This picture of the solar eclipse of the 3rd
October 2005 is doubly interesting.
First of all the images of the eclipse are
formed on the school wall by the pinhole camera effect, the 'pinholes' being the gaps
between the leaves of a large walnut tree.
The large number of images is
due to the large number of gapes between the leaves. Each gap produces an image
– the finer focussed and dimmer images are formed by very small gaps while the
brighter and blurred images are due to large gaps.
You can see the
extent of the eclipse - it was about 80% where the picture was taken in our garden in Juignac in the Charente
region of France.
The daylight dimmed – this was about 11.30 a.m. local
time and the temperature fell. The strange bluish nature of the light during the more
intense period of the eclipse was probably a psychological effect. We are used to the
change of the colour of the sky towards nightfall and the accompanying drop in
temperature and assumed that this was happening during the eclipse. The silence
due to lack of bird song was also impressive.
The line of sticks in the
foreground is the fence between our garden and the school.