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ECLIPSE
of 11th August
1999
My son, David,
friend David
Bowden and myself
trekked to France
to view the eclipse.
We ended up about
five miles south of Amiens just off the N147 road.
Despite early cloud cover, glimpses of the sky in the last few
minutes
before the eclipse made us spring in to action to take some photographs.
A hole in the cloud allowed us to view totality, albeit without
a dark sky.
We had hoped to
see the shadow coming towards us but because of the cloud the
shadow
was very soft edged. So much so that although one could see fields
getting dark progressively
towards us it was impossible to see the edge of the umbra.
David is an excellent photographer
- he should be he was one of my students for a number of years!
-
and he captured this image |
 |
I was disappointed with my stills
working with a 900 mm lens on 35 mm film. Due to the longer exposures
the cloud drift softened the totality images to nothing. I did
manage to get some video footage and will construct an animation
from it when I get time.
Altogether we felt elated that
we had seen as much as we did - visually a total eclipse is far
more spectacular than any photograph can do justice.
Financial constraints notwithstanding we want to go to another
one - soon!
Want to know where the next ones
are? Then
this is the place to go.
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Last updated
November 1999 |
