At times, I think it would be very useful to be an octopus. But then, if I was an octopus, I probably wouldn’t be able to do the things I wished I could do, whilst thinking it would be useful being an octopus. Sigh. There are pros and cons with everything.
Take Thursday’s partial eclipse, for example.
I usually miss astronomical events, usually due to three reasons. 1) I’m asleep; 2) I’m in the Place of W; or 3) cloud cover. Thursday morning was covered in cloud. Thick, dark, heavy clouds that hung ominously overhead. All around the edges was very bright, but up above not so. I was also in the Place of W which didn’t help matters any.
However, come 11am the clouds miraculously dispersed, meaning it would be possible to get a glimpse of the eclipse after all. I had a few minutes to work out where the Sun was, and then see if I could capture it on camera.
The cloud cover would have been useful, thinking about it, as long as the Sun could be seen peeping through. The last partial eclipse we had, also when I was in the Place of W, occurred on a cloudy day, yet I managed to get some good photos of it through the cloud. That day, however, the skies had a slight feel of Armageddon, which made the whole thing a little more surreal.
Back to Thursday. I looked through the office window, to see if I could see the Sun. At first I couldn’t see it, but used the angle of the shadows on the window frames to work out where the Sun was. Then I leant at an angle that shouldn’t really be achievable by any human (although it would probably be an easy one for a contortionist), as the Sun was hidden behind the overhang of the roof. Being in my impossible pose, I now saw the Sun and then couldn’t see another thing for about two minutes.
Well, I could see a black circle surrounded by red… or was it a red one surrounded by black? I think it alternated as I blinked, as I hastily tried to get to view this eclipse. I wasn’t going to miss this astronomical event. No way.
Fortunately, my blind spot faded, and I could see again. I grabbed a piece of card, and pierced a hole through it with a handy pin. I placed a sheet of paper on the window sill, and then angled the card so that the image of the Sun appeared on the paper. I then reached for my mobile phone, and holding the card in one hand, looking at the paper with one eye, holding the camera with the other hand, and looking at the image in the phone’s screen with the other eye, managed to get a photo of the event. As it happened!
The photo wasn’t the best however.
But, if you tilt your head and squint your eyes at a certain angle, you can just about make out the Moon moving over the Sun at around 1 o’clock. (In case you were wondering, the lines on the photo were printed on the other side of the piece of paper – I didn’t have a plain sheet of A4 to hand!)
At least I saw it… and that’s all that matters!
Posted for Debbie’s Six Word Saturday. The link will take you to her site, where you can see what a real photograph should look like!
