As with the annular event in 2003, I had originally planned to travel to see this one but the complications of a hectic lifestyle again intruded (not to mention ludicrously expensive air-fares to Madrid!) so I had to be content with a large partial eclipse from the back garden. The morning was gloriously clear, in contrast to most of Great Britain that day, so I was able to take lots of pictures through a film camera mounted on the reflector telescope's equatorial tripod for ease of tracking. The eclipse lasted from 8:51am to 11:19am, with maximum coverage at about 10am.
Given my luck with eclipses you may guess it was not all plain sailing though and, true to form, complications soon ensued as, with only a few minutes to first contact, the camera refused to load any film! A change of battery didn't help so I had to disassemble the whole thing and swap the entire camera body, resulting in the first few minutes being missed. It was very frustrating seeing that first nick out of the Sun's limb but being unable to capture it! From 9am onwards everything worked fine though, with a picture being taken every 21/2 mins until "close of play" so I could construct a movie of the entire event.
While I was peering through the viewfinder Sandra went to get a colander. Not the most obvious thing to do, you might think, but the intention was to demonstrate an interesting optical effect. The perforations in the colander act as multiple pin-hole cameras and so if the images are shone onto a card you see a pattern of "Suns". During an eclipse the Sun is crescent-shaped and so if you get the right focus distance from colander to card the images of the Sun will be crescents as well, giving a most unusual pattern. This effect can also be seen in dappled sunlight through leaves, as was shown during our 2001 expedition.
Unfortunately, though the day itself went well the processing of the slides did not. I wondered why they were taking so long until I got a package back from Fuji together with a letter. This started "During the processing of your recent order an incident occured within the Laboratory which has unfortunately resulted in all of your frames being damaged". "Damaged" meant that one entire film was so over-developed (virtually clear for 75% of its length) they didn't even mount it and the last dozen frames on the other were mainly a bright orange colour, with the dozen before that of low contrast i.e. a bit of a disaster really. 'Eclipse luck' strikes again, in spades! Still, as with the 2003 annular, good job I hadn't gone all the way to Madrid to capture "the real thing" only for Fuji to ruin the shots!! I've scanned in those that I could, but it's not really the outcome I was looking for.
Fortunately, my friends from the 2001 eclipse came up trumps again so I've begged some shots from their expedition to Tunisia. Their record really is astonishing - not one viewing spoiled by the weather! I've put a great shot of "totality" on the next page, and constructed a few animations from others. Thanks Terry & Shanta!
Pictures of the eclipse Technical Info
Third contact showing the effect of the irregularity of the lunar limb.
Maximum phase from the devil's horns to the ring of fire and back again.
End of eclipse
