The Think Tank

Annular Solar Eclipse May 2012

Mom and I drove down to Medford on Sunday so we could get the best view of a very rare celestial event: an annular solar eclipse.  As with all solar eclipses, when the Moon passes between the Earth and Sun a shadow is cast which, depending on your location on the planet, can block all or most of the of Suns rays.

Unlike a full solar eclipse, which blocks the entire visible part of the Sun (the photosphere) an annular solar eclipse leaves a thin “Ring of Fire” around the Moons shadow.  (The name is derived from the Greek word annulus, meaning ring.)

There was a fairly narrow band stretching around the globe where you could witness the “totality” in full.  In our neck of the woods, the band ranged from around Eureka, California to Medford, Oregon.  When viewed within that band, the Moon blocked about 94% of the Sun.

Mom and I cruised down there just for the event, and everything worked about as well as could be hoped for.  The car did develop a bit of an overheating issue – as this car has been known to do, this time due to a sticking thermostat – but it got us just far enough for us to get a great spot to take some photos.  It got us back home again too!

We’d done some reading and knew that we needed to have some kind of special filters to photograph the eclipse, but we were unable to find one in town or online that could be shipped in time.  However, we did discover that you can use welding glass, so we bought some of that and decided to give it a try.  For viewing the eclipse with the naked eye, the welding glass worked great (although the green color was sort of strange), but it wasn’t of high enough quality to get good pictures through.

Fortunately I was able to get some good, unfiltered shots during totality.  I had to stop the camera all the way down to F45 and use 1/8000 of a second shutter speed, but that did the trick.  They may not be the best shots, but I think it still pretty cool.