Solar Eclipse October 2005

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 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.

Solar Eclipse March 2015

It was to be nearly ten years later on 20th March 2015 I was to observe my next eclipse of the Sun.

It was fortunate that there was some cloud cover because it enabled the photos to be taken without the dazzling crescent of the Sun obliterating everything else in the image.




The two photographs were taken using an ordinary digital camera in the garden of my home in Somerset, England where the eclipse reached around 85% totality.