Happy Eclipse!

At our local maximum,  the eclipse covered about 80% of the sun.  That meant we didn't get the cool coronal ring effects, but we did get some really interesting shadow effects.



 The dappled sunlight turned into beautiful crescents!







We didn't have solar glasses, but we had several other ways to observe the actual eclipse besides the shadows.



We did successfully use a pinhole in paper to project the sun's image, but we found it projected much more clearly if we used binoculars.

Please note we were not looking through the binoculars, even to line them up!  

We just moved them around until the sun's light passed through them and projected onto the paper.

Then we realized we could observe these effects inside, where it was 78 degrees and low humidity!

We had punched a page full of holes, and, when held to the light, you could see the moon and sun clearly.

It was interesting, at 80% occlusion, it didn't get super dark, it just got weird. 

It definitely got darker, but not really like night time - it more felt like we were wearing sunglasses.

I think what made it feel odd was that it was dim, but the shadows were (crescent shaped) midafternoon shadows,

And, of course, we also live streamed the eclipse from areas where they had totality!