Total Solar Eclipse in Shanghai (Jul 22, 2009)


Progress of partial eclipse

Date & Time: Jul 22 2009 (Times are Chinese Standatd Time, 1/2000 to 1/1000sec. exposed)
Optical: BORG 45EDII with Televue PowerMate 2.5X (f=812mm, F18.0)
with ND8 filter
Auto-guided with Eyebell CD-1 portable equatorial
Digital Camera: Nikon D80 (Remodeled)
Location: Fengxien, Shanghai city, China

Camera Settings: Recording Format...JPEG-FINE (3872×2592)
CCD Sensitivity...ISO400

Change of sky brightness during clouded total solar eclipse

Nikon D50 + SIGMA 15mm EX Fish-eye
ISO200, Center-weighted integral, Program mode, Recorded with 12bit CCD-RAW format

A white curve indicates calculated LV under an assumption that the illuminance is proportion
to the area ratio of uneclipsed solar area with the limb-darkening effect
(Assumed the LV of normal midday sky, LV0, as 15.4).


Change of sky during eclipse
(Individual numbers correspond to those in upper graph)


On Jul 22, 2009, our group tried to observe the total solar eclipse at near the coast of Hangzhou bay of Shanghai city, the eclipse occurred in China and Ryukyu islands of Japan. But unfortunately we couldn't see the totally eclipsed sun because of bad weather condition although could be observed partially eclipsed sun through a rift in the clouds.
The first set of images shows the progress of the eclipse from before the first contact to 68% in magnitude of eclipse (about 24 minutes to start of total eclipse).

This solar eclipse is one of "deepest" in this century, has a width of lunar umbral shadow of over 200km, so we could observe the sky got extraordinary dark during the total eclipse.
A figure shows the change of Light Value (LV) of sky captured with a SLR digital still camera and fish-eye photo lens in program mode. The sky started to get dark drastically from 5 minutes before the total eclipse, and the LV was down 17 steps from the beginning of measurement. I can estimate the brightness (illuminance) of sky was about one hundred thirty thousandth (=1/217) of that of cloudy sky in midday. My subjective impression was same with light-polluted midnight, could hardly distinguish individual faces. And the sky was started to brighten again with end of total eclipse (I aborted measurement at 9:51 because of rain fall).
The second set of images shows the change of brightness of sky. You can see a neon sign of building in lower turned on a light automatically during the total eclipse.


Partial Solar Eclipse on Oct 14, 2004
Annular Solar Eclipse on May 21, 2012 (Review)

Copyright(c) 2009 by Naoyuki Kurita, All rights reserved.
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