Solar eclipse

Cyprus wasn't in the path of totality, but the eclipse was total in Turkey, which isn't far away. Sure enough, around 1.45pm we realised that the light was distinctly different outside. Tim rigged up binoculars to project onto paper, to display the chunk temporarily taken out of the sun by the moon passing in front of it:


Then we tried to see if the camera would show the sun itself. A big advantage of digital cameras, of course, is that they can be pointed at the sun, with eyes shaded, and the little viewing screen on the back is safe to look at.


However we didn't get anything dramatic. The sky looks a bit darker than usual, but the sun still appears to be its usual shape, despite the evidence of only a crescent showing. Actually it didn't look nearly this dark in reality. Even a small percentage of the sun is sufficient to look almost like full daylight. Probably we needed some sort of filter, or maybe some advanced settings to see the sun with a chunk removed.


So that's today's excitement...