This was the solar eclipse that occurred April/08/2005. The moon was covering the 93% of the sun.

After many evenings of inviting friends to watch double stars and planets in the freezing cold of night, the April 8th eclipse offered a daytime opportunity with pleasant weather. The image of the Sun was taken with a SolarMax40 telescope. The Happy Eclipse photo is an example of pinhole projection: My wife and good friend watched the eclipse as a pair of friends perform pin hole projection using a 2' 'pin hole' from a few feet away. And the last photo is an example of solar projection using a 5' achromatic refractor. Everyone had a great time and very much enjoyed the daytime astronomy. All photos were taken with a Sony Cybershot DSC-P100.

April 8, 2005, 22:20 UT Meade ETX-125, Baader Visual Solar Film MaxView 40 eyepiece, W-15 yellow filter Nikon Coolpix 4300 12.2 mm FL, f/4.3 1/261 second Ocala, Florida Howard Eskildsen

Here in Pittsburgh we were right on the edge of the eclipse. As one can see, below the 'E' in the photo is a very slight indent. That is as big as it ever got. The projected setup I used to take the picture can be seen in the 2nd photo.

Views from annular eclipse in Venezuela's village of Macigual in western state of Merida, 730 km from Caracas, April 8, 2005. Sony DSC-F717

This was as much as could be seen before the Sun dipped behind a bank of clouds and disappeared completely. Photo Details: JVC GC-A70 digital camera afocal to a Celestron NexStar4 via a 25mm eyepiece.

Taken through clouds with a Canon 10D digital SLR using a 280mm lens and a red filter.

This photo was taken with a Panasonic Lumix FZ20 digital camera at 12X zoom and a Baader solar filter at F2.8 and 1/20 at 6:03 EDT.

ASA 400, f/8, 1/500. Clouds blocked out the first half (most of it) but cleared for the second half. So my sequence is not complete but still 'ok' :-) See ya in 2012!

Just a nibble of the Sun was taken by the Moon during the solar eclipse on April 8. I hope it wasn't too hungry afterwards.