Solar Eclipse Cornwall 1999

The following images have been obtained during the total solar eclipse on 11 August 1999 from top of the Carn Brea Hill near Camborne / Redruth in Cornwall, England (see Map). The image series gives a realistic impression of the dramatic change of light for the landscape (the Pool - district of Camborne and its coastal hinterland) around totality. To my knowledge, no comparable image sequence has been published before, in particular as it managed to capture the approach of the moon's shadow despite the totally overcast sky.
Due to the clouds, no direct images of the sun could be obtained, but you may find these elsewhere on other websites (see Links/ Webring). Please wait until all the images below have loaded, then click 'First Image' in the navigation bar on the right.

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The timings for the Totality Sequence should only be considered as approximate. They are probably correct to within about 5 sec for the pre-totality frames but the post-totality ones are only estimates as I did not time the restart of the image sequence towards the end of totality. Exact timings were anyway pretty much academic due to the thick layer of clouds which meant that the brightness level on the ground was actually determined by the solar illumination of the cloud-tops which were at a height of about 10 km (the airplane which was transmitting live TV- pictures of the eclipse from this area had to go this high in order to be out of the clouds). The inclination of the moon's shadow and its velocity of about 1 km/sec (see Map) meant that both the beginning and end of totality occurred almost 10 sec earlier than the nominal times and was furthermore blurred by a similar amount due to the scattering of light within the clouds. Nevertheless it was noticeable that daylight reappeared much faster than it disappeared (probably twice as fast). This could be explained by the fact that during totality (and also to a significant degree for about 5-10 sec before and after) the local brightness is determined by secondary illumination by light scattered from outside the shadow. The inclination of the shadow cone meant however that a larger air volume was illuminated at the end than at the beginning (the reverse would have been true had the eclipse been in the late afternoon because of the different position of the sun).

All images on eclipse day were taken with a tripod mounted Canon T70 and a 35 mm wide angle lens (Carl Zeiss Flektogon f/2.4 mounted via an adapter) on Ektachrome 100 HC colour slide film (which was pushed by 1.5 stops at the processing stage). Exposure was determined by partial metering from the landscape with the near totality frames consistently underexposed by 0.5 stops. Re-composition of each frame resulted in a delay of about 2 sec between metering and shutter release and a total time of about 5 sec between the shots. Aperture was fixed at f/4 which gave an exposure time of 1/15 sec at the start of the Totality Sequence ( 50 sec before second contact). During totality the metered time exceeded the maximum exposure time of the camera of 2 sec resulting in a corresponding underexposure which however only emphasized the near-nighttime darkness at this stage.
The 'Day Before' -image was taken with a zoom lens at about the same focal length but from a slightly different position.
My observation point was exactly 200 m above sea level (about 100 m above the town). The closest parts of the landscape (town) in the images are about 1 km away, the coast 6 km and the theoretical horizon from this height is at 50 km.
The direction of view was chosen such that the center of the image was roughly tangential to the shadow cone as the latter was closing in, i.e. one was looking into the shadow in the left part of the picture and out of it in the right (towards the end and after totality the shadow cone was outside the field of view (in fact behind the camera) as the symmetry had reversed) (see Map for an illustration)