Solar Eclipse 2015

Solar Eclipse from 20 March 2015, England

Today, in 2017, there was a full solar eclipse which went all the way across a section of the United States. Here in England, there was only a chance to see a sliver of the eclipse. But as it was cloudy here where I am in Stroud Gloucestershire, there was little to no chance of seeing it.

One of my nieces from the States, Amber, contacted me and asked if I could photograph today's eclipse from England for her. As I couldn't I thought I'd show her the images I took from 2015's eclipse. Sadly I didn't blog about it here, but on my website, and not long ago my website was corrupted and I lost that page, along with quite a few others. So I'm going to blog about it again, for my niece. And anyone else who's interested.

20 March 2015 (Copied from my notes)

It started out very cloudy! (400mm)

Today we had a partial solar eclipse in Southwestern part of England. It was quite foggy and cloudy when I got up this morning and still so when I went out to attempt to capture it in pictures. So I got in my car and I drove up Rodborough hill looking for clear skies. I didn’t find them so I kept going to Minchinhampton Common. It was quite cloudy at first but soon it cleared up.

This one is over exposed, but cut through the clouds. (2000mm)

I used two cameras, Canon 5D m2 & Canon 5D m3. Well I used a compact and my phone as well but I didn’t like those photos. 🙂 Lenses used were a 1000mm mirror lens with a 2x converter, giving a focal length of 2000mm. Most of the sun photos are from this lens and have not been zoomed and cropped. I also used a 400mm Canon lens for the sun, but I didn’t really care for those photos either, but there are a couple in the gallery below, the smaller photos of the sun. For general photos I used a Canon 70-200mm zoom and a Canon 16-35mm zoom.

Better exposure, but still quite cloudy. (2000mm)

In some of my images the sun appears white, those are over exposed and have lost detail of the sun. In most of the images the sun appears yellow, this is for two reasons, first it’s not so over exposed and I was using filters, mainly a green welding glass. The other filters which are actually for black and white photography I believe seemed to have neutralized the green of the welding glass. There was a slight greenish tent to it which I removed and was left with this. That’s the only alterations I did to the images.

Oops, over exposed, but shows the progression of the moon across the sun's path. (2000mm)

The moon fully in front of the sun, a partial eclipse. (400mm)

The moon continuing it's journey across the path of the sun. (2000mm)

(2000mm)

(2000mm)

You can just see a sunspot in this one! (2000mm)

I know it's a sun spot because it's in several of the photos in the same place on the sun. :-)

Nearly finished! You can see the sunspot in this one too. (2000mm)

Here are all the images again, together, so that you can see the progress of the moon across the sun. 

Me watching the solar eclipse with a special mask I made myself. AKA beer goggles. 

I bought some welding glass and made my own solar viewing mask. It worked amazingly!! I was so busy watching it and talking to others that I wasn't fully concentrating on getting the photos. This was my first solar eclipse after all! :-D

Welding mask & my home made mask.

Someone actually brought and used an actual welding mask. They tried my mask as well, photo above, and said they preferred my mask as the glass was cleaner and clearer. Several people came over to borrow my special made mask.

Some people had special solar glasses.

Here they are using a telescope to project the image of the sun onto a piece of paper to watch the solar eclipse.

I took this photo at the height of the solar eclipse, it didn't get as dark as I thought it would.

I really enjoyed attempting to photograph the eclipse and I really enjoyed chatting with the others who came to enjoy the eclipse as well.

Back to 2017...

I've been enjoying looking at everyone's photos from the States of the Solar Eclipse today. Wishing I could have been there to try and photograph it again. Thanks for all those who shared their experiences and photos today!!