Tag: sun

Eccentric.

Today we drove a couple hours into the hill country to see the annular solar eclipse of October 2023. We originally thought we would drive to the center of the path, but decided to head for the eastern edge. This meant we wouldn’t see the complete “ring” of the sun around a concentric moon passing in front of it. Instead, we wanted to see the edge of the moon barely passing by the sun, hoping to see some Bailey’s Beads. That means the passing moon wouldn’t be centered inside the sun, but just barely touching the border. I wasn’t able to capture any Bailey’s beads his time – I think the sun’s light was still too bright. But it was a fun roadtrip. The next eclipse is less than 6 months away!

We drove to the west side of Canyon Lake. Eclipses are pretty cool. 🙂

Pretty much maximal occlusion

Light of day.

During winter, the low, rising sun shoots a blinding ray of morning light through the east-facing windows on the house.   An illuminating spotlight passes through the house quickly.  I caught this moment as I was walking through the living room this morning.  I could almost see the light move slowly across the wall as I stopped to take the picture.

IMG_0152

The last transit of Venus of the 21st century.

While it was possible for us to see the transit by looking through our welder’s glass.  It really wasn’t useful for taking a picture – it was too small.  Monte mounted a pair of binoculars on a tripod and used that to focus an image of the sun and the transit of venus on a piece of paper.  That’s what these are images of.

The transit started right on time.  If you look just to the right of the top of this image, you can see Venus just starting to show up.  You can also see 4 or 5 sunspots in each image.

It begins.

A little while later, Venus is clearly visible on the face of the sun.

A little while later.

This was one of the last images, taken shortly before sunset.

Right before sunset.