Galileo's Camera

When I covered the 21st June solar eclipse, I took 19 photos over roughly 3 hours to create a montage of Moon's path across the disc of the Sun. There were some private queries on how it was done, so I figured might as well explain it all in a post.

Thesolar eclipse of 21 June 2020 appeared to Sri Lanka as a partial eclipse. The timing of this wasn't that great given that the area I live is under the monsoon season and there is absolutely no guarantee of clear skies. The day before the eclipse however, it was extremely sunny. But things got complicated when two different weather sites gave two completely different predictions for the day of the eclipse.

When I planned the year, I planned my vacation travel to be in June so that I can stop over in Oman to view the solar eclipse that is happening on 21st June 2020. While the eclipse is viewable in my own country, Sri Lanka, we can only see a partial eclipse, whereas in Oman you can view an annular eclipse.

Ever since my NexStar 4SE broke down irreparably my astrophotography work came to a standstill. While I could've continued a little more with my 400mm telephoto lens, a particular problem I met with it meant that that's also out of question. When I learned that there was a solar eclipse on 26th of December 2019 and that it is visible to the northern part of Sri Lanka, I thought this might be a good time to may be try and get back to it. Thanks to my dad, I had an exposure to astronomy from a very early age. If I am not mistaken, the very first solar eclipse that I witnessed was on 11th Sep 1988. This was a partial eclipse. My second was again a partial eclipse, 24th Oct 1995. This one was special in a way that I used the most rudimentary method of observing a solar eclipse, using a basin full of water. I did skip the eclipse in 1999 but did checkout the one on 03rd Oct 2005. Skipped again in 2008 and observed the annular eclipse of 15th Jan 2010 as a partial one. This is th...

Today (03rd November 2013) marks the last eclipse for the year of 2013 and it is a total solar eclipse for some areas in the world. Although Sri Lanka is not in that list, if you want to see how it looks like, there is someone webcasting it as it happens: SLOOH - Total Solar Eclipse or embedded via the SLOOH website The webcast of the eclipse will begin at around 17:15 Sri Lankan time.