The Eclipse!

It was the eclipse on Friday! Hurrah!

I'd was desperate to get a good look at the action as this was the most complete eclipse I've had the chance to see so far. On the left is a picture I snapped just after the peak of the eclipse in Sheffield. We were quite lucky as during my walk to work in the morning it was really cloudy, so I was thinking I might just have to watch it on TV. However, I wasn't going to give up so I made myself an oh so sophisticated pinhole camera and went outside to see if I could catch anything with it. 

The very hi-tech pinhole camera!

With it being so cloudy, it was really hard to get the pinhole to work, but because of cloud cover and the very handy polarising windows in my building, we were able to snap photos and catch the action inside. Also, once everything started brightening up again I managed to get some very good, but small images of the sun from my pinhole, although I had to stop after a while when my arm went into cramp... Oops! 

I think the main problem that stopped the pinhole working as well as I hoped was the ambient light as when I've used one before we drew the curtains around us to see the projection better, but at least I can make a note of that for next time.

All in all I had a great Friday morning, I got some great pictures and experienced a pretty rare event in person! If you missed the Eclipse action (fingers crossed you that you didn't), or if you want to re-live it, you can catch it all over on BBC iPlayer with Eclipse Live from Dara O Briain, Brian cox and Liz Bonnin. For more about eclipses check out the Stargazing Live Resources page here!