On November 14, there was a solar eclipse that was visible from Australia, New Caledonia, New Zealand, South America, and Antarctica. I would have loved to use it as excuse to visit any of those places, but unfortunately, I couldn’t. However, I was pleased to receive the next best thing. A wonderful home educator who is field-testing my new elementary science curriculum with her family, Marianne Trinham, sent me pictures of the eclipse as seen from Brisbane. I hope you enjoy them!
While the eclipse was total in northern Australia, it was not total in Brisbane. Here is an image of the maximum of the eclipse as seen there:
How did this family get that image? They used binoculars to project it onto a white sheet of paper:
They also used a telescope, but as was the case with the binoculars, they didn’t look into the telescope:
Instead, they used the eyepiece to project an image onto a white sheet of paper. This is what they got near the end of the eclipse:
Not surprisingly, the coolest shot came from something that really shouldn’t have worked. Marianne’s husband took a photo of the eclipse with his cell phone camera. While the image of the sun is too bright to see anything, there is a red glow beneath the sun that shows the eclipse. I have no idea what caused the image to form in this way, but it is really cool!
Thank you so much to the Trinham family for giving me a chance to experience the eclipse with you!
Thanks for sharing Dr Wile and Trinham family.
Hi Dr Wile. We live in New Zealand so also got to experience the eclipse. I wrote about it at http://katrinasampson.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/solar-eclipse-excitement/
Thanks for the link, Katrina! I think it’s awesome that Daniel was able to share the eclipse with the students at the school!