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Annular Solar Eclipse

Date

October 3, 2005

Location

Vila Nova de Foz Côa, Portugal (41 N, 7 01 W)

Eclipse Evolution

The images were taken with the following equipment:

• Telescope: Mak-Cass 125mm f/12
• Digital: Camera Casio EX-Z750
• Afocal photography with a 25mm Plössl eyepiece
• Baader solar filter (see construction process)

Atmospheric condition: clear sky, excellent transparency but very bad seeing, which reflected on the quality of some of the photo frames as well as on the visual observation.

Click on each frame to enlarge it. Unfortunately I was not able to photograph the first moments of the eclipse.

See also the frames animated (looks like a silent film from the 19th century): WMV Format, 138 KB

Lunar Limb Profiles During the 2nd and 3rd contacts

In the brief moments surrounding the contact instants of a solar eclipse, the Sun's limb appears irregularly interrupted due to the dramatic topography of the Moon surface. In this section, two of the frames above, corresponding to the 2nd and 3rd contacts, were overexposed to accent the mentioned irregularities in the Sun's limb, allowing us to compare them to existing lunar limb profile maps.

The lunar limb profile maps used below were created by Fred Espenak (NASA/GFSC) and are being used here with his explicit permission (thank you!). The original maps are available here.

Click on each image to enlarge it.

2nd Contact:

3rd Contact: