Into the shadows

The first solar eclipse of the year and it just happens to fall on lunar new year's day. This was suppose to be an annular eclipse, meaning the moon is at a further distance from the Earth and will appear smaller and not cover the entire surface of the sun (duh).

However, it is unfortunate that the umbral shadow does not land near me (damn) but I guess with 80% of cover, its better than nothing. So there I was with my good friend 5th Halo as we set up shop at an open field near his place. Why his place you ask? He's the one with the DSLR camera with the zoom lens. I know, shame on me. It was quite deserted so I guess either everyone doesn't give a damn about this phenomenon or everyone who did probably made their way down to cluster-f**k at the Singapore Science Centre (No offence, astro guys. I know you guys were doing your best to educate the groupies. I just hate crowds)

At roughly 1630hrs (local time), we spotted the first contact as the moon slowly moved in to blot out the sun. Its not very obvious to the untrained eye so leave it to us "old hands" who, even with age (okok, we're not THAT old) and bespectacled, managed to catch the tiny sliver of the shadow creeping in. By the way, that honor goes to 5th Halo, by virtue that he managed to hog the camera at the right time.

After about half an hour, the surrounding light appeared significantly dimmer although again it may appear to be the effect of the clouds. But we know better. By then it was pretty obvious that the moon is significantly smaller than the surface of the sun.

Finally, mid-eclipse approached and the clouds are starting to threaten. Not rain but as sun block. However, we still managed to squeeze off a few decent shots even though the cirrus clouds hovering across the view threatened to blur the images. Thank goodness for exposure settings. I managed to get a good shot of the maximum cover just before the clouds came in and like a night club bouncer, threw us out of the show. It was disappointing but we closed shop just a little after that. We never got to see the sun again for the rest of the day.

Please take note, all shots are made at 250mm focal length on various exposures. And most importantly, with an improvised solar filter. Won't want to fry the optics and the eyes.

The shot in green is actually captured using a normal Digital camera with a piece of welder's glass held in front of the lens, shortly after first contact.