Viewing Partial Solar Eclipses

While it's true we earthlings all have the same sky above us, the stars and planets look very different depending on from where in the world you are viewing them. On Sunday November 3rd much of the earth witnessed a partial solar eclipse. Totality was visible from the northern Atlantic Ocean (east of Florida) to Africa along the equator. The best place to view the total eclipse from land was along the equator in Ghana and the Ivory Coast in Africa.

taken @ the JHB Planetarium @ Wits University

To witness the phenomenon, Wits University organized an eclipse viewing party at the Johannesburg Planetarium. We could not go, but the JHB Planetarium posted some great pictures on their Facebook page of the partial solar eclipse viewed through pinhole viewers. Only about 6% of the eclipsed sun was visible when viewed from Gauteng.






 

The JHB Planetarium also posted this picture of the eclipse taken from somewhere in Ethiopia. Lerothodi Leeuw (UNISA) took this photo. Since Ethiopia is closer to the equator than South Africa, the percentage of the sun covered was much much greater when viewed from there.

Vince and our son Alex take a look.

While we didn't "see" the solar eclipse on Sunday in Joburg, we did see a partial solar eclipse on Christmas Day 2000 from our backyard in Fanwood. Santa had given us all special eclipse glasses from the American Museum of Natural History in our Christmas stockings that morning with which to view it.

Our neighbor Teri and our son Nick take a look too.

We didn't take pictures of the pinhole images on Christmas - we actually didn't think to do it. Great idea for next time!

On Sunday, American professional photographer Mike Black posted this picture on Facebook of the very same 2000 Christmas Day Partial Solar Eclipse. I do not how he did it, but it's cool!