Annular Solar Eclipse, Durness, Northern Scotland, 31/05/03

Success!! After all the waiting and wondering about the weather up here in Durness, we awoke at 3.30 this morning to almost perfect conditions, with only a little sea-mist on the north-eastern horizon.

So at sun-rise, the sun and moon were obscured, but both became visible just at the moment of annularity, and we caught a beautiful view of an incredibly thin band of fire around the moon, heavily filtered by the sea-mist, leaving it visible but safe and comfortable to look at.

Moments later, the sun and moon cleared the mist cover, and with our solar filters now on, we were able to watch the eclipse progress from about 4.50 to it's conclusion at 5.45 BST. Lots of nice views of the recent sun-spots, and the most beautiful observation site you could imagine.

So I'm feeling mightily chuffed having caught 3 out of 3 of this month's major astronomical events!

Dublin was beautifully shrouded in mist this morning, clear skies above but from Killiney hill you had trouble making out Bray Head and Howth was invisible.

However at about 5:20 the Sun started to creep above the mist and we got to see a very dark red sun with a bit missing from it.

Didnt see any sunspots, partly because I didn't bring a telescope (just had 300mm camera lens), but the whisps of cloud did give a very jupiter like effect to the sun!

As with the Mercury Transit I missed the beginning and the end but did get some very nice views.

Photos to follow, the digital ones I should et done today, the film ones will take a bit longer!

Cheers,
~Al

Hi,

My pics from the digital camera are at
www.cademuir.net/gallery.html

However they arent particularly good, hopefully the film ones will be better. You get the idea about haze and clouds from them anyway.

Cheers,
~Al