Pinhole-camera images of solar eclipse formed by spaces between leaves in canopy. According to Jon Grepstad, this phenomenon was explained by Aristotle. The eclipse is just ending; the picture was as close to total as it got here (Boulder, Colorado).
12 Comments
Matt Young · 23 October 2014
Sigh. Aristotle observed the phenomenon; he did not explain it.
Lurker111 · 24 October 2014
You can experiment with your own pinhole photos if you have an SLR camera. Just get a piece of cardboard, put a pinhole or nailhole in it, remove the camera's lens and hold the cardboard in front of the camera. Works.
JimboK · 24 October 2014
I wanted to take some images like this, but we could only view the start of the eclipse (St. Louis Metro area). We had several days of blue skies up to Thursday, but could it be clear for little three hour stretch on 10/23? Noo-oo! Stupid clouds...
Matt Young · 24 October 2014
You can experiment with your own pinhole photos if you have an SLR camera. Just get a piece of cardboard, put a pinhole or nailhole in it, remove the cameraâs lens and hold the cardboard in front of the camera. Works.
I took some hand-held pictures using a SLR and a set of extension tubes; you can see one here. The longer focal length of the extension tubes gives you a narrower field of view but also higher resolution. The resolution (measured as the width of the frame divided by the resolution limit) increases with increasing frame width, so a larger format would be better, unfortunately. If the pinhole is small enough, you may not have to take the lens out, but that is another story.
Carl Drews · 24 October 2014
You can also use a small hand mirror to show the eclipse safely. The mirror acts as a pinhole, and you can direct the crescent image into a shaded white surface for easy viewing.
sloansdad · 24 October 2014
I built a cardboard box pinhole theater for my kids to see the eclipse(hooray for appliance boxes). They traced it as it moved across the paper.
Just Bob · 24 October 2014
I saw that effect several years ago when we had a partial eclipse. The crescents were even sharper on a nice, clean sidewalk.
I'd wager that 95% of non-scientists, seeing that, would fail to notice it, or if they did, fail to realize what it is.
Paul Burnett · 25 October 2014
I astounded my co-workers by using a ballpoint pen to poke a small hole in a copy paper box lid and projecting the image on a piece of white paper.
Matt Young · 25 October 2014
The crescents were even sharper on a nice, clean sidewalk.
The crescents in my image are not sharp, possibly because the "pinholes" in the canopy are too big for the image distance, because the leaves in the canopy are kind of sparse this time of year; and possibly because there was a light cloud cover. I will try to do better next time, but that is not until 2017. That eclipse will be around noon, local time, not 4:30, so there will be opportunity to find many images on the ground.
AltairIV · 25 October 2014
JimboK said:
I wanted to take some images like this, but we could only view the start of the eclipse (St. Louis Metro area). We had several days of blue skies up to Thursday, but could it be clear for little three hour stretch on 10/23? Noo-oo! Stupid clouds...
I feel your pain. I swear sometimes that the clouds lie in wait just for the opportunity to mess with you.
When comet Hyakutake came by in 1996, I saw it as a small fuzz-blob in binoculars a couple of days before closest approach, then there was solid wall to wall cloud cover over the entire region for three whole days, and the by the time it cleared out the comet was back to being a small blob in binoculars again.
I also got solid clouds for the 2004 transit of Venus, and was forced to wait more 8 years for the 2012 rerun. And for the 2012 annular eclipse the clouds started rolling in just as the eclipse commenced, and were pretty much solid by the time of totality. There was only one three-second window of lighter cover during totality, which did give us a brief view of the ring, but not enough time to snap any good photos.
TomS · 26 October 2014
AltairIV said:
JimboK said:
I wanted to take some images like this, but we could only view the start of the eclipse (St. Louis Metro area). We had several days of blue skies up to Thursday, but could it be clear for little three hour stretch on 10/23? Noo-oo! Stupid clouds...
I feel your pain. I swear sometimes that the clouds lie in wait just for the opportunity to mess with you.
When comet Hyakutake came by in 1996, I saw it as a small fuzz-blob in binoculars a couple of days before closest approach, then there was solid wall to wall cloud cover over the entire region for three whole days, and the by the time it cleared out the comet was back to being a small blob in binoculars again.
I also got solid clouds for the 2004 transit of Venus, and was forced to wait more 8 years for the 2012 rerun. And for the 2012 annular eclipse the clouds started rolling in just as the eclipse commenced, and were pretty much solid by the time of totality. There was only one three-second window of lighter cover during totality, which did give us a brief view of the ring, but not enough time to snap any good photos.
Is it possible that a cooling of the atmosphere during a solar eclipse is favorable to the formation of clouds?
Transits, comets, and lunar eclipses, we can, with the lack of any other explanation, attribute their clouds only to design.
SmartBoy81 · 26 October 2014
What is SOLAR ECLIPSE? in a 3 minutes Video! http://check123.com/videos/2146
12 Comments
Matt Young · 23 October 2014
Sigh. Aristotle observed the phenomenon; he did not explain it.
Lurker111 · 24 October 2014
You can experiment with your own pinhole photos if you have an SLR camera. Just get a piece of cardboard, put a pinhole or nailhole in it, remove the camera's lens and hold the cardboard in front of the camera. Works.
JimboK · 24 October 2014
I wanted to take some images like this, but we could only view the start of the eclipse (St. Louis Metro area). We had several days of blue skies up to Thursday, but could it be clear for little three hour stretch on 10/23? Noo-oo! Stupid clouds...
Matt Young · 24 October 2014
Carl Drews · 24 October 2014
You can also use a small hand mirror to show the eclipse safely. The mirror acts as a pinhole, and you can direct the crescent image into a shaded white surface for easy viewing.
sloansdad · 24 October 2014
I built a cardboard box pinhole theater for my kids to see the eclipse(hooray for appliance boxes). They traced it as it moved across the paper.
Just Bob · 24 October 2014
I saw that effect several years ago when we had a partial eclipse. The crescents were even sharper on a nice, clean sidewalk.
I'd wager that 95% of non-scientists, seeing that, would fail to notice it, or if they did, fail to realize what it is.
Paul Burnett · 25 October 2014
I astounded my co-workers by using a ballpoint pen to poke a small hole in a copy paper box lid and projecting the image on a piece of white paper.
Matt Young · 25 October 2014
AltairIV · 25 October 2014
TomS · 26 October 2014
SmartBoy81 · 26 October 2014
What is SOLAR ECLIPSE? in a 3 minutes Video!
http://check123.com/videos/2146