Total Solar Eclipse, 29th Mar. 2006

Time schedule for Side, Turkey. Times given are in EEST (GMT+3).

Event Time

First contact 12:37

Second contact 13:54

Third contact 13:57

Forth contact 15:12

Event	Time
First contact	12:37
Second contact	13:54
Third contact	13:57
Forth contact	15:12

Images of the eclipse. The images have been taken with a Minolta XD 7 SLR camera, Tokina mirror f=500mm, f/8 and Fuji Provia 100F color slide film. The slides have then been copied with a digital camera and a slide copying adapter. The digital images have been cropped and processed with Gimp.

Click on an image to view a larger version.

Images before totality between 12:34 and 13:52. A Baader AstroSolar filter foil was used to protect the lens and camera.

12:34 12:38 12:50 13:00 13:10

13:20 13:30 13:40 13:50 13:52

Images during totality. Images with increasing exposure times from 1/125 s to 1 s are shown.

1/125 s 1/60 s 1/30 s 1/15 s 1/8 s 1/4 s 1/2 s 1 s

End of totality:

1/30 s

During the eclipse it was getting colder and fresh. After totality one could see dew drops in a spider's web. This was at 2:30 pm on a bright and sunny day ! Click the image to view a larger version.

Near Side, Turkey, totality lasted for about 3 minutes. During this time the moon totally occulted the solar disc. From the images above you can see that the moon entered the solar disc from "bottom right". And from there after totality the first light comes again. To get an idea how much larger the moons disc appeared than the sun's disc, the following image is a combination of an image taken just before the eclipse started and an image taken at the end of totality. You see the bright disc of the sun surrounded by a small black ring. This is the dark disc of the moon which hides parts of the sun's corona.

In general, if the moon is closer to earth, it's disc appears larger. During that time a total solar eclipse would last longer. If the moon is farther away from earth, it appears smaller and a total solar eclipse would be shorter. And since the moon revolves earth not in a circle but in an ellipse, it can be thus far away from earth that it appears smaller than the sun. In that case the moon can not occult the sun completely and an eclipse would only be ring-shaped.

Last revised: 30th. Apr. 2006