CoMo Science

2024 Eclipse

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There was a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 crossing North America from Mexico to Maine, including southeastern Missouri. Totality at my location started at 1:58 pm and lasted a little over 4 minutes.

Things I learned about eclipses:

  • The path of the zone of totality is about 150 miles wide.
  • The eclipse starts about 1 hour before totality.
  • Traffic was terrible, especially when leaving.
  • You can’t (easily) get good pictures of an eclipse with an iPhone.
  • The bright “stars” that become visible near the sun are likely Venus or Mercury since they are never far from the sun.
  • It is better to just enjoy the eclipse and allow others to take great pictures which you can look at later.
  • The temperature definitely drops.
  • The sun is still pretty bright even when it is almost completely covered.
  • A good time to do experiments is after totality, while a partial eclipse is still going on, but everyone else has become less engaged.

Websites with great pictures and/or explanations:

YouTube videos with interesting perspectives on eclipses:

Here are some pictures I was able to get:

All it takes to make a pinhole is a ballpoint pen.

Here is a close up of the images of the eclipse projected on a piece of paper from the pinholes.

Here are some images from light passing through tree leaves. Because it was early spring, there were not a lot of leaves and I couldn’t get a great picture of this. You can clearly see the crescents though.

You can even make pinholes with your fingers. Notice that the orientation of the crescent has changed, since this was done after totality. Also, note the double shadow of my hand.

Here are a couple of videos that show interesting features of the eclipse:

This video shows how quickly the moon appears. The moon takes about 10 seconds to go from being invisible to completely obscuring the sun. You can see Venus appear at the end of the video.

This video shows how you can make a pinhole with your hand to see images of the moon in front of the sun. You can also see a double shadow around my hand.

This is the alignment of planets during the eclipse.

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