusk. I saw a flock of heron flying back to their roost - South West to North East. You see them flying in this direction only in the evening. In the early morning they fly North East to South West. To the East is situated Parsik hills and to the West is the Thane Vashi creek.

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@AJ.Bharath has also taken some good pics. Hope he posts them here.
@vvcstemplay could you grab the Annular image?

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All other pics are in camera will upload once back in town

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Yes, I did. This is a screen grab from the livestream created by Aswan Korula in Kotagiri https://youtu.be/qkILypAYic8

Just now, I also received 2 timelapse photos he has created. The first one is taken over nearly 12 months, and is even more stunning than the second, a compilation of the entire eclipse over the morning.

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Classic, these photos.

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Time of the day please and the location for each photo!
Great clarity!
How you managed to take photos without your eye lense getting affected?

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Mine is a screenshot from a livestream sent from Kotagiri. I watched the entire event on the TV screen, no risks. And in Mumbai, where, as I kept checking, the haze and clouds meant the event was never visible.

To add insult to injury, a couple of hours later, the sky was clear and the cloud cover had vanished.

The time stamp on my pics is correct. I have given latitude and longitude in the post header.

I am looking at the image on the camera LCD. Initially, when the moon shadow covered only a small area of the sun’s disc even the camera could not handle the light intensity. I placed the “TomCruise” welding goggles on the lens of the camera The first two eclipse images show the results.
Once the sun disc was covered there was no need for the goggles on the camera. The rest of the images are clicked without any goggles on the camera.

WARNING: Irrespective of the visible light intensity, the sun emits quite a lot of UV. Consequently DO NOT LOOK AT A SOLAR ECLIPSE DIRECTLY. ALWAYS USE PROTECTIVE GOGGLES. EVEN WHEN THE VISIBLE LIGHT IS LOW AND DOES NOT HURT YOUR EYES.

The idea of putting on sun glasses on to the camera was quite an ingenious idea. Great shot.

Also I wonder what you meant by ‘you missed the annular due to clouds’. Were you expecting to the see the annular phase from Mumbai? Or were you elsewhere?

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I was in Mumbai. And I was expecting to see something close to annular. But I was wrong on that count, as annular eclipse was visible in India only in the southern part.

Also the goggles are welding goggles and have a much higher attenuation than even very dark sun glasses. I presume that regular sun glasses would have worked with the camera, since they have brightness / contrast adjustments.

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you have various projection methods which doesn’t require any solar filters, googles or any but a simple mirror
Share the youtube link for the same

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:point_up: * Classic natural canopy pinhole camera based Study of Solar Eclipse (26 Dec 2019) * along with a Control data of the next day (27 Dec 2019), by * Reeja, a school teacher of CUBE SNV High School Nedunganda * ~40 km north to Thiruvananthapuram

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