Solar Eclipse 2017

August 21, 2017 8:10 pm

We had fun watching the eclipse today.  Livermore had ~75% occlusion at peak.  It was also Heather's first day of school (separate post coming).  They took the kids outside to watch pinhole cameras and then let them use eclipse glasses one-at-a-time so they could ensure they were being worn properly.

Heather helped me make eclipse cookies yesterday.

My sugar cookie skills could use some work...

Corinne got a kick out of the eclipse proclaiming, "Moon! I see the moon!" (by which she, of course, meant sun).

We used the colander to get pinhole-camera-style shadows.

And I had my camera set up with filters taking pictures.  I just kind of guessed at settings.  Some came out better than others.  Here's the picture from the peak eclipse:

And here's one I got as it was ending where you can see a line of spots.  I don't know if they're technically sunspots, but they weren't just dust on my lens--they stayed with the sun throughout the event.

My weather station noticed the eclipse too:

The variations in the readings are due to varying cloud cover that, thankfully, almost completely cleared out during the eclipse.

The temperature even dropped a hair:

One thought on “Solar Eclipse 2017”

  1. I don't really get why you get crescent shaped shadows from the eclipse. Objects don't have round shadows when the sun is unobstructed.

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