Students took indirect pictures of the Total Solar Eclipse on Monday, August 21st, 2017 starting at 12:37 pm to 12:45 pm CST when the sun appeared bright, casting a sharp shadow on the concrete decking. The clouds had been moving in and out, blocking the sunlight, so as soon as the moment arrived, we ran outside to capture some shots!
NASA website, eclipse2017.nasa.gov recommended casting a pinhole map of our state, Louisiana, marking our location.
The local news coverage, WWL Channel 4 and the Weather Channel, recommended casting shadows with objects like a colander and a sheet of aluminum foil with a hole in the center...
This colander had pineapple cutouts in it!
Students were fantastic scientists exploring how each object would behave in the eclipse conditions.
Then, Students used inverted binoculars to safely project the eclipse onto the paper surface to be photographed in the first stage of the eclipse process, at 12:45 pm CST.
Binoculars blocked for sun.
One lens was capped; it took trial and error to get the sunlight to aim through the open lens.
The eclipse was magnified and reflected back through the binocular lens which had a UV filter (not eclipse safe, but normal light filter) which cast the green glow seen in the photos.
The early phase of the eclipse is indicated by the "cookie bite" taken out of the side of the sun.
Students held a steady hand with the camera capturing the eclipse photos!
Amazing to think that this image is a reflection of Earth, Moon, and Sun aligned to each other today. The last time this happened here for a total eclipse was 1979. During a total eclipse of the Sun, the Moon covers the whole solar disc, and to do this the Sun has to be around 400 times further from the Moon than the Moon is from the Earth.
Scientists from NASA and Universities have telescopes with special filters that allow them to directly photograph the eclipse which gives crisper, clearer pictures like what we saw on the news, however, it was immensely exciting to see this appear in our own exploration!
The sense of community that we shared with others who were experiencing the eclipse all over the USA and North America was very fulfilling!