Partial Solar Eclipse of Monday June 10, 2002
Here is a Description I wrote for CSUDH people and then forwarded to the Southern California American Association of Physics Teachers and the SC regional Society of Physics Students.
Dear SCCAAPT person and others possibly interested in Astronomy:
(The following message was originally sent this morning by me to my campus. The sky is very clear now and it looks like we are going to have a rare opportunity to view a sunset eclipse and possibly take great photos (for fun and physics promotion/ recruiting).
As you may have already heard, we will have a partial solar eclipse (PSE) tomorrow afternoon, Monday June 10 2002. We have been lucky to have had recent solar eclipses occur over Los Angeles on December 25, 2000 and December 14, 2001.However tomorrow's event will be the last solar eclipse visible from Los Angeles for almost 10 years (until May 20, 2012).
Tomorrow's PSE will begin in LA at 5:13 PM PDT, end at 7:23 PM and reach a maximum at 6:22 PM, when 71% of the area and 79% of the diameter of the Sun will be blocked by the moon's shadow and the Sun will be at an altitude of 20 degrees above the (Western) horizon. If the sky is clear, as it was Sunday afternoon, tomorrow's eclipse should be a memorable and exhilarating event, with the setting Sun still high enough in the sky to be easily visible in most places. By the way, sunset and moonset tomorrow will be interesting events to observe that
will occur at 8:05 PM and 8:08 PM PDT, respectively.
Please look at the Sun only through indirect means by projecting its image onto a screen or by viewing it through a certified solar filter (I have some). Keep in mind that even brief exposure to direct sunlight can cause permanent eye damage. A makeshift projector can be constructed using a pinhole in cardboard or a binocular objective and a piece of paper or some other flat screen (do not look directly through an unfiltered lens). You may even see projected images of the eclipsed
(crescent) Sun under a tree or some other object with recesses or gaps.
If you can figure out a way to avoid direct exposure to the Sun, probably through the use of a certified solar filter and a tripod, tomorrow may offer a unique photo-opportunity, with the crescent Sun setting over local landmarks. For more information on the PSE of June 10th 2002 and how to view it safely see
http://www.griffithobs.org/Skyinfo.html
orhttp://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/ASE2002/ASE2002.html
.Kenneth S. Ganezer, Department of Physics, CSUDH.
kganezer@csudh.edu
Here are some images Taken with a Digital Camera On The CSUDH Campus Just West of the North Side of the Dorms Near Hillside Court and Unity Drive (East-West).
First, A Picture of Our Observation Point
The following images were taken by K. Ganezer and Howard Christenson from 5:25 PM until 7:30 PM with two filters in front of a digital camera that was borrowed from CSUDH instructional media. It was windy and cool (not Santa Ana conditions) with scattered clouds and some haze or smog near the horizon, although generally clear. The filters were a Griffith Park Observatory (GPO) Solarama, broad spectrum with a reddish tint, and a glass device that I bought from GPO about 12 years ago marked M-14-H, that favored the yellow part of the spectrum. Some of the images were slightly obscured by leaves from trees on campus, thus the green spots. As the Sun got lower in the sky more and more low frequency light (remember "ROY G BIV" orders the colors according to increasing frequency) was filtered out by increased path length of Sunlight in the Atmosphere due to decreased altitude of the Sun as we approached sunset.
Unfortunately I lowered the intensity of light accepted by the Camera and turned off the magnification after the first two images since I was unfamiliar with the camera and since people were warning me I might "burn out" the CCD.
Here is the First Picture of the Eclipse at about 5:25 PM PDT, shortly after "First Contact" of the moon-shadow with the Sun.
Additional Images of the Eclipse in Chronological Order
The Last images were taken about 7:30 PM after the eclipse had ended.
That's All of the Image (.jpg) files that I took. As the Sun started to set, the images got "greener" because more and more low frequency light was scattered out of the line of sight by the increasing path length in the atmosphere (as the Sun got lower in the sky).