Recently there was another solar eclipse in Alice Springs. Unlike the last one, I didn’t know this one was happening and had the strange strange experience of sitting at the kitchen table wondering if I had lost my mind. Actually it wasn’t so much that I had lost my mind, but my memory as I was certain that clouds didn’t block out as much light as was occuring right then (it had been a while since we had had a cloudy morning okay).
Anyway a call from my boss drew my attention to the truth and I set about playing with the eclipse and seeing if I could get photos of the eclipse or the visual effects of the eclipse. The following are the results.
Stage 1: Looking at the Sun.
Okay so looking at the Sun isn’t the brightest thing to do, but looking through the lense of my camera seemed like a good idea. Interestingly the sunspot at the edge of these photos shows the eclipsation better than the photo.
The eclipse was pretty obvious, and certainly visible through the camera.
The sunspot in this photo shows the sun as it’s most eclipsed point, or at least roughly….
This got pretty boring pretty quickly so we start playing with more creative techniques of observation!
Stage 2: Playing with shadows
We tried a number of very conventional and creative methods to see what was going on.
The highest degree of planning and experimental design are demonstrated in out eclipse watching apparatus.
The results of out amazingly technologically advanced apparatus.
Obviously this was a lot of hard work. So we played with bigger shadows instead.
Easily the coolest and easiest way to view the eclipse was through your fingers!
Every shadow was bent and distorted!
It turned out you could see the eclipse in every shadow, so we decided it was easier to play with shadows!
All in all a fun morning, and I got to say I was late to work because there was something wrong with the sun.
Categories: Alice Springs, Life and Daily Interest, Planning
Tags: alice springs, photography, photos
The Graceful Cyclists 
The highly scientific, delicately calibrated wheelie bin wins my vote!