The 2024 Solar Eclipse

The April 8, 2024 solar eclipse in progress, through my projector. At least one sunspot is visible off center, and maybe some dust or bugs that got onto the screen. 

I didn't manage to get to northern New England to see totality in last month's solar eclipse, but I did catch about a 93% eclipse in Connecticut, which is enough that the light got pretty dim, shadows looked sharp with diffracted crescent sun images in them, and owls started hooting. It was neat, but nothing like the show when I caught the 2017 Great American Eclipse in South Carolina.

My jury-rigged binocular solar projector, this time with improvised tripod mount and screen.

Eclipse silhouette with button-hole crescent sun image.

Tree trunk shadows with crescent sun images.

Projection of the sun close to maximum coverage.

Solargraphy camera recording the action, with binocular projector in the background.

I set up a solargraphy (sometimes spelled "solarigraphy") camera to photograph the eclipse. Solargraphy is the process of using a camera obscura--usually a homemade pinhole camera made from soda cans--to capture photographs on black-and-white print paper, with very long exposure times, ideally resulting in a ghostly image of the landscape with the sun's track visible as streaks in the sky. I'll plan on stopping the exposure around the solstice in June, and will report back with the results then. Hopefully the first, lowest daily solar track in the photo will record a dimming as the eclipse progresses, but I already know that it won't include the sun brightening as the eclipse ended, because clouds moved in shortly after the peak of the partial eclipse at my location. [edited to add: finished solargraph here]